"No, you don't!?" I yanked Stacy in with my right hand and hauled her against my chest. With my left I snapped an ice shield into existence between Dizzy's dagger and Stacy's throat. I didn't have an opportunity to shape it clean—more slush than plate—so the blade punched through the ice and straight into my palm.
"Ugh." The pain lit every nerve like a fireworks factory going up; my left arm was howling with that ten-times curse-tax interest. I'd taken hits from Stacy for three years, though. Pain wasn't a stop sign anymore; it was a suggestion I ignored. I hopped off the bed with Stacy slung tight and put distance between us and the dog with the suddenly unfriendly eyes.
"What terrible timing." Dizzy's voice came out flat and irritated. "I wanted to do it in your dreams, but you just had to wake up. Tsk." She let the blood-wet dagger clatter onto the bedsheets and palmed two more—one reverse grip, one forward—like she was deciding which cutlery to use for dessert. She saw me glance at the discarded blade and smiled too sweetly. "Wondering why I dropped it? You'll find out later. Hehe."
"Can't wait." I fed mana to Super Regen. My flesh knitted together, and the nerve-screams faded to a barbed hum. I glanced down—my right hand had Stacy by the collar like she was a stray kitten I'd rescued from a well—and gave her a small shake. "Hey. Up."
"Don't take your eyes off your enemy," Dizzy sang, already moving. She dashed in, blades fanning for my ribs and throat.
I grew a greatsword in my left hand—ice shivered into length and weight with a sharp, clean ring—and caught both daggers on the flat. Sparks of frost hissed. "Dizzy," I said, meeting her eyes over the locked steel, "did you really think I'd be that easy? Furthermore, who trained you? You're crossing your lines like you're slicing cake."
Her answer was a hiss. I tilted my head to clear the stabbing line and kicked. My heel sank into her stomach like booting a sack of rice. Dizzy launched backward, taking the bed with her, then the wall, then most of my patience, and hit the far side of the room with a dent that was going to make the mansion's auto-repair spell work overtime.
I shifted my grip on Stacy, slung her over my shoulder fireman-style—so dignified—and faced the crater. Dizzy peeled herself out of the wall with a rattle of plaster and stubbornness. "How are you so strong?" she wheezed. "I knew you were a demon-fox, but you're still level two."
"Is there something special about being a demon-fox?" I asked, deadpan.
She laughed like I'd told the world's funniest joke with a knife in it. "Didn't you know? Your kind is rare and dangerous. Why do you think it's rare to see any others? The Federation gave a continent-wide order to exterminate you. Anyone who brings back a corpse gets a massive reward. It's open season."
Something low and ugly rolled under my tongue. It wasn't fear. It wasn't grief. It was the kind of anger that makes your hands go steady and your thoughts get clearer. Maybe it was the blood in me—primordial, old as everything. Perhaps it was the result of three years spent building something that felt like a life, only to suddenly hear that strangers wanted my species as a trophy. I leaned down close to Stacy's ear. "Sorry about this," I whispered, not sure whether I meant the wall, the mess, or the things I was about to do.
I let Stacy down gently to the floor and moved.
Dizzy saw a blur. She got her blades up—credit for that—and still went skidding in a skid of splinters. This time she didn't stop at the wall; she went through it, screaming metal and stone, and vanished into bright late-afternoon air.
I stepped to the hole. Outside, the sun slanted gold across the courtyard, throwing long shadows off the training posts. Beyond the outer lawn, the Dead Forest crouched and breathed: a black treeline like a jawline of teeth. Dizzy was a broken figure fifty meters out, sprawled in a churned scar across the lawn, fighting her body to stand.
Behind me, the door banged open. "Kitsune!" Rebecca held a chain-axe in one hand, while Lily stood beside her with a rapier at her side. They took everything in—the crushed bed, the hole, Stacy on the floor, me—and then their eyes hit mine. Rebecca flinched just a fraction. Good instincts. The idea of running away from me must have occurred to her, and then she sensibly left.
"Take care of Stacy," I said. "She used her memory skill." I didn't explain. I didn't have time. I dropped out through the hole.
Gravel crunched under my sneakers; the air outside was bright and cold with the first bite of evening. I walked toward Dizzy at a conversational pace, letting my shadow stretch long. She finally scraped herself upright, blades raised again, arms shaking like bowstrings pulled past their limits.
"Are you really Federation?" I called, pleasant as a clerk. "You're so weak. Level two did this. Has your battle power declined so much we wouldn't even need half our Black Ops to mulch you?"
"You—how dare you mock the Federation!" someone screamed behind me.
I turned. It was one of the kitchen staff—one of the night-shift chefs I'd seen laughing at stew—charging with a longsword from the crowd that had gathered. Behind him, faces. So many faces. Some pale, some worried, some too focused. The intense focus displayed by some individuals suggests that they have previously engaged in violence and enjoyed it.
I smiled. "One guy? That's sweet."
He screamed wordlessly and chopped. I brought the ice blade down in a simple vertical. The adamantine edge I'd molded through practice and temper didn't so much clash as dismiss his steel. My sword bit through his guard and then his skull, and gravity took our argument from there. I let the blade go, and he crumpled with it—folded like a wicked idea.
"Really?" I looked at the crowd. "First swing and he's gone? Has the Federation always been this squishy?"
That did it. Twenty broke from the edges at once, peeling off aprons and dropping tools, producing real weapons from places servants shouldn't have them. Twenty of the less than one hundred and fifty staff members were involved. Ten percent rats in our grain.
"Cute," I said, and reached into the pocket between moments.
Dimensional Storage unlatched. Fabric whispered and caught, and in one smooth breath I was in my fighting clothes: black hoodie, dark red tee, jeans, sneakers, scarf up, and my twin chakrams settling against my hips with a familiar, hungry weight. Adamite fibers kissed my skin like a promise. I curled my hands and felt the lightning itch under the left forearm, the fire purr under the right, and the ice sit in my chest like a cold star.
"Let's dance."
I stepped forward, and the first two came in tandem—butchers' rhythm, the kind you learn cutting meat. I gave them the respect of a clean response: pivot inside, left hand rising, and the chakram flicked in a flat arc that hummed through the air and took the first man across the throat. I was already ducking under the second's blade, my knee driving into his thigh; his leg folded, and I clipped him across the temple with the pommel. He went down boneless.
Six more rushed. Good. I needed something to do with my hands before I started thinking about extinction events.
"Federation special today," I called, because if I didn't talk I might start screaming, and I didn't want to do that in front of Rebecca and Lily. "Two for one in humiliation."
The courtyard roared and narrowed. I felt the world in the soles of my feet—the give of grass, the crunch of gravel, and the clean hard confidence of stone. A spear thrust for my ribs; I trapped the shaft under my forearm, let the point glance past, stepped on the spear foot, and shoved. The wielder stumbled into his friend, and I kicked both of them into a tangle of limbs. The left chakram whirled out—thunk, thunk—and returned to my palm with a wet breath.
Someone screamed behind me. The sound snapped and cut short. I didn't look; I didn't need to. Rebecca's chain sang. Lily's rapier made bright, neat music. We were a choir.
Dizzy staggered back into my view, spitting blood and sliding into the gaps, while my movement felt like rain finding a crack. "You can't—" she started, and I cut the conversation short by planting my foot in her chest and borrowing her body as a stepping stone to go up and over a sword swipe that would have taken my legs. I landed behind two men, took them by the shoulders, and clapped their skulls together. The sound was ugly. I didn't apologize.
"Are we sure the Federation pays you?" I panted, grinning, letting the humor sit on top of the iron under it. "Because I would ask for a refund."
An ax whistled at my spine. I let lightning out, just a breath. Agony bit into my left arm like a thousand frying needles—hello, ten-times curse—but speed flooded the world. The ax looked reluctant to arrive. I slid aside, caught the haft, and twisted. The wielder stumbled into me, and the heel of my hand broke his nose through his mask with a red pop. He screamed into my palm. I did him the favor of making it brief.
"Eyes up, fox!" someone shouted—a house guard, loyal, shocked, trying to help. He took a knife for his trouble. I identified the thrower by her low, balanced, and precise movements, and then I flicked my right wrist. The chakram left me like a thought and came back like an answer, and she folded her hands at her throat as if in prayer.
In the corner of my vision, the dagger Dizzy had left on my bed—now far behind us, through the hole in the wall—crumbled to powder. A faint scent carried on the breeze; not iron, not oil—bitter, metallic-sweet, wrong. A beacon. The hair on my tail bristled.
So that's what she meant: not poison, a call. "Later," she'd said.
"Rebecca!" I shouted, without turning. "We've got a marker out; expect company."
"Noted!" She barked back, and the metal ball at the end of her chain smashed a spy into the ground, breaking the courtyard stones. "Stacy's awake and swearing!"
"Language," Lily scolded primly, then ran a man through and flicked her blade clean like she'd just skewered a cherry.
The last five tried to regroup, moving with each other instead of at me. Better. I could give them that. They circled, feinting, testing for a mistake. I gave them one—a sloppy lunge, an overreach—then punished the first to bite, snapping my scarf up to blind him and kicking his knee sideways. He howled; I stole his balance and his breath with the same motion and let him drop.
Three charged at once. I grabbed an ankle, a wrist, a collar, and the physics worked out in my favor. I made a wall of ice—hip-high, clear as a winter stream—and threw two into it. The third tried to stop, failed, and joined the cuddle. I hardened the wall, let it bite inward. He made a noise like stepping on snow. Then he stopped.
The noise ended as quickly as it had begun. Bodies on the lawn. Blood in the grass. The scent marker from the bed edged the air with its metallic whine. Dizzy on her knees, hair over her eyes, still smiling with two cracked molars.
I walked to her.
"You wanted to meet with me alone," I said, sounding pleasant again. "You should have checked the books on our family first. We specialize in one-versus-many."
She giggled through blood. "Not alone. Just… busy. And now you're in the open." Her eyes flicked past me, toward the trees. My ears—curse them—caught it: a low thrumming growing under the forest's breath. Boots. Not many. But excellent ones.
I exhaled and, gently, since I don't prefer to be cruel, struck her temple with the flat of my blade. She slumped, breathing. If I wanted answers, one alive was worth ten dead. And I did.
I turned, raising my voice. "Anyone else want to revolt today? Speak now, or I'll make an icebox for confessions." No one moved. Good choice.
A shadow fell across the lawn. I looked up. Stacy stood in the ragged hole three stories up, pale but upright, one hand braced on the frame, black eyes locked on mine. She looked as if she'd fought a war while sitting still. Maybe she had.
"Hun," she shouted, voice hoarse, "marker?"
"Yeah," I called back. "Expect guests."
She snarled—an ugly, fond sound—and disappeared from the frame. A heartbeat later, the auto-repair spell began to stitch the walls back together around the void with a lazy ripple, like water pulling tight over a wound.
"Inside!" Rebecca barked, her voice going command-cold as she snapped her chain back around her arm and shouldered a fallen traitor with contempt. "Lily, call Lockdown Blue. All staff are inside now. Loyalists to the inner ring. "We will defend the courtyard if necessary."
"Yes, ma'am!" Lily darted, fast as a thought.
I dragged Dizzy by the collar with one hand and picked up my fallen ice sword with the other. The courtyard stones glittered with frost; the lawn glowed bruised-green where we'd torn it. Above us, the sky had the bland innocence of a child who did not watch any of this.
"Fox," Rebecca said in a low, even voice as we walked side by side toward the doors, "what did Stacy see in that look in your eyes?"
"My past," I said. "All of it."
"And?"
"And she's still here." I didn't look up. "Not the worst bet I've ever made."
"Good. You'll need her." Rebecca's mouth twitched, as if a smile were struggling to emerge from her facial muscles.
We crossed the threshold just as the first three figures broke the treeline—a triangle of gray-cloaked shapes whose movement said they weren't kitchen staff. They didn't shout warnings or threats. Professionals rarely do.
The heavy doors swung shut behind us and thudded home. A shimmer of mana crawled through the wood and into the stone. Lockdown Blue.
I hauled Dizzy into a side chamber we used for debriefs, threw her into a chair, and wrapped the legs in bands of ice that froze to the floor. She blinked blearily, then grinned as if we were about to share tea. "You're fast," she croaked. "Faster than a level two."
"Yeah," I said. "Our household has its own peculiar ways of doing things." I slid a chair opposite, sat down with my elbows on my knees, and let the sweat cool on my neck while my scarf hung loosely. "You and I are going to have a chat, and you're going to tell me who laced that dagger and how many more of your friends I should set the table for."
"Or?" She raised an eyebrow.
"Or I'll ask Rebecca to do it," I said lightly. "She loves cutting things that deserve it. And she knows how to make it last."
Dizzy swallowed. She believed me. Sensible.
The door opened. Stacy stepped in, clean clothes on, hair damp with a basin rinse, a blade in each hand, and a storm behind her eyes. She looked at me first, taking in everything about me, counting my limbs and breaths, before sheathing the knives and stopping an arm's length away. We didn't hug. We aren't those people. She still reached out and squeezed my shoulder once, like writing something simple in a language only we read.
"Hey," she said softly. "Hey."
"Hey."
Her gaze flicked to Dizzy. "Alive?"
"For now," I said. "She rang the dinner bell and brought guests. I thought maybe we should ask about the menu."
"Cute," Stacy said, but the curve of her mouth didn't quite hold. She exhaled slowly. "Rebecca's locking the rings. Lily's got the west hall. The outer ward will buy us fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."
"Plenty," I said. "I only need five."
Dizzy watched us like we were a play she'd paid for. "You two," she murmured. "Mother and monster. Sweet."
Stacy's hand twitched toward a knife. I touched her wrist. "Don't waste the beneficial steel."
She breathed in, breathed out, and nodded. Then she shifted her weight and faced Dizzy with the kind of smile that made better people pray. "Alright," Stacy said, her voice going flat and professional. "Who's your handler? Where's your relay? And what exactly did your little party bring to our lawn?"
Dizzy hesitated. I waited, patient as winter. On the edge of my hearing, feet thundered, doors slammed, and orders snapped like flags. The house breathed around us like a living thing—our house, our ribs, our spine.
"Fine," Dizzy said finally, eyes glittering with the joy of betrayal. "You want a name? Our relay's in the Dead Forest—north line, old watch stump at the white roots. Two forward teams, one suppression caster. Target priority: your pet fox. The rewards list says bring her head, bring her tail, bring her heart. They'll pay triple if it's still moving when it arrives."
"Ah," I said, and smiled without mirth. "So personal."
Stacy's jaw worked. "What do they know about her?"
"That she's nine-tailed blooded," Dizzy said, eyes flicking to me. "That she didn't die when she was supposed to. That you're hiding her in plain sight like a favorite knife under your pillow."
"Good guess," I said. "Tell them to add a surcharge for stupidity."
Dizzy's grin faltered. She looked at me properly then—not at my clothes or the blood drying on my knuckles, but at my eyes. Sometimes, people look at you and then recall other things they intended to do. "You're not—" she began, and I let my irritation flicker outward through my stare.
She wilted. "Right," she whispered. "Right."
Outside, something struck the outer ward with a sound like a thunderclap wrapped in velvet. Stacy and I both turned our heads toward it—predator instinct, synchronized. The second strike came faster.
"We should go," I said.
"We should," Stacy agreed. She looked at Dizzy one last time and then back at me. "Five minutes?"
"Three," I said. My tail flicked once. "I'm feeling efficient."
She snorted and briefly touched my shoulder with just two fingers. "We'll talk later," she said, and somehow "talk" meant "about your memories, about your mother, about the part where you called me that word."
"Later," I said. It wasn't a promise I had trouble making.
We moved. Hallway, turn, stairs. On the landing, Rebecca met us, chain-axe lazily in her hand, hair a little wild, Lily behind her like a clean line drawn through chaos.
"Explain," Rebecca snapped, eyes cutting to Stacy.
Stacy's mouth twitched. " Short version: Dizzy's fed. Marked our air with a call-blade. Two teams are approaching, along with a caster equipped with a suppression rig. They want to serve Kitsune's tail on a plate.
"Over my dead body," Lily said primly, which, coming from her, sounded like a polite RSVP.
"Over theirs," I corrected, and the cold in my voice wasn't something I had to manufacture. It lived there rent-free.
Rebecca's stare flicked across the four of us—calculating. "Positions?"
"West hall," Lily said. "Shutters sealed. Inner servants ring under lock. Loyalists in pairs on the second line. I gave Margo a broom and told her she was a halberdier; she seemed excited."
"God help us," Rebecca muttered with a sigh that said she actually liked Margo. "Alright. Stacy will be accompanying me at the outer door. Kitsuna—"
"Let me clear the relay," I said. "If I break their caster's toy, we will prevent the suppression field from being deployed." I can be out and back before they've finished their dramatic entrance."
"Fox," Stacy warned, and that one word carried a thousand more—don't get cocky, don't overextend, don't make me watch you die, don't make me think I could've stopped it. "Pain tax."
"I know," I said. I flexed my left hand; the lightning answered like an eager dog that had never been fed. "I'll keep it light."
Rebecca was already moving, trusting me in that pragmatic way she had. "Three minutes," she said. "Then fall back on the inner ring. If you're not in by then, I'm sending Stacy to drag your corpse by the tail."
"Romantic," I said. "Note taken."
I ran.
The side door whispered open for me—house magic, friendly in the way a hungry wolf is to the hand that feeds it—and the evening slapped my face with cold. The Dead Forest waited, black and patient. I hit the outer steps, cut right across the gravel, vaulted the low wall, and took the slope at a diagonal. The smell from that crumbled dagger—a metallic, sweet rot—threaded the air like a trail only idiots or foxes would follow.
Good news for everyone: I was both.
The first wardline shivered over my skin like walking through a spiderweb. The second crackled around my ankles and tried to be a tripwire; I hopped it. The third announced itself with a cluster of pale mushrooms at the base of a dead stump—whiteroots—exactly where Dizzy had said. A small leather case sat in the hollow, runes stitched in a language that had to be ugly when spoken. A slender crystal rod sprouted from its top like a flower that had never seen the sun. The air around it hummed.
"Hello," I murmured, stepping into the circle without hesitation. "You must be the caster's favorite baby."
The suppression field reached for my mana, curious hands trying to smother my fire and choke my lightning. I fed it ice instead—pure, clean, cold—and the case shuddered, the rod frosting from within, hairline cracks racing like frightened rabbits.
"Shh," I told it. "You'll feel better in a second."
It exploded like a sigh, not a bang. The hum cut. In the distance, something—a ritual, a net—stuttered and died. The pain in my left arm ebbed as the field's dampening attempt stopped grinding against my curse. I flexed my fingers and smiled at the stump. "Five out of ten for effort. Zero for taste."
A shape moved to my left. Cloak. Bow is already rising. I didn't think. I pulled and threw.
The chakram took his arrow off its line and then took his breath a heartbeat later. He fell like someone had unplugged him. Another attacker tried to flank me; I kicked a slab of ice out of the ground like a door, deflected his blade off it, and then put my shoulder into his chest. He went away.
"Two," I counted, panting.
The third didn't rush. Sensible type. She hung back in the trees and began to sing. The hair on my neck stood up; the forest around us leaned in. Not suppression—something older, less civilized.
"Ma'am," I said, and gave her the respect of not letting her finish. I flicked a narrow lance of ice at the base of her throat. She twisted—good—but not enough. The song cut off in a wet gurgle. The forest lost interest.
"Three," I said, and turned to go.
I ran back the way I'd come, lungs burning pleasantly, legs remembering every drill Stacy had ever tormented me with. The house rose ahead, lights bright in the windows, doors barred, the sense of a beast bristling to protect its heart.
I reached the wall, vaulted, hit gravel, and slid through the side door as it opened for me like a friend.
Rebecca looked up from the inner hall, chain wrapped and ready, Lily at her shoulder with a smear of blood across one cheekbone like a careless artist's thumbprint. Stacy appeared from the other side of the corridor, blades clean again, eyes dark and alive.
"Relay?" she asked.
"Broken," I said. "Caster gagged by an icicle."
"Charming," Rebecca said. "Outer team?"
"Three less," I said. "The rest will get confused for a minute." I rolled my shoulders and smiled with most of my teeth. "Minutes are all we need."
Stacy's gaze flicked to my arm. "Pain?"
"Yes," I said honestly. "Manageable."
"Good," she said, and that word conveyed a multitude of emotions—approval, worry, and pride that she would suppress before expressing them aloud. "Let's clean our house."
We moved together, four lines braided. The doors shook once, twice, as something outside tested them and found them honest. I breathed in the scent of stone and wood and the faint medicinal tang of the infirmary down the hall. I thought about Dizzy, who was tied to a chair, and the questions I still wanted to ask. I thought about the word "extinction" and filed it under "reasons to get up early."
A bell chimed somewhere deeper in the house, playing three descending notes. Lily's mouth set. Rebecca's chain uncoiled. Stacy's knives sang as she drew them.
I pulled my scarf up and felt the lightning whisper, the fire purr, and the ice settle. No speeches. No threats. Just work.
The first door opened.
And I smiled.