'Blaise!'
The name escaped Felix's mouth before he could stop it. The back of his collar ripped as he wrenched himself from the okami's grip. Falling to his knees at the cliff's edge, Felix could do nothing but watch as the two of them fell.
The rocks were merciless, would leave them broken. There was no hope for either of them to survive and yet Felix could not look away.
His blood ran cold.
The okami hit the ground with a crack of rock and bone. He lay sprawled on his front, his limbs splayed out at unnatural angles. A pool of blood collected beneath his head, narrow veins bleeding into the stream. The sight made Felix retch, but it was Blaise's lack of a landing that shortened his breath. Less than a second before the okami hit the ground, Blaise had vanished as though swallowed by the rocks themselves.
The okami stared down in stunned silence. Felix could hear nothing but the sound of his own rasping breath in his ears.
Felix did the only thing he could think of and scrambled back to his feet, racing away from the pack along the edge of the ravine toward the bridge. He had no idea how to explain what his own eyes had shown him, but Blaise was gone. The okami stirred behind him as soon as they heard him move before one of them grumbled, 'Leave the pup.'
The wooden slats of the bridge wobbled under his heavy steps and he dived into the trees on the other side, stumbling through the undergrowth. His lungs refused to obey him as they snatched at the air. The scene replayed in his mind in a loop as he desperately grappled for an explanation. He couldn't focus his mind to part the air currents and run faster. Air Craft had always been Blaise's strength, not Felix's. Even as he broke free of the forest and approached the village, he could barely remember half of the run.
'Who goes there?' a guard demanded, perched on the walkway. He lifted his torch to shed light across the pathway beneath, momentarily blinding Felix as his vision adjusted.
'It's Felix!' he called back and scurried underneath the walkway without waiting for an interrogation, darting between the cabins and the trees and swerving around other kitsunes. Most of the clan had woken already from the first of the night's rests and grumbled at him as he stumbled past in his haste. A woman with her arms full of twins tried to ask what was wrong, but Felix didn't hear.
The great marble hall set into the slope of the moorland had been the first building in the village, supported by great rosewood beams with a slate tile roof. It was the size of four cabins sitting on top of six cabins for only the chief and his daughter plus a handful of servants.
Just as he reached the stone steps leading up to the door, a guard moved to block his path and Felix skidded to a halt. 'State your business,' the guard commanded.
Felix struggled to find any words through his erratic gasps. 'I need to see the chief,' he spluttered eventually. 'He- One of the clan... I think he's in danger.' Or dead, he added privately to himself, but shook the thought from his mind.
'Who does this concern?'
'Blaise. The chief's ward.'
Guards were never supposed to show any personal feelings while on duty, but Felix caught the flicker of a grimace on the kitsune's face. 'Go through,' he allowed after a moment's hesitation. 'The chief and Marien are resting.'
Felix nodded a quick thanks and bounded up the steps to the great Hall doors. Another guard opened them for him without a word and Felix ducked through, walking as quickly as he dared toward the drawing room. A maid passed him in the corridor and noticed his agitation but said nothing.
'Chief!' he called as he barged into the room.
Two sets of eyes zoned in on him and he hurried to compose himself. He felt his cheeks heat up as he quickly lowered his head and mumbled an apology. The chief towered over most everyone in the clan and the bredth of his shoulders made Felix feel stick-thin and very breakable. He wore an embroidered coat tied loosely around his middle with a sash and even while resting he wore the silver circlet on his brow, a thin strip of metal that hooked around his ears and lifted into branchlike wings either side. He turned his head languidly toward his daughter and asked, 'Who is this, Marien?'
'The mail boy,' she told him. Her voice was as collected as ever but her eyes fixed on Felix. 'He's also one of Blaise's friends.'
Felix's tail itched to tuck between his legs as the chief turned his hard stare back on him. It was not often he had an audience with the clan's leader, and this had to be the first time he was speaking with both the chief and Marien alone. He was also acutely aware that he was a sweaty, leaf-strewn mess. 'Blaise is-' He cut himself off. What could he say? 'Blaise is...gone.'
'Gone?' the chief repeated from his armchair between the fireplace and the window.
Felix nodded. 'We were in White Tail territory running from some shepherds-'
'What were you doing in White Tail territory?' the chief demanded with narrowed eyes. Felix flattened his ears back and bit down on his lip.
'Let him speak, Father,' said Marien. She hovered in front of the window, the moon illuminating the edges of her pale gown.
A brief uncomfortable silence followed before Felix found his voice again. 'Blaise said the clan would run out of food before the crops are ready for harvest. He only wanted to take one, I swear!' he added quickly as the chief cast his eyes skywards and rubbed at his temple. 'But we were caught and the aurochsen charged. The shepherds chased us to the ravine and one grabbed Blaise by the shirt and-' he gripped his own collar, '-and threw him over the edge.'
Marien released a gasp so tiny Felix wasn't sure whether the chief didn't hear or just ignored it. 'Is he dead?'
'...Blaise pulled the shepherd over with him,' Felix added to avoid the question. 'I watched them fall.'
'Are they both dead?' asked the chief.
Felix's eyes flicked toward Marien. She stared unblinkingly back at him. She was almost an identical copy of her father, with the same golden-blonde curls and a face forced into a mask of composure. Both of them could maintain complete stillness in their ears in order to give nothing away. 'I don't—know.'
The chief straightened up in his chair and frowned at him. His eyes seemed to cut into him. 'How can you not know?'
Felix clasped his hands behind his back and wrung his trembling fingers together. 'The shepherd landed on the rocks. But Blaise... Blaise didn't hit the ground. He just...vanished.'
A suffocating moment passed in which the chief and his daughter shared a silent exchange of tiny shifts in their expressions. An entire conversation appeared to be happening, one which Felix was not admitted to. Although he should have caught his breath from the run by now, it still came in too-short huffs.
'Logan!'
The chief's sudden summon of his butler made Felix jump. A kitsune in a black frock coat entered through the door behind Felix and folded his hands behind his back. He regarded Felix in his overlarge white shirt stained with all colours of the undergrowth and unbuttoned waistcoat and inclined his head toward Marien. 'Yes, Chief?'
'Bring Shia here. This pup has news that concerns him.' Logan bowed and left. Felix chewed on his lip, dangerously close to drawing blood, and flinched when the chief spoke again. 'You're obviously in shock, pup. Nobody just disappears into thin air like that. Isn't it possible you simply didn't want to see him fall?'
'I watched him,' Felix insisted. 'I watched both of them fall. The okami hit the rocks and Blaise disappeared. I couldn't make something like this up, Chief. Why would I?'
'How?' the chief demanded. 'How could he just disappear?' Felix didn't have an answer. But he knew what he had seen, and being unable to explain it didn't make it any less true. He looked to Marien for help, but her attention had moved to the window. 'I'll have the guards search the foot of the ravine at first light.'
'Blaise isn't there,' Felix said.
'He can't have disappeared, pup-'
'Blaise vanished. I don't know how or why or where he is now, but I know for certain he didn't die.' Felix bit down on his forefinger to stop himself from saying anymore. He was already crossing a line by arguing with the chief. Marien's eyes flashed between him and the window, but her expression remained unreadable.
Before the chief could berate him, Logan returned with a surly-faced kitsune, whose brown hair fell into his two-coloured eyes. The right was such a deep brown the pupil was indistinguishable from the iris and the other was a lighter tawny colour, the same as Blaise's. 'I have brought Shia for you, chief,' Logan announced.
'I don't appreciate being summoned at this time of the night,' Shia declared before the chief could greet him.
'I apologise, Shia. Did Logan wake you?'
'Yes.' Shia stepped up beside Felix and turned his steely gaze on him. 'I suppose this must be about Blaise if you're here. What has he done now?' He crossed his arms and his ears faced outward, on the verge of turning backward. Marien turned her back on him.
'He and this pup were trespassing in White Tail territory this evening worrying aurochsen.' The chief sat back in his armchair and crossed one leg over the other.
Felix interrupted, the words bubbling out of his mouth without permission from his brain. 'We weren't, I swear, we weren't worrying them. We just wanted one. Just one to help feed the clan until the harvest-'
'Watch yourself,' Logan growled behind him.
'What happened?' Shia demanded.
'An okami shepherd threw Blaise into the ravine!' said Felix.
'What?'
'And vanished on landing, apparently.'
'How could-? What do you mean, he vanished?'
'He didn't land at all.'
'I am sending the Guard down there tomorrow in order to retrieve his body. I'm sorry to cause you this level of distress, Shia.'
'He won't be there!'
'Pup-'
'He won't.'
Shia shook his head, ears now flat back against his head to camouflage with his hair. 'I've heard enough.' He scratched the back of his head and sighed heavily. 'Let me know when you find him.' He turned away and Logan opened the door for him.
Felix watched, jaw slack. 'He's your brother! He might be alive!'
'We may have shared a mother, but that kitsune is not my brother,' Shia spat back. 'He will have tormented those shepherds even after they had him cornered. Isn't that right?' He pinned Felix with a cold glare. Felix couldn't argue with him. 'He's been provoking everyone who will let him for as long as I can remember.'
'Nobody deserves to die like that!' Felix snapped. 'None of you are even considering ending the alliance after this. An okami tried to kill one of our clan and none of you seem shocked!'
'We won't know what happened until we speak with the White Tail chief,' said Marien, reminding Felix she was still listening.
He opened his mouth to insist, but the chief silenced him with a glare. 'I realise this is something you don't want to acknowledge. I don't either want to acknowledge it. I would not have invited Blaise into my care if I didn't somewhat admire him. But if the okami didn't survive, it is too unlikely that Blaise could have escaped.'
'You won't find him,' Felix repeated. And because they refused to even consider the possibility, he spun on his heel and stormed out of the drawing room before even Shia.