Malachai hit me once as hard as he could. I stumbled, grabbed the collar of his kimono with both hands to balance me. I looked into his eyes, ready to chastise him, but I caught myself. His eyes were bloodshot, glossy, fear filled and angry behind his glasses. He grabbed my wrists, my cheek beginning to smart. Ietake soon came running, a half-sheathed sword clenched in his hands. He stopped when he saw me, “It is only you, Oshia-san.” Malachai’s hands tightened around my wrists, an unnatural chill ran through me. “This is the first he has moved in days, I thought he had sensed danger.”

I looked at Ietake out of the corner of my eye. “Days?” I asked. “I spent a night. How long have I been away?”

“A week,” he said, “maybe two. Time flows differently among kamigami.” He slid his sword back into its sheath. “Your friend, he stayed in the guest room, curled up, muttering.” He moved his sword to one hand. “Did Chirizukakaiou-sama have the answers you sought?”

A week, maybe two; I stared at Malachai’s face, at the pallor of it, at tears blurring his blue eyes. "Ietake-san.” He understood the underlining meaning, bowing his head and returning to his house. “Malachai,” I said softly, “tell me…what’s been on your mind?” He let go of a wrist, wiping tears coming too fast, his breathing turning uneven and rough. I held his head to my shoulder, telling him to take his time, trying to get his breathing back from its hiccupping state.

His fangs brushed against my skin, gnawing at it. I didn’t say anything as he bit at my neck softly, teeth not breaking the thin barrier. He sunk them in softly, breathing hard through his nose as he sucked. I felt lightheaded almost the instant my blood touched his tongue, my body getting weak and growing cold. Malachai had to keep me on my painful feet until he finished eating. He licked the puncture holes, at the bruise on my face. “You told me to trust you,” he had composed himself while he fed, no longer a sniveling child. “Something tainted your blood.” He pushed his glasses up, wiping at reddened eyes. “I was worried…when you didn’t come back…and I told myself to trust you…but then…ev-everything I said didn’t make you come back…and I started to think that…that he was right.” He placed his glasses back on his nose, tilting his head down. “And then you come back…injured.”

He carried me to Ietake’s house, sitting me down on the engawa. He was gone for only a few minutes, returning with a small bucket of water, a rag, bandages, and a pair of socks. “Who is ‘he’?” I asked as he washed the dirt and blood from my feet. “What is he right about?”

Malachai dried my feet. “My tată,” he said quietly, beginning to wrap them in bandages. “He…No one could ever…love me…because I’m…” He slid the tabi socks on me. “My mamă thought the same.”

He helped me stand, an arm wrapped around my back. “What…What did she think?”

“That I…” He looked down at his own feet. “That I’m not…Dr. Chase said I shouldn’t call myself that anymore.” He brought his head up, “You’re very cold, August.” He was done with the topic of his tată, whatever that meant. I respected his quietness on the subject, I didn’t want to pry more than I would be able to handle if he became violent or shut himself down.

I started to feel the cold Malachai felt, a ghost of frost permeating into each cell of blood. The mountain was mad, and I had a rather good idea as to why. We passed Ietake on the way to the guestroom, he muttered to Mototomo before pushing him off on his own solo journey. I sat in my futon, it had been cleaned, but its appearance was almost identical to how I had left it.

“Chirizukakaiou-sama ga nani to ii mashita ka?” Ietake appeared with a hanten in his hands. “What did Chirizukakaiou-sama say?” I put the jacket on hoping I wasn’t visibly shaking too much from the cold spreading throughout my body, recounting my conversation. “That…is a problem.”

A shiver went down my spine, spreading out to encase my ribs. “I’ve gathered,” I said. “Miyanoura-dake sent a jami.” I shoved my hands in the hanten’s pockets. “Are all the kitsune under protection?”

Ietake nodded, “Yes, I believe so, though…there may be a tengu or two who would part with theirs.” He walked to the door. “There are extra blankets in the cabinets. I will be back with something warm.”

I laid down, pulling the thick blanket up to my chin and gave Malachai a summary of what Ietake had said. He went to retrieve another blanket while I tried to hold onto any warmth left in my body. The loss of feeling happened gradually, starting in my hands before spreading to my wrists. I kept flexing my fingers to keep the blood flowing, but it did nothing. The cold was in my blood, circulating throughout my body until I would freeze from the inside out. I curled up on my side, shoving my hands between my thighs to try and warm them up. Two blankets, a hanten, a kimono over a yukata wasn’t enough to keep in the heat.

There was a weight on me, comforting and warm. It made me feel protected, loved, that I wasn’t alone. It was Malachai, holding me from on top of the blankets, having half rolled me into a cocoon. The sensation was soon coming back to my hands, only leaving me again when he removed himself from me, Ietake entering with hot tea and rice porridge. Sitting up was a little challenging for me as a wave of dizziness washed over me.   

The next handful of days were filled with bouts of uncontrollable shaking from the unnatural cold or being soaked in sweat by an overwhelming warmth. The influence of the jami was lessening, however. I found the times I spent shaking with ice in my veins to last twice as short as the periods I sweated through my layers.

 Once the frost had left my body was when the sickness came. I coughed after every word, after every through breaths, which I was unable to take through my nose. The nausea was the worst, making me feel sick with even the slightest bit of food or water in me. If the cold didn’t take me, starvation and blood loss would. It became increasingly hard for me to let Malachai feed from me, a few mouthfuls from my wrist was enough to make me lightheaded.

I stayed warm, no matter how much cloth I soaked in my sweat. Ietake said I needed to boil the jami out of me, and I would do just that. The sooner I could stand without vertigo, the sooner I could go hunting for a tengu willing to give me their kitsune. The idea of turning a kitsune into kitsune udon still unsettled me. If it was the only way to hide my horns for a few months to wrap my life up, then I would take it. For just a few more months with Shii, just a few days with Naddy to explain myself…I would do something I thought was unthinkable only days ago.

Malachai never left my side, using whatever bit of warmth his body could still muster to help the cold leave faster. He force fed me when I felt too sick to eat on my own. I didn’t know if he was doing it out of necessity to keep his food source alive, or because he truly wanted me to get better. These thoughts whirled around my stuffed head, coming and going in fever dreams.

I was convinced the gods were angry with me the longer the illness stayed. My intention to kill a kitsune, one that may be under a god’s control was just as bad to them as actually killing one. I wouldn’t leave the forest alive. That thought penetrated deep in my brain, mixing with my thoughts about Malachai’s trauma suffered as a child. But that idea didn’t seem to register independently within him, unlike him, I could return to my former self once the jami left me.

He wiped sweat from my body, helping me change my clothes whenever they got too soaked. “Malachai?” I wrapped my arms around my middle. “The…the kitsune udon won’t hide my horns and fangs forever…I’ll…I’ll have to come back to Kisankoku…”

He rested his head on my stomach, an overwhelming quite falling over him. “Is…your mind set on that?”

“Where else would I go?” I asked.

His face appeared next to mine. “I could always…keep you locked up in my apartment…” His cheeks begun to flush as I assumed he imagined all sorts of things. “I’d take care of…all your needs…as long as you take care of all of mine.”

Malachai kissed my cheek and rested his head on my covered shoulder; I didn’t bother shrugging him off. “If…If the choice is between here and never leaving your apartment…” He moved his head slightly. “I…I can’t stay couped up forever.”

Suddenly, he was straddling me, face as red as I thought mine was from the fever. “Not even in a sexy way?” I asked what he meant, and he smiled, eyes glazing over. “I told you I wanted to torture you, didn’t I?” He leaned forward, voice getting low and raspy. “I could tie you up in all sorts of positions…watch you writhe in pain while—

“I get it!” I cut his words short, looking away. I felt too terrible to have all my blood rush to other places. “C-Couldn’t you…you still do-do all that h-here?”

He moved my head to force me to look at him. “I suppose,” he slid a finger up to my bottom lip, “but I would need a bed with a headboard.” I swallowed. “You’ll need something to hold onto, dragă.” I had no idea if it was the fever or his words, his scent, making my body temperature rise. With my body being so weak, he could’ve done whatever it was he was imagining to me. I wanted him to, to bring any and all of his desires to life. I would’ve asked him to, demanded him to, but the fever begun to make me dizzy. “Rest, August,” he took his place by my side again, “we can make time for me to…cut you open.”

I rolled onto my side, too embarrassed to face him. I could feel his gaze on me, though, full of amusement at my reactions. I closed my eyes to sleep, it getting harder and harder to do so the higher my body temperature rose. The sooner I could get better, the sooner I could go kitsune hunting.