Most humans could never be as clever as Kuro, but he’d expected better of the onmyouji. Capturing Kuro must have been a god’s granted prayer. Instead of slipping Kuro anonymously through the palace’s side door, the onmyouji insisted on presenting him to the Sun Prince.

Goodbye shrine, greetings horrible death.

Worse, he’d forced Kuro into three suffocating layers of new robes — underrobes, overrobes and hakama trousers. As Kuro and the onmyouji bowed the length of the Imperial Palace’s five audience halls, the cloth ties dug into his belly. His heart beat in his ears louder than his heaving breath. If he had to flee, Kuro would barely be able to jump over a short fence, never mind escape the Imperial Palace bulwarks. If the onmyouji hadn’t worn three times the layers, Kuro would have accused him of treachery.

All the way down the audience halls, the too-pristine walls and the silence mocked him, acting like everything was normal. As if the Night Parade didn’t lurk behind them. Look how innocent we are, they cooed. You’ll never see our fangs before we bite off your head.

They reached the prince’s side chamber before he could glimpse through the normal disguise or regained his breath. The onmyouji breathed evenly. Bastard.

Two cushions had been placed before a bamboo-curtained dais. The onmyouji kept his eyes low and calm as he stood behind his cushion, when even a newborn kit knew not to be so stupid as to ignore their surroundings. Incense hid any smell further than a few mats around Kuro. But then the onmyouji wasn’t being delivered to kill a Sun Prince with the Night Parade at his beck and call.

The demon wouldn’t need to smell or see them to attack. The prince had ensured that. All he needed to do was leap at the cushions.

Kuro needed an escape route. He swept his eyes over the panels. His jaw dropped.

The panels weren’t plain white like the audience hall and the onmyouji’s chamber, or even stained yellow from the incense.

Amidst beds of peeling gild was the image of the Imperial Palace. Samurai limbs practised archery in one courtyard, monks in patches of black and orange preyed in another. A garden covered one wall, clouds of badly patched gold drifting between crumbling ponds and twisted red pines.

Kuro’s breath hitched. Amid a ghostly retinue of umbrella holders, chair-carriers and attending samurai, a faded emperor slew the outline of a fox.

The onmyouji hissed at Kuro to take his place. Kuro ignored him, swinging his gaze to the bamboo curtain.

Forget the Night Parade. The onmyouji might have brought him to the palace for the Sun Prince’s fox hunt.

The onmyouji yanked Kuro to stand behind the other cushion. Kuro grunted, squeezing his fists against his thighs, but obediently knelt.

The figure behind the bamboo curtain chuckled. Kuro jerked. A shudder wrenched up his spine.

The prince. Or so Kuro assumed.

Kuro and the onmyouji bowed once more on the cushions. The weight of the prince’s gaze blazed on Kuro’s neck. Kuro hurried to rise, to keep his eyes open and alert for so much as a twitch, but the still-bowing onmyouji flicked a finger in Kuro’s direction, promising a painful reprisal if he didn’t behave. Kuro ducked his head again, resting his forehead on his hands and twisting his neck to watch them both.

“These humble beings bring greetings from his Majestic Self, First Lord Shogun Gorou,” the onmyouji said to the mats.

The prince said nothing. Kuro waited. One of them would crack. One of them would reveal why instead of shoving Kuro into the kitchen, the onmyouji had dragged him into the prince’s presence.

Did the onmyouji expect Kuro to leap at the Sun Prince that very moment? He couldn’t be that stupid. He would want an alibi first. Too many possibilities flooded Kuro’s head, each as likely and as impossible as the last.

“Your Imperial Highness?” the onmyouji prompted as the silence stretched out.

“Oh?” the prince sounded surprise. “Sorry, are you still here?”

The tone was as pompous as Kuro had always imagined in the Sun Prince, full of pride and not much else. The Sun Prince would be rich again if he could sell pride at the market like rice. The only thing Kuro hadn’t expected was how informal the prince spoke. He’d expected more of the elongated, overly-polite crowing that Noh actors groaned out.

“Yes, Your Imperial Highness.” The onmyouji clenched his toes. “I wished to humbly beg His Imperial Highness to listen to my inadequate words.”

The prince sighed in a way that sounded like, ‘Must I?’ Kuro held his breath, praying he would say it. But instead he said, “Fine.”

“I’m sure that His Highness has thought through this very carefully, but it is my humble opinion that such a course of action is unwise.”

“Do you?” the prince asked.

“I do, Your Imperial Highness. Accepting a demon into one’s household—”

“But he’s not a demon,” the prince interrupted.

The prince knew Kuro wasn’t human? Kuro raised his head to glare at the onmyouji. The onmyouji almost grimaced at the prince’s rudeness. Served him right.

“I’ve been told he’s a fox.”

Kuro snuck a glance at the dying fox on the panels. He swallowed.

“Not all spirits are demons,” the prince continued. “I would have imagined an onmyouji of your renown would know that.”

“But even spirits are dangerous,” the onmyouji said. “A fox, especially one as common as this one, is a trickster.”

“So much more amusing then,” the prince said. “And educational. I’ve heard that my Capital is filled with all kinds of supernatural creatures.”

Bullshit! What kind of half-dumb kit believed the prince cared about them?

“A fox is untrustworthy.”

Kuro held his breath. The onmyouji almost sounded as if he tried to convince the prince not to take him. If the prince agreed, Kuro was saved. The onmyouji couldn’t exile him to the forest. It wouldn’t be fair. He chewed on his bottom lip. But since when did humans know what ‘fair’ meant?

“Perhaps they are, and perhaps they aren’t.” The prince’s tone didn’t agree with his words. “But if half my subjects are spirits, I should learn more about them. Don’t you agree?”

No, no, no. Protest, onmyouji, protest.

“As Your Imperial Highness thinks wise,” the onmyouji said, tone carefully resigned.

He gave in already? But—

That onmyouji was tricky. Kuro curled his fingers against the mat. He’d played the prince by arguing against what he wanted. Had the onmyouji used the same trick against Kuro when he’d negotiated for his shrine?

“His Greatness, Shogun Gorou, wishes me to convey his agreement with His Highness’ careful consideration.”

The prince didn’t even stab the onmyouji with the most obvious response, that the onmyouji’s earlier argument had not only contested the Sun Prince but the Shogun as well.

“He has thus chosen to send this fox here, in response to the favour Your Imperial Highness asked of the Shogun.”

Kuro dropped his jaw. Favour? Asked? The prince had asked for Kuro? But why? How did the prince even know Kuro existed?

Rumours and gossip. But how would the cloistered prince overhear that? And why didn’t he despise Kuro like everyone else?

Ren. He laughed to himself. He’d thought the human strange and even went so far as to consider he might have belonged to the Shogun’s household. But perhaps Ren was the prince’s boy. It explained his delusions about the Shogun’s generosity, the prince’s importance, and why he’d stayed away from the Imperial family earlier.

“Return to him my words of gratitude,” the Sun Prince said. No please, no thanks, no actual words of gratitude. But then the Sun Prince wouldn’t waste words on so lowly a servant as the onmyouji.

The onmyouji bowed his spine over the insult, but Kuro didn’t have a second to enjoy his discomfort.

Whoever had told the prince, whatever the prince knew about him, Kuro couldn’t stay. The prince would expect him to… His mind went blank. What did humans do? He’d spied on merchant households enough to mimic them in case he got into a tight spot, like in the dead end where he’d met Ren, but that was a far cry from a prince’s household. He’d kneel the wrong way or open a screen door with the wrong hand, or commit any one of the countless offences. The prince would feed him to the Night Parade before nightfall, before ever catching a whiff of Kuro’s treachery.

And what did the Sun Prince even want from him? Was he a servant? A pet? An idle curiosity? He liked Kuro because he was a fox. Did he mean to leash Kuro as if he were a dog? Or feed him as a treat to his precious Night Parade?

“I’m not housebroken.” The words flew out of Kuro’s mouth. He hunched his shoulders.

The onmyouji shot Kuro a venomous look. The prince half-choked, half-laughed.

“Er, Your Imperial Highness,” Kuro added, as if the title erased his words. Not housebroken? He was a kitsune, not a dog. “I mean, I lack training. Court training.”

The prince shifted behind the curtain. “That hardly matters.”

“And I’m loud,” Kuro added. “Obnoxiously loud.”

“The palace is too quiet.”

“But—”

The onmyouji cut him off. “What the fox means is he’s overwhelmed by His Highness’ generosity. Isn’t that so?” Head still bowed, he twisted so Kuro saw him mouth the word forest.

“Err, that’s right.” Why did his voice have to yip at the end like a kit crying for his mother?

“You may leave then,” the prince said.

Kuro crawled backward toward the door.

“Not you.” The onmyouji pointed to Kuro’s abandoned cushion.

Shoulders drooping, Kuro returned to his spot. So close.

Once Kuro bowed again, the onmyouji said, “As His Highness wishes,” and bowed his way out of the room and back down the chambers, the same as when they had approached.

Which left Kuro alone with the Sun Prince, and no idea what he was supposed to do or say. Was he supposed to leap at the bamboo curtain in his fox form?

Kuro couldn’t afford to wait. Any moment, he’d unwittingly insult the prince. He had to act before the prince had the chance to throw him into his demon pits.

He thrust himself onto his hind legs. Any plan would be better than this one, but the stupid onmyouji hadn’t given him time to think. He had to leap.

The prince’s shadow leaned to the side and pulled on a rope. The bamboo curtain flew up.

Kuro cursed. He did not want his eyes to be boiled. Bad enough for humans, they only had to live eighty years. Kuro would have to suffer as a blind man for hundreds. He dove back down into a bow, but it was too late. He caught sight of the Sun Prince.

And Kuro froze, mid-bow.

The first thought lurking in the frozen land that was the current state of his mind was this must have been a joke. A prank on the onmyouji, where the prince switched places with a commoner to see if the onmyouji could tell the difference. A fox would have played that prank.

But the human wore silk embroidered with the Imperial crest. Only the Imperial family could wear that crest upon pain of crucifixion, and while the prince had many sisters, the figure was definitely male. Kuro had seen him stripped to the bare minimum of a winter kimono just a day earlier.

Ren grinned down at Kuro like a jolly Jizo statue. “You’re welcome.”