Chapter 50: Chapter 50: The Clingy Demon, The Laundry Note, and The Western Pavilion

[Kitsune’s POV]

For a Warlord who commanded an army of ten thousand men, Akira Kurogane was currently acting like a very large, very lethal guard dog.

It had been two days since the assassins dropped into the Ancestral Shrine. And for two days, Akira hadn’t let me out of his sight for more than thirty seconds.

If I walked onto the veranda, he was standing right behind the sliding doors. If I poured a cup of tea, he took the first sip to check for poison. When I slept, he didn’t even lie down; he just sat next to the futon with his hand resting over mine, his Warlord aura completely cloaking the room.

It was sweet. It was incredibly romantic. And it was driving me absolutely insane.

"Akira," I sighed, standing in the middle of our bedchamber. "I am just trying to pick out a clean pair of socks."

"The wardrobe has a blind spot," Akira replied smoothly, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. His dark indigo robes looked pristine, but the dark circles under his amber eyes gave him away. "An assassin could hide in the upper compartments."

"It’s a cedar box, Akira. Unless the assassin is the size of a squirrel, I think I’m safe."

He didn’t smile. He just stared at me, the tension in his jaw so tight I was worried he was going to crack a tooth.

There was something heavy lingering behind his eyes. A dark, frantic energy that hadn’t faded since he pulled me out of that shrine. I thought, at first, he was just shaken up. But the way he looked at me now like he was standing on the edge of a cliff and I was the only thing keeping him from falling was starting to worry me.

Every time I reached out to touch him, he would freeze for a fraction of a second before pulling me close. It was like he was fighting a war inside his own head that I couldn’t see.

I grabbed my socks and walked over to him, gently placing my hands flat against his heavy iron breastplate.

"I’m right here," I told him softly, looking up into his eyes. "I’m not going anywhere. The Emperor’s trap failed."

Akira looked down at me. His hands twitched, coming up to hover over my waist before he forced them back down to his sides. He let out a slow, ragged breath.

"You don’t know the Emperor," Akira murmured, his voice tight. "He does not accept failure. He only changes his tactics."

"Which is exactly why we need to change ours," I said, stepping back to give him space. I didn’t push. If he needed to be a grumpy, overprotective Warlord to process the trauma, I would let him. "Where is Yua?"

"In the courtyard," he said, turning his head slightly. "With the feline."

I slid the paper doors open and stepped out onto the sunny veranda.

Yuki was currently in his cat form, taking a nap on a silk cushion. Rin was sitting next to him, intensely sketching a picture of a koi fish on a piece of parchment.

Yua was sweeping the gravel, but the moment she saw me, she quickly leaned her broom against the wooden railing and scurried over. She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a tiny, folded piece of white silk.

"From the laundry, Crown Princess," Yua whispered, handing it to me. "My sister slipped your message into Lady Renge’s washing bin yesterday. This came back this morning."

Akira stepped out onto the veranda, standing directly behind me like a massive, terrifying shadow.

I unfolded the silk. Once again, there was no signature, just a single line of elegant calligraphy.

The Western Pavilion is abandoned by the guards at the hour of the dog. The broken gate has no lock.

"The Western Pavilion," I muttered. "Isn’t that where Ryu is?"

"Yes," Yua nodded nervously. "It is the disgraced quarters. The Emperor sends his outcasts there. The Imperial Guards don’t patrol it because no one is allowed to visit."

"Which makes it the perfect place for a secret meeting," I smiled, crushing the silk in my hand. I looked up at Akira. "She took the bait. We meet her tonight at the hour of the dog."

Akira frowned, looking out over the Imperial Gardens. "Renge is desperate to restore her son. If she thinks handing you over to the Emperor’s mages will earn her favor, she will sell us out."

"She already tried earning the Emperor’s favor by framing Jin," I reminded him. "And it didn’t work. The Emperor still has Ryu locked in the Western Pavilion. Renge knows the Emperor is playing a different game, and she knows we are the only ones who hold the key to it."

I turned to Yua. "Tell your sister and your uncle to keep their heads down tonight. I don’t want anyone in the rat network caught in the crossfire if this goes wrong."

"Yes, My Lady," Yua bowed deeply and hurried away.

I looked back at Akira. He was staring at the crushed silk in my hand, his amber eyes completely unreadable.

"Are you ready to go make a deal with the devil?" I asked lightly, trying to ease the heavy tension radiating off him.

"I am the devil, Kitsune," Akira said, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling register that made my heart skip a beat. He finally reached out, his large hand gently wrapping around mine. "But I will gladly burn her white lotus to the ground if she tries to betray you."

The hour of the dog was the darkest part of the evening, right before the moon fully rose over the capital walls.

I wore my dark northern tunic and trousers, binding my hair up tightly. The iron mesh vest was secured tightly over my ribs, and my Tessen was tucked firmly into my sash.

Akira wore a simple, dark uncrested robe, leaving his heavy Warlord armor behind to remain silent. He didn’t bring a lantern. He just held my hand, his yokai vision guiding us perfectly through the pitch-black, winding garden paths of the outer palace.

We avoided the main corridors, sticking to the servant paths and the shadows of the massive cedar trees.

True to Yua’s word, the closer we got to the Western Pavilion, the fewer guards we saw. It was as if this entire wing of the palace had been deliberately forgotten. The wood was unpainted, the stone lanterns were unlit, and the gardens were overgrown with weeds.

We reached a high wooden wall. The gate was cracked down the middle, hanging loosely on rusted iron hinges.

"The broken gate," I whispered.

Akira stepped in front of me. He gently pushed the broken gate open. It let out a soft, agonizing creak.

We slipped into the overgrown courtyard. The Western Pavilion loomed ahead, dark and silent. It smelled like damp wood and rotting leaves.

"She is inside," Akira murmured, his yokai hearing picking up what I couldn’t. "Alone. I don’t sense any Imperial Mages."

We walked up the rotting wooden steps and stopped in front of the main sliding doors.

I didn’t knock. I just slid the door open.

Inside the dim room, lit only by a single, cheap oil lamp, sat Lady Renge.

She wasn’t wearing her faded gold silk tonight. She wore a completely black, unadorned robe. Her hair was down, and the fragile, weeping white lotus act was entirely gone. She looked sharp, cold, and incredibly dangerous.

She looked up as we stepped into the room. Her eyes darted from me, to the terrifying Warlord standing at my shoulder.

"I wasn’t sure you would come," Lady Renge said, her voice perfectly steady.

"You sent me a heads-up about a murder plot," I replied, stepping into the dim light of the lamp. "I figured it was only polite to stop by and say thank you."

"Do not mistake my warning for kindness, peasant," Renge sneered, though she didn’t stand up. "I simply prefer my enemies to fight each other so I can sweep up the pieces."

"We know," I smiled, completely unfazed by her insult. I sat down directly across from her, crossing my legs casually. Akira remained standing behind me, a silent, lethal shadow.

"We know you framed Jin to save Ryu," I continued, dropping the pleasantries. "We know the Emperor threatened Ryu’s life anyway to keep you in line. And we know you are absolutely desperate to figure out why the Emperor wants to kill me, but needs my husband alive."

Renge’s eyes widened slightly. The perfectly composed mask cracked for a fraction of a second. She hadn’t expected the basement rat to have her entire political strategy mapped out.

"You know his secret," Renge realized, her voice dropping to an urgent whisper.

"We know everything," I confirmed. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "The Emperor is a rotting corpse playing on borrowed time. And he is going to spring a trap that will tear this entire capital apart."

I looked the highest-ranking concubine in the Empire dead in the eye.

"I want to break the Emperor’s trap," I told her. "And you want your son to survive the fallout. So, Lady Renge... are you ready to make a deal?"