The Sun Prince

Ch16 P3 - All Kuro wanted was dinner

The dowager empress was both more clever and cruel than the Shogun and the onmyouji put together. She didn't settle for assassins or demons to take care of her enemies.

She'd starve Kuro to death.

Kuro collapsed to the tatami mats as the dowager empress ushered her daughters out of the compound, carrying Kuro's poor abandoned dinner with them. Their bickering over Ruri's lack of love life trailed behind them, but words couldn't fill his empty belly.

"Bath?" Ren bounced on his heels as if his cheeks weren't as pink as fish guts.

Kuro clutched his stomach. "Go ahead. I'm going to find the kitchens."

"We just ate."

No, Ren had picked a few grains of rice, and Kuro wrangled a few pieces of fish with the chopsticks. That did not count as eating.

"I'll, uh, I'll show you where they are." But Ren remained where he stood.

Kuro narrowed his eyes. "You don't know where they are."

"Of course—" He shrugged. "No, not really."

"I'll find it." Kuro pointed at his nose. "Just swear to me you won't slip a single toe outside of the compound."

Ren exhaled.

"Swear to me."

He raised both hands. "All right, upon my honour, I swear."

After Kuro climbed the compound wall and slipped into the main palace, the knots in his spine loosened. The floorboards creaked with every shift of weight, so he barely had to pay attention for approaching humans. At last, he was alone. Unobserved. Free.

He didn't even have to walk like a human, and after switching his gait, one foot landing directly in front of the other, his feet fell so lightly the planks only groaned.

If he wanted, he could change forms and jump over the palace bulwarks. He could say goodbye to the convoluted mess his life had become. Leave behind the ill omens his black fur presented. Leave behind the Shogun's plots, and... and not hurt Ren.

But then what?

He trotted down the corridor, but halfway down, a floorboard creaked ahead. Kuro froze, wishing human ears weren't plastered to the side of his head so he could hone in. A mouse, or a human? But why would a human stand around a corner, without moving? A human should be walking somewhere.

Unless they'd set a trap. Kuro slid his feet backward, the floorboards groaning under his feet despite his best efforts to stay quiet. At least he'd hear if a human approached, since their steps were a hundredfold more noisy than a fox's ever could be—

He bumped into a a torso. A human torso.

He tried to leap forward, but a hand grabbed his neck and used his momentum to throw him against the wall. The hand lifted. Kuro tried to turn. A blade replaced the hand, over Kuro's throat. He froze, every one of his fox senses directed at the steel.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" the dowager empress asked him.

The dowager empress? She pressed her torso against Kuro's back, and once he noticed more than the blade, that torso was very obviously a human female's. She hadn't had one of the palace guards attack him. Could she use the dagger? Could she press it so hard his blood spurted out?

"I suppose not," she said. "It's rather hard to enjoy one's self when one is in the middle of a distasteful task. I imagine that working for the Shogun must be troublesome."

"Working for—" Kuro started to swallow, then froze as his throat Buddha pressed dangerously close against the blade. "I — this humble servant doesn't — doesn't know what Her Highness means."