Utter blackness wrapped my vision. In the confused transition between wakefulness and slumber, I could not decide if I’d lost my sight to an Oni or a worse monster. When Mother removed the wrappings from my head and the light of her silver scales flashed before me, I forgot all about the ogre demon. Tears dripped from my snout and over my mother’s scales.

  “What is wrong, Isha?” Her eyes glowed with power and reflected back an image, half of my own creation and half a product of the mirrors of her pupils. A weakling among dragons stared into Mother’s eyes. Pale and pink like a newborn piglet, the color of my scales proclaimed the frailty of my magic. Through the reflection of my own slender body, I could see Mother’s imploring gaze. She begged me to reach out to her and tell her everything.

  How could I explain to her Jinshi had found one of the few weaknesses in dragon’s natural magic resistance and exploited it to villainous effect? Every time I’d ever tried, Mother had believed Jinshi and I had found myself slowly growing distant from my own mother, the Queen of the West.

  I shook my head and covered my eyes and face in my claws. “It is nothing.”

  Across the gulf of time I shouted at myself to tell her the truth, to make her understand. Somehow, from the vantage point of the far future, I knew this was the last chance I had before I took drastic actions which would bring down my own house. But the past changed for no one, neither dragon, god, or mortal.

  Fleeing before Mother, I ignored her cries and found myself in the weapon forges. Deep in the mountain where magma rose between cracks in the earth, our vassal dragons harvested steel and shaped it into armor and weapons suited for my family’s armies.

  Far away from the eyes of my family, I’d found my first and only friend. Across the same span of years, I hated him. The forge spirit, Kon, had destroyed everything I loved. But I had set the first stone tumbling.

  “Finally recovered your vision, did you?” Kon took the form of a smith wringing power from metal, though no heat or sparks flew from where he worked his spirit forge. “Have you considered my suggestion?”

  “I can’t kill Jinshi, she’s too strong.”

  Kon turned and pointed to a metal vial on a nearby table. We’d made the concoction together in the sense the spirit had goaded me while I’d gathered and brewed the poison down. “She’s not strong enough to resist what’s in there. And if you bring her down here before she dies, I will show you how to capture her magic and use it as your own.”

  I knew what he suggested was blasphemy, a betrayal of the bonds of blood and family. But after everything Jinshi had done, she deserved it, didn’t she? My nightmare flashed to the scene of me pouring the draught into Jinshi’s ear as she slept. Her eyes flicked open and the last scene my sister witnessed was my final act of revenge.

  Her body was a light thing, surprisingly light considering she was my older sister. While she’d always been the more magically powerful of the two of us, I had always been the more physically powerful. I hammered the spikes into her limbs and pinned her to the table under Kon’s directions. No one, not the gods, not the evil spirit Kon himself could honestly claim I’d killed Jinshi with anything but my own hands.

  The silver, rune etched blade I used to skin her removed her hide in a single pass. She didn’t awaken during the process, but she continued to breathe as I skinned my own sister. Only at the end, with the entirety of her hide stripped and laying on the floor, did I gut her and let her entrails spill over the pile of hides. Kon had insisted on this, had claimed it was essential to the magic.

  How I imagined I would pass through the halls of my youth wearing Jinshi’s hide was a matter I had not considered fully. I relived the vile act of cleaning her scales and reforging them into a suit of human-sized armor in excruciating detail. Heat from the forge made me drip with sweat, brought waves of distorted light across my eyes and wearied me such that I took frequent breaks.

  Kon assisted me until the very end. As I laid the final touches on the armor, my sister’s corpse beginning to stink up the forge, I heard a rumbling gasp from the door. Mother stood in the entryway to the forge with the treacherous spirit Kon floating with a gleeful, spiteful expression on his face.

  The shame which filled me roared over my body in time with my mother’s own roar of rage. I woke sweating from the fire, with the now familiar ache still in my chest. The side of my body opposite the fire blazed as if there a second flame lay between me and the stone wall to my back. It took me a second to discover the source of that heat. Hanari lay with her bare chest against my back and her arms draped over me.

  Though the ache in my core lingered, it had faded in intensity far quicker than I’d expected. Years of injuries on the trail had given me a sense of the unique frailty of the mortal form. And I should not have recovered this quickly from a broken rib. Mystery though it was, I refused to dwell on it because my vision had begun to clear.

  Had I perhaps slept for weeks in a single session? Denying myself sleep had become a habit and though trapped in a mortal form, I still possessed great strength, stamina, and physical ability associated with my kind. An ability to ignore the need to sleep was among the few draconic powers I retained.

  Rather than stir and wake Hanari up with my movements, I blinked my eyes and yawned. At the very apex of my inhalation, my chest pain flared to life. But for the most part, I could breathe and move without the agony sparking bright in my side.

  Dying embers in the fire pit glowed with orange light in the predawn. As my eyes adjusted to the return of my sight, more of the former grotto around me came into focus. Where the fire lay, a bowl had been carved into the stone. I didn’t know how Hanari had gathered the larger logs for our fire, but a few sizable logs sat largely unburned in the depression.

  Not far from the edge of the stone clearing, bright pink, yellow and orange maples leaves cavorted and shook in the morning breeze. The rain I’d scented last night had come closer with the opening of the day. Before the sun reached meridian height, we would suffer an autumnal deluge.

  We.

  When Odgen still lived, the word had come easily to mind. But decades of solo travel made the word sound foreign to my mind. And yet I had used it almost without thinking. Hanari was a Kitsune, and they were not know for loyalty or martial prowess. The life I led would not suit her.

  As slowly as I could, I disentangled myself from Hanari’s arms and slipped away from her grip. Her breathing didn’t so much as slow as I stood. Parts of my back and shoulders cracked and whined at the movement. But again, Hanari did not awaken. With my sight restored, I could look upon the strange woman who’d done her best to help me, who’s life I’d saved accidentally from an assassin no doubt paid for by my father.

  White shocks of hair, the color of a winter owl’s feathers draped over her cheeks. A narrow chin and triangular face curled in on itself as if she felt the chill from my absence. Delicate features hid beneath her stark white hair, but to see them fully I would have had to brush her hair away. It would certainly have woken her. Her body was small and thin, though not fragile in the way I found most humans. Lean muscles stretched beneath her pale skin and suggested a deceptive strength therein. Her chest was smaller than my own and her hips surprisingly narrow for her sex.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I shook my head. Urges rose up in me I’d long suppressed. Dragons did not give much thought to petty matters of gender in their lovers. Gender was a matter of mating and many of my kind only mated when the heat came upon us too strong to deny. But pleasure was a different matter entirely.

  Shaking my head, I forced myself to look away from her body. No matter how much I might have enjoyed it, there was no way she would return my interest and there was no way I would let myself become distracted by a pretty face and a fit body. Not when I had a mission to undertake. A Kitsune would only slow me down and her quixotic nature could even interfere with my goals.

  When I turned to walk away, a hand shot out and grabbed my ankle. “I’m cold. And you didn’t tell me your name.” She looked up and the white curtains of hair parted to expose her crimson red lips and eyes the color of red maple leaves. Her grip on my leg was softer than necessary, I could have jerked my foot away with minimal effort.

  But I could not deny her request after she’d stayed and kept me safe in the night. “I am Isha, Isha Blackheart.” She nodded, but did not speak. After her pause, I added, “You said you were with Waru when he took the contract on my life. You already knew my name then, didn’t you?”

  Hanari released my foot and stretched, her whole body arching as she did so. “Of course, but you didn’t tell me so I thought I’d ask.”

  Blood rushed to my cheeks. Every bit of hair on Hanari’s body was white, from the top of her head to the center of her hips. And my eyes lingered on several of those spots with a hunger I’d ignored for years.

  “Thank you for helping me last night.” I bowed to her formally and walked over to the fire. “I will douse the fire and be on my way. Thank you again.” There was no need to stare at her like she was a piece of meat. I could find all the meat I wanted out among the villages and forests. I’d done so for decades.

  I stepped on the logs, stifling the last of the embers in the pit. The noise of my own activity concealed Hanari’s footsteps. I’d expected her to remain on the ground and let me leave. So when she touched my shoulder, I jumped. My mind was very much in the pit with the coals; as far from the Moon as it could get.

  “You’re leaving?” The question in her voice made me turn to her. Eyes above her chin. I’d been human for so long their urges had become intrusive.

  “I am. I don’t like to stay in one place for too long.”

  “Because of the assassins?”

  I nodded my head at her and gulped. With a mental command I sent my armor over my body. It might have been a burden all its own, but at least it protected my modesty as I unfolded my robes.

  Hanari leaned toward me as I did so and fluttered her eyes closed. What in the names of every sword form I knew did she want from me? “I will find a new robe. You should wear this.” I all but threw it at her, blushing and unable to look at the woman as I turned back away. “There is a village to the West, Hakkaim. It’s a shit pile and they won’t treat you well, but I do not believe they will hurt you.” I cleared my throat. “As long as you do not reveal your true nature to them.”

  I could hear cloth rustling behind me and in the midst of the rustle, I swore I could hear a huff. “You make it sound like a lovely little place.” When I peeked back over my shoulder, Hanari had donned the robe, but completely wrong. Her head poked out of one of the sleeves and none of the pleats draped correctly over her knees.

  “This is all wrong.” I grabbed the front of the robes and pulled the sleeve off of her head. Heat built in my limbs from the proximity to her and I averted my gaze. In all of my years with Odgen I had never been this awkward. The question of attraction between my old master and I was a shut door. Hanari on the other hand was a slit rice paper wall, ready to blow open at the smallest breeze. When I finally got the robe situated, a task made much harder by refusing to look at the woman, I cleared my throat and gave her a once-over. “There, you look almost like a proper monk.”

  “Or someone who stole a proper monk’s clothes while he was sleeping.”

  I winced at the words. Anyone who knew the faith my old master belonged to wouldn’t believe Hanari came by her garments legitimately. “I suppose.”

  “Can I come with you?” Hanari put her hands on my shoulders and stood on the tips of her toes to come closer to my face. “You’ve been alone for a long time, right…”

  “No.” I blurted the answer out before she could complete her sentence. “I travel alone.”

  “You mean you’ve traveled alone before today.” Damn those scarlet eyes. It had taken me more willpower than I’d needed in years outside of battle to refuse her so far.

  “I do mean that, and I also mean it is too dangerous for you to accompany me.”

  “Why?”

  I shook my head. There was nothing I could say to the woman… no, kitsune, which would convince her of the truth in my words. “This is not a discussion. This is a parting.”

  I turned away from Hanari and stomped to the road. It might have been cruel, possibly even hasty to send the woman away. But I’d been serious about the threat of assassins. Other dangers stalked the maple woods after me I did not wish to acknowledge out loud. Disgruntled former clients, relatives of those I’d cut down on a mission, and angry spirits all hounded my steps. Hanari was too innocent and carefree for such dangers.

  When I reached the road, I turned back and found myself alone. A part of me sagged on the inside. I would not have admitted in so many words, but I’d wanted her to be one of the creatures hounding me. That she was so easily dissuaded from following me meant she was too fragile for this path. Nodding in assurance, I continued on, my pale green armor sending tiny flecks of light into the forests around me.

  My eyesight had completely recovered and the aches in my bones had eased considerably. I had to wonder if Hanari had something to do with the speed of my healing. Or perhaps I’d taken a step toward returning to my draconic heritage? I could hope for the latter, though I suspected the former.

  Morning in the forest was Odgen’s favorite time. He danced in the play of the sunlight through the tree leaves. Though he had been even older than me, he possessed an occasional child-like charm which I found disarming. Even as a child, I had been far too grown up, far too aware of my failings and my place in my parents’ court. There had grown the seed of the avarice which was my downfall.

  Almost half an hour had passed since I’d wallowed in the despair of my former life. The shock of the realization brought me to a halt on the well trampled road. Had this been another effect of Hanari’s presence or had she merely given me something novel to worry over? I shook my head and continued. I forced my focus back to the path beneath my feet and observed the road itself. In the darkness of the battle last night, I’d lost track of how far I’d moved from Hakkaim, but the roads had changed. Gone was the plain dust and uneven wagon divots. This section of road was well maintained almost to the point I could imagine servants raking the stones to level them to ease travelers’ passage. Such well cared for roads set my mind further at ease, though I did not drop my guard. Bandits and other forces could lie in wait at the edges of the finest lanes. I know I had once. But the time and effort required to create such a well-tended path suggested a nearby village or town of means. And that suggested they would have dealt with any bandits along the lanes.

  My distraction at the fire pit fresh in my memory, I pinned my mind to the moon and kept constant track of my surroundings. A cete of badgers halted in their grooming to listen to me pass by. One of them, probably the mother of the den, poked her head out and watched me from the distance. Only when I passed out of sight did they resume their playing. Birds chittered overhead, many of them warning their neighbors a human had entered their territory and to be on the lookout. As with the badgers, when I’d passed out of their area of influence, the birds had resumed their previous songs. Most of them simply announced their presence to the others in the area, who would reply in kind in a round like old women bragging or complaining about their children in a circle.

  When I spotted the log walls peeking over the horizon, I stopped and circled around the spiked peeks of timber. It took longer than I was happy with, but I finally spotted the lookout post and the flag flapping in the breeze next to it. This village belonged to the greater Yujin kingdom and were vassals of the same local lord as Hakkaim. Here I could find a hot meal, a proper bath, and fresh clothing. The fact I’d given away Odgen’s robes on a whim irked me now, but with any luck Hanari was already on her way back to Hakkaim village on her own.