#killer kai

He liked this though. He liked both of Xanas’s forms and the company was enjoyable no matter the form. Even before everything had fallen apart Kai had liked cats. His hand kept petting by habit as the fire created abstract shapes. Gramps would have liked Xanas. Probably more so as a cat in some ways. His fingers slowed.

“Xanas?”

Xanas chirruped next to his ear, barely interrupting his purring.

“I think Grandpa would be unhappy if he saw me now.”

The purring didn’t stop, but it did slow, less a statement of pleasure than a soothing sound. Xanas’s cold nose touched Kai’s cheek.

“Grandpa wasn’t big on violence.” The hand not resting in Xanas’s fur hovered near the flames, pulling on their heat to warm him. He felt like no amount of heat would be enough at the moment. “I knew that from the start, but I made my choice even though I knew he wouldn’t like it if he was still alive.” His hand turned over so he could see his palm and the still too tender skin there, scarred and mottled pink and white. “I still would have made the choice if he was alive, just maybe not as soon as I did.” Kai tipped his head against Xanas’s. “Does that make me selfish?”

Xanas’s purr went silent. He was still, listening, giving Kai his full attention. Kai swept a thumb along Xanas’s jaw.

“It probably is selfish to want to destroy a country’s government and everyone in it because my loved ones were killed by the system. I’m hardly the only one….” Two years ago his whole world crashed down. “I was at the academy when they were taken. Mom and Dad died that night, but the others lasted longer. I didn’t know. That day there was nothing on my mind but writing a research paper on spell theory. I didn’t find out until two days later and by then Lake was dead too.” The fire leapt as his emotion got the better of him for a moment. It could have been that day with Kala telling him in a concerned voice that his home had been burned, that his parents were dead, that his siblings were missing. Her telling him that he had to leave even though it could cost Kala her job or even her life to warn him. Kai shuddered. Xanas’s rough tongue rasped against his cheek.

“I was supposed to have gone back home that week,” Kai said. “I stayed because I wanted to learn as fast as possible even if it meant missing holidays with my family. It was chance that I lived and it has been chance that I haven’t died so far.” Kai removed his hand from Xanas’s fur and twisted it with his other hand, tangling his fingers together and clenching until his knuckles ached. “I am not sure I really wanted to live when I decided to follow this insane plan.”

Xanas’s claws pricked through Kai’s clothes. He could feel Xanas tense from paw to tail and feel an inhale that might turn into a growl or a hiss or any number of reprimanding sounds.

“I’m not the same person who started this suicide quest,” Kai said, cutting off whatever response Xanas had to offer. “I don’t want to die. I just want to burn Minaito’s corpse and run off with you.” He sighed. “Thank you for that. You’ve kept me sane. Or at least as sane as I’ll ever be.”

Slowly, the tension through Xanas’s body relaxed. A rough tongue swiped along Kai’s cheek, rhythmically moving from near the corner of his eye down toward his chin. Kai laughed at the ticklish brush of whiskers along his throat. It wasn’t a very strong laugh, but that he could laugh at all with the past heavy in his thoughts was testament to Xanas’s positive influence. A tap from Xanas’s paw made him turn his head in time for Xanas to press his muzzle against Kai’s lips. Kai snorted when he pulled back.

“Kissing does not work when you’re in cat form. First off, no lips. Second, you’re way smaller than me. Third, it makes me want to look over my shoulder and check that there’s no one around to cry bestiality at me.”

Xanas’s paw squished Kai’s lips closed, his claws pricking with implied thread.

Kai rolled his eyes. “Very mature.”

The look he got in return he chose to interpret at “See if you get any human kisses anytime soon.”

Eventually, Kai rose and took grain to the horses and unpacked jerky from the packs for his and Xanas’s dinner. His appetite had yet to return for all that Xanas had gotten a smile from him.

*****

The horse was acting up. She didn’t have a stone caught in her hoof, she hadn’t eaten anything she shouldn’t and wasn’t showing signs of colic or any other stomach problem. She wasn’t sick. All together, Kai wasn’t sure what was wrong. For the last mile she had been side stepping at random times, nearly tossed Kai, and tried to snap at the sorcerer’s horse multiple times. Considering she was usually well behaved Kai was worried. She was acting like she did before she got used to him only worse. Then she only threw him when she got distracted by her stomach.

Kai dug his knees into her sides to keep from being thrown as her back arched underneath him. Her ears were back flat and her tail whipped. Nothing was there. There was no threat. And Xanas was behind Kai growling steadily with his fur puffed out where moments ago he had been grimly holding on to Kai’s bedroll with his claws. Behind him, something darted out from the tall grass that surrounded them. The sorcerer’s horse leapt to the side yanking the lead reigns from Kai’s grip. His horse kicked out with her back legs almost succeeding in unseating him this time. As suddenly as she had started acting strange twenty minutes ago, the horse…stopped…still poised with one hind leg raised but swaying. Xanas looked similarly dazed.

A person rose from the grass, wild haired and dirty, looking half feral. If Kai didn’t see her eyes, he would have thought the girl had gone feral. On the contrary, they were as dark and serious as the last time Caecus had seen them over the corpse of the sex trafficking lord. They were still the same blood red of Xanas’s eyes. Somewhere she had gotten clothing since they last saw each other. Kai didn’t see her brother.

“You don’t want to go this way,” the girl said. Her dark hair swayed with the grasses as a winter-chill wind circled around them. She didn’t appear to feel the cold.

“Why?”  Originally the plan had been to go closer to the capital as no one would expect that move, but he and Xanas had decided to circle around north a bit longer and to hold out on their plan of attack until after winter. They had not been seen in weeks.

The girl didn’t shift or change expression. Her eyes, now that he was looking closer, were glowing like Xanas’s did when his powers were closer to the surface. And Xanas still looked dazed, lolling on the bedroll. The horse wavered on three legs. They hadn’t moved since the girl appeared from the grass.

Kai felt a splinter of fear.

“If you go ahead,” the girl said when Kai was moments from breaking the silence again, “you will regret it.” She moved, touching the horse’s muzzle. The horse settled, four hooves planted in the dirt again. “You think you have cut all ties to your past or had them cut for you,” the girl said, her words directed more toward the horse than to Kai as she ran her hand down its long, silky nose. “You have not.”

Kai wet his lips as his throat went dry. “So someone I was close to once is ahead?”

The girl didn’t speak, but her eyes, directed at Kai again, said everything he needed to know.

“Who? How do you know?” And more importantly… “Why are you here?”

“If you break, the Controller’s Demon will break with you. The outcome of such backlash would be unfortunate.”

“…What happened to you?” This was not the same girl that had threatened him months ago. This girl was dangerous in a way she hadn’t been. “Did becoming Cain’s follower change you so much?”

For a moment there was emotion in her eyes, the anger and stubbornness and desperate desire to live he saw when he entered the room and almost lost an eye. Then it smoothed away. “I channel his thoughts willingly.” Her hand stopped petting the horse. She reached and touched Kai instead, her fingers finding the sliver of flesh bared to the elements on his ankle where his trousers had been pushed up from fighting to keep his seat. Her fingers were like ice. “Don’t go.”

“What did you do to my animals?” Kai asked. “Where is your brother?”

She blinked and scowled and something that Kai had barely noticed—a heaviness? When had it started?—disappeared from the air. Xanas groaned from behind Kai and the horse flinched beneath him. “If you’re too stupid to take a warning, you deserve whatever the gods give you,” the girl said. Her hand twitched toward her waist where she likely had her knife and Kai felt his magic rise—had it been suppressed?—at the thought of a threat. Her hand stopped before it grasped a hilt. “My brother is none of your business. Your animals will be fine in a few minutes.” She brushed her hair out of her face. “You are a hard person to get the attention of. I followed you for miles before your horse noticed and even then you didn’t react.” Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what he sees in you.” Focused beyond Kai on Xanas she frowned. “Try to live. There are those who would like to see a change in the system.”

“Would you ally yourself with me?” Kai asked. Beneath him, the horse shifted two side steps away from the girl.

She wrinkled her nose. “Ally? No. This is your war; I’ll remain a witness.”

Of course. There would be no luck. Kai scowled “Then why interfere at all?”

“I am only here for the Controller’s will.” Her eyes went distant. “You’re running out of time to turn back.”

A low growl reverberated behind Kai and then the horse stumbled at the sudden addition of weight and Kai had a wiry body leaning against him for balance. “You!” Xanas rumbled. “Leave. Now.”

The girl’s eyes changed again, colder and distant and glowing. “I hardly take orders from you.”

“No.” Xanas levered himself forward until he was half hanging off the horse’s back to loom over the girl. Kai grabbed around his middle to make sure he would unbalance. “I’m here physically. I’m living life here. I have the choice to follow or not and I don’t want to play any of these games. Not while I’m mortal and not if they involve Kai.”

The girl’s lips turned up and Kai was sure it was Cain riding her consciousness again. “Why Xanas, one would think you never plan to return home.”

“I’ll live as long here as I can,” Xanas growled back.

Kai’s grip on Xanas’s middle and the horse were not equal and one was going to give out sooner or later. He grunted and he held on as best he could. “Look, your warning is received. We’ll move on.”

“Back where we came?” Xanas said. His voice was still more growl than not, and it vibrated through Kai’s arm. “Is that truly any safer?”

Kai shrugged as best he could with one arm around Xanas and the other keeping hold of the saddle.

The girl’s eyes narrowed and she looked like she was about to speak when a figure crested the hill and came crashing toward them. Kai stared. It was the girl’s brother, his hair as long and wild as hers with fresh mud streaking his legs and a wild look in his eyes.

“Saki!” he gasped.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped back. Cain’s presence was gone in an instant as the girl focused on her brother.

“They’re moving!” the boy said between pants for breath. “There was no time…”

The girl, Saki, turned to Kai again. “Go! If you move fast you might make it to hide in the tree line.”

“Half a mile back?” Kai asked. “If they’re moving we don’t have that time. Your brother can’t run that fast.”

“Saki, we need to go,” her brother said. His eyes had a determination similar to Saki’s when Kai had entered the room to find her standing over a corpse.

“But they’re not—”

“You gave them the message, they didn’t act, and if we get caught in the middle of this, we will die. The Controller won’t fault us for living.” He grabbed her hand and tugged.

Saki went, shooting a glare and a frustrated “Go!” over her shoulder as they vanished back into the grass.

Kai took a breath. He could hear what might be hoof beats in the distance. “Xanas.”

Xanas had stopped growling and was still in Kai’s arms though he still breathed heavily. “Yeah?”

“Change back into a cat.” Kai turned the horse in a tight circle and urged the sorcerer’s horse to turn with her.

“You’re going to try to run?”

“Yeah.”

Xanas shifted and dug his claws tight into the bedroll. Kai kicked the horse into a gallop. He didn’t have much hope really. They left a path through the grass where they ran—it was inevitable with two large, heavy animals. Still, if they made it to the trees and got far enough in, there was a chance that whoever was coming might lose them. By now Kai had a lot more experience at running horses through woodland than the average rider. He was fairly confident that they could outrun any pursuers. If they made it.

The moment the riders crest the hill was clear as shouts came from behind him. Digging his knees tighter into the horse’s sides, he urges her on faster. He’d have to slow when they hit the trees so he pushed her as fast as he could over open ground. If they hit a hole or a root at this speed or the horse mis-stepped, they were both dead.

He leaned close to the horse’s neck as they reached the first straggly trees, keeping low to keep from being swept off by a branch. The horse slowed to a pace that she could manage, hooves scrambling and crushing undergrowth. A branch whipped Kai dangerously close to his eye. It stung but he couldn’t spare a moment to assess the damage. Behind him, Xanas growled, most likely a warning as the other riders had to still be following.

“Come on,” Kai grunted. The horse stumbled, but didn’t fall. The sorcerer’s horse wasn’t faring quite as well, falling back as its packs got caught on branches and it had trouble following Kai’s horse due to its larger size. If they lost the horse, they’d lose most of their supplies. Given the choice between supplies and his life, Kai would take his life.

Minutes passed in blurs of bare branches and scraggly dried brush. Kai couldn’t hear much beyond his and the horse’s gasping breaths and the crash of their passing through leaves and branches. He couldn’t look back to see if they’d lost the other riders. Running through forests for their lives was starting to get really old. Always the forest. While it was better than a swamp or the plains, he had to wonder about the odds.

Behind him Xanas yowled. That was the only warning Kai had before bright light exploded ten feet in front of him.

The horse veered left, half-blinded, and she staggered. Kai squinted at suddenly blurry surroundings and just managed to steer the horse clear of a tree trunk before she brained herself. Shit. If they kept trying to run like this, they’d die before their pursuers could even try to kill them. He blinked hard to clear his eyes and tugged the horse to a jarring trot, then a walk. The crashing behind him was more obvious now, two horses, maybe three, one of which might have been the sorcerer’s horse.

“Xanas, can you see?”

There was a growl behind him that Kai took as a no. With Xanas’s light sensitive eyes, he’d probably been hit worse than Kai had.

“Damn it.” The horse was still moving, but whatever advantage they’d had was gone. Kai scrubbed at his eyes and blinked hard again and he could see a little more. Enough that when he looked behind him he could make out one of the shapes as the sorcerer’s horse, likely following out of habit, and another dark brown horse. Its rider had the dark blue cloak of the mage academy, but his eyes couldn’t make out the color or patterns at its edges to tell the rank. He stopped the horse and called magic to his hands. It fed off his fear, pulling to lash out and burn anything within reach.

“Kai!” the pursuing rider called. She drew her horse up short seeing him stopped. “Kai…” she repeated, voice hesitant.

It took a moment to place her, though it shouldn’t have even if it had been several years since they last spoke or saw each other. “Kala.” His eyes were almost clear now, though there were still spots when he tried to focus in on details.

Kala sat tall on her horse, in perfect form even as she panted for breath after their mad run through the woods. Her hair was longer than when Kai had last seen her, the brown-red strands just long enough to tie back now, baring her forehead and eyes where there was fringe before. Now that she was close, Kai could make out the three red stripes on her sleeves that marked her as a professor at the academy. There were new markings, though, around the collar and a pin that Kai had seen on war mages serving the crown. She had not been directly in service to the crown when Kai studied under her.

Kai narrowed his eyes. “It’s been a while.”

“It has.”

He didn’t relax his magic. For all that she didn’t seem to be preparing a spell of her own, Kala was eying Kai as intently as he was eying her. He had no illusions about what would happen if he tried to out-cast her. Kala was the fastest spell-weaver in the academy.

“I’ve been hearing a lot about you, Kai,” Kala said. “Most of it not good.”

“It depends who is telling the stories,” Kai said. There was no point trying to deny anything. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t know what he’d done.

Kala sighed. “I’d hoped to meet up again under better circumstances.”

“Then you’re here to kill me?”

There was a pause before she responded when her expression froze and Kai was sure she looked upset by his bluntness, but then she relaxed. “I would rather you cooperate and come willingly, alive, but if it comes to that I will.”

Xanas crawled onto Kai’s shoulder, fur bristling. It left Kai’s right arm immobile supporting his weight, but it made an intimidating sight with Xanas’s eyes glowing red and his fangs bared. Kala’s eyes tracked him. “What happened to letting me escape? You let me go last time.”

“Last time you were innocent,” Kala said. Her body language was still relaxed, but there was coolness in her words that had Kai’s magic flaring at his uneasiness. “I can’t save you from this, Kai. Those deaths weren’t accidental, and the mages you killed weren’t merely in self defense.” She paused. “Some of those mages were friends of mine.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Kai said. He meant it though he would never have traded their lives for his.

“You’d have killed them even if you knew them, wouldn’t you?” Kala asked softly.

He couldn’t answer that. Not with her staring him down. Xanas’s claws pricked his shoulder. The air was starting feel thick with magic. Kai touched Xanas’s head to calm him. Kala had been his mentor. She’d taught him how to first harness his magic and showed him the basics of fire magic. On rainy days he’d drink tea with her and discuss his latest magical theory readings. They  had been teacher and student, but she was one of the few people Kai had considered a friend back then, and one of the few he still considered a friend since. His magic faltered with the shift in emotions.

Kala leaned forward. “You still rely on emotion for casting don’t you?” she said, eyes all too knowing.

How did you fight one of the people that taught you? How did you kill someone you cared about knowing that if you didn’t they weren’t likely to hesitate in killing you? Kai had no illusions about where Kala’s loyalty lay. She had a fairly black and white view of the world—there were those who followed the laws and moral code and those who did not, and while letting a boy go because he wasn’t guilty of whatever crimes his family might have committed was one thing, premeditated murder and rebellion was another.

Xanas nipped at Kai’s ear and rubbed his cheek along Kai’s jaw. It was small comfort.

“Will you come quietly, Kai?” Kala asked, her voice deceptively calm. There was a heavy feeling in the air of magic gathering, like the air before a thunderstorm.

“I can’t,” Kai said. “I can’t come with you and I can’t stop what I’m doing. You know why.”

“Revenge doesn’t solve anything.”

“Neither does sitting around.” Xanas dove off Kai’s shoulder with a yowl, and Kai aimed a blast of magic at Kala’s horse.

Half the fire dissipated before it reached her, but what Kala couldn’t stop, Kai willed to burn and burn hot. The horse shrieked and lurched away, trying to escape the source of pain and Kala tumbled to the ground. As she struggled to stand, Xanas latched onto one of her arms, distracting her enough for Kai to send more magic her way. The hem of her robe caught fire and Xanas streaked back to Kai’s side and up onto the horse’s back.

“Damn it Kai! You aren’t going to win this battle!” She waved her hand toward her robe.

It wasn’t his best magic. His heart wasn’t in it. It worked enough for him to turn the horse and start trotting away, casting fire spells at the trees behind him in hopes that they would slow Kala down enough that they wouldn’t be followed. He didn’t slow to see if they hit or not or if the sorcerer’s horse was following or not.

“You can’t run forever!”

The further they got, the more his vision recovered until they were moving at a canter through the trees. Kai didn’t hear Kala following, though once he heard her shout something else after him. Another bridge burned. Another enemy made. His heart hurt.

At some point, Kai let go of the reigns and let the horse go where she wanted. She slowed to a walk, snuffling at tree branches like she hoped some of it would be a good meal. All their food, cooking gear, and medical supplies were with the sorcerer’s horse. He supposed they were lucky he had his bedroll and remaining money on his horse.

When the horse stopped, too tired or bored to keep walking, Xanas crawled from Kai’s bedroll onto his lap. Kai buried his hands in soft fur as Xanas purred.

“I forgot,” Kai said, the first words he’d spoken in over an hour. “I forgot that Kala might be used against me. Hell, after I got back to Grandpa I didn’t think about the people from the academy at all. Everything else was too raw. Parents dead. Siblings missing, then dead. Gramps essentially going into hiding to keep me from joining them. She probably got in trouble for helping me leave.” Xanas’s tongue rasped against Kai’s thumb.

“I can’t kill her,” Kai said. “And I don’t want to. We’re going to have to avoid her in the future.”

Xanas meowed. Since he sounded more resigned than anything, Kai took it as agreement, but reluctantly such.

“I’m not saying we won’t defend ourselves if we have to. I can’t fight her with the intent to hurt or kill though. This is your fair warning if you need it.”

Xanas scoffed.

Kai smiled and rubbed his head. “I know you don’t really need it. You’ll try to aim for our survival ahead of anyone else’s. I get that.” Xanas pushed his head into Kai’s touch and stretched up until he could lick Kai’s cheek. His purring tickled against Kai’s throat. “You know, it would be a lot nicer if I could hug you properly right now.”

He got a glare and a feline huff at that and Xanas settled back into Kai’s lap, digging his claws into Kai’s pants to be stubborn. His purr never stopped though, so he couldn’t be too annoyed. Kai smiled again.

“I should move but I really don’t want to.” He leaned back until he was half resting on the bedroll still tied to the saddle. His arms and legs dangled against the horse’s sides. The hair there was tacky from sweat.

Xanas murred and squirmed his way to Kai’s chest, his fur brushing Kai’s chin.

“Right. Just a bit longer and then we’ll….figure something out. There’s nothing for dinner or breakfast.”

“Mrr.”

“Just because you can catch your breakfast, that doesn’t mean I’ll have any luck or food for the horse will magically appear.”

Xanas wheezed a laugh and stretched his neck to lick at Kai’s cheek, washing away the blood from earlier where the branch cut his face.

“Thanks.” Kai curled his fingers in Xanas’s fur.

*****

Considering how things happened with Kala, Kai though the sorcerer’s horse was long gone. If not, some farmer had to have caught it and taken its supplies if not the horse itself. So he was surprised when four days after losing it, his horse lifted her head and neighed toward something upwind. Not three minutes later, the sorcerer’s horse came crashing through the undergrowth.

Its mane and tail were full of burrs. The packs strapped to its back were still there, but battered, some places torn and the securing straps loose. It trotted up to Kai’s horse and nosed her in greeting like it wasn’t miraculous to see it again.

Kai gaped. “Where the hell have you been and how did you find us?” If Xanas wasn’t out hunting, Kai would have thought he’d herded it this way.

The horse shied away the first time Kai tried to grab its halter, but the second time, it stood still, ears flicked back like it didn’t like being held still but would tolerate it anyway. Kai took his time looking it over. There were some scrapes and healing cuts that would probably scar but nothing was infected and aside from looking like it had run through all the burrs in the woods, it was in remarkable health. Kai untied the packs and brushed the horse until the dust was gone from its coat and the impression left by the straps in its hide was barely visible. The way the horse’s head drooped contentedly as Kai worked burrs free from its mane, Kai didn’t think he’d have to worry about it running off again for the moment.

When Xanas got back from hunting and dropped the rabbit he dragged behind him in shock, Kai laughed and laughed. There was something that felt right in hearing two horses snort and whisk tails than the quiet breathing and antics of one horse. It was funny how quick he got used to things and how hard it was to change once he was used to them.

“Where did it come from?” Xanas asked when he turned human, pulling clothing on and spitting out rabbit fur.

“Out of the trees.” The sorcerer’s horse’s tail was proving to be much more difficult to get burrs out of than its mane. He kept at it with the comb. “I think he was looking for my horse because she called him over before I even realized he was there.”

“He looks healthy.”

“Better than I was expecting all things considered.”

Xanas shook his head and started cleaning the rabbit. Kai gave up on getting the burrs and tangles out for the moment. “Now that we have our supplies back, do you want vegetables or grains to go with that?”

“Both.” He set entrails aside to bury later. “Make stew.”

Kai snorted. “We’re not going to eat until after dark with stew.”

“It’s more filling than soup, which takes just as long, and more satisfying than roasting.” Xanas scowled, knife slipping between skin and flesh. “And it’s cold out.”

Kai laughed and searched out barley and vegetables from the packs. “You complain now but it’s only going to get colder.”

“If humans had actual fur it wouldn’t be nearly as bad.”

“Yes, well, we’re strange that way.” Out came the beaten up cook pot and the small bottle of oil to cook the onions. The sorcerer’s horse and Kai’s horse stood side by side, leaning against each other looking relaxed and sleepy.

Kai cut onions into the pot, added a bit of oil, and got down to cooking. They didn’t talk as they worked, but the silence was comfortable. When Kai left to get water for the pot, he returned to Xanas arranging chunks of meat and rabbit bones among the vegetables, onions, and barley. It was, Kai reflected, going to be a hard time waiting for the meal to cook. The thing with slow cooking was that the scent of food filled the air for hours before it was actually ready.

“Glaring at the pot won’t make it cook,” Xanas said, poking Kai’s face. Kai wrinkled his nose and wiped at his face. There was probably rabbit juice on it now.

“Go wash up,” Kai said. He put the pot over hot coals and the battered lid on top, and willed the heat steady. It would take more wood and reinforcement before the meal was done, but there were days when he was glad his affiliation was with fire rather than water or earth. It was usually easy to keep things from burning.

When Xanas returned, he disposed of the bits of rabbit they weren’t using and Kai went back to working burrs from the sorcerer’s horse’s tail.

***

The stew was picked over bones and a thick mix of broth and barley packed away for the next day’s meal when the sun set. As the sun touched the horizon it sent red and gold light against clouds, tinting them orange and pink, and then purple as it sank lower and the dark of night faded into the edges. Kai ran his spoon around his bowl, watching the last light glow at the edge of the sky. He felt content, which wasn’t something he could say often. The two horses were back-lit shadows with swishing tails and flicking ears. One half of Xanas’s face was tinted gold; the other was almost lost in shadows. He looked about as content as Kai felt and for a moment Kai let himself entertain the thought of not hunting down Minaito. There was nothing stopping him from leaving the country and living this way forever with Xanas by his side. They could explore new lands, go somewhere warmer to winter over and never look back at this country and the bloodshed they’d caused.

The fantasy didn’t last and neither did the contentment. As the last of the light bled away and the fire was the only glow, Kai could see the men he’d killed in his mind’s eye and the mages he’d burned. There was Wisteria and Rowan and Blake and his parents, their faces growing foggier in his memory in a way that terrified him if he dwelled on it too long. Losing everyone and everything you held dear shouldn’t become easier and it shouldn’t scab over and get duller as time went on. It shouldn’t be something he was starting to wish he could forget rather than something motivating him to act, but the longer he spent time with Xanas, the more the wounds closed like they hadn’t living with his grandfather. Would Xanas think less of him if he didn’t go through with his plot?

Probably not. But Kai would think less of himself. It would make all the deaths so far meaningless.

Kai leaned sideways until his shoulder thumped against Xanas’s chest. Xanas’s arms went up to hold him there, a warm half-hug. It was time, Kai thought, to stop being half hearted. He’d been leading them in circles for months trying to will himself one way or another and he couldn’t afford to do that much longer. Kala was in the fight now. They knew his name, his face, his history. It was only a matter of time before he was caught, killed, or forced to flee the kingdom.

“You’re thinking,” Xanas said. “What about?”

“You know how I mentioned going to the capital?”

“Yes?”

Kai turned his head into Xanas’s shoulder. “I think we should go now.”

“Now?” Xanas’s hold tightened. He shifted Kai in his arms until he could look him in the eye. “Why now? I know we’ve considered wintering there…”

“It wouldn’t be wintering there.” Kai couldn’t meet Xanas’s eyes. He still had the bowl in his hands, and he fiddled with it, sliding the spoon around its edges. “Well, we would be, but it would be using the winter to find out as much about Minaito and his palace as we could before we attack.” He tightened his grip on the bowl. “If I got the chance, I would probably go for Adair and Schul too since they’re the advisors but…Minaito’s the main goal.”

“…You wouldn’t feel like your vengeance was incomplete if you skipped your other targets? I know there was one more lord you were considering…” Xanas’s voice was gentle.

Kai shook his head. “Minaito is the target. If I can….I’ll go for the others but…” It did feel like it would be incomplete, but he wanted it over. He wanted the after, where he didn’t burn with hatred that drove him to kill and where he could be with Xanas without being torn by indecision and distractedness. He didn’t know if that would be the future he got if he pulled it off, but it was the future he longed for.

He squirmed free of Xanas’s arms, needing the space. He could feel Xanas’s reluctance to let him go.

“We’ll go to the capital, I’ll kill Minaito, and maybe others, and someone else can pick up the pieces. Maybe Blue, maybe Schul, but not us. We’ll leave the country and keep traveling for as long as we want and are able.” There was nothing left of the sunset now but the dim afterglow on the horizon. The night stars poked between clouds, pinpricks of white that made Kai think of the coming snow. He shivered.

“Okay,” Xanas said. “If that’s what you want.”

Kai thought that would make him relax to hear agreement. It didn’t. If anything he felt tenser than ever. “Hey.” He held out his hand. “I’ll do dishes.”

Xanas raised an eyebrow. There was a quirk to it that Kai read as concern. “It can wait until morning.”

“I need to clear my mind.”

Xanas’s eyes flickered red, but he passed his bowl and spoon over. “I’ll tend the fire while you’re gone,” he said.

Kai nodded and made for the stream he’d found earlier. The dark and the night air away from the bubble of the fire was soothing, but not as calming as he hoped. Grandpa would have called it a thinking mood. Blake would have called it brooding. Kai laughed and it felt hollow. He could almost see Blake’s expression as he said it. Almost. The bowls splashed into the stream with more force than was necessary.  He wasn’t good for anything in this sort of mood.  Even his magic was quiet, not sparking and flaring at his mood swings.

Moving forward would help, surely. Moving at all toward the goal should feel good or strengthen his resolve. So why didn’t it?

Water ran over his hands, cold and bound to get colder. The bowls were clean of residue but he turned them between his hands anyway. He felt happy earlier when the horse came back. When he worked in silence with Xanas. When he heard two horses breathing rather than one. When he saw the pricked, black-furred ears poke their way out of the bushes before the rest of Xanas’s body.

He thought of Minaito, of the face he saw on coins and on imperial edicts, of fleeing for his life and hearing about how each member of his family died. His fingers clenched so tight on the spoons that they hurt and he finally felt a rush of magic in response to the familiar anger.  The water warmed around his hands slightly.

Yes, he still wanted to kill Minaito. He wanted the skin to blacken and peel away from the cold, unfeeling face. He wanted to see the fear and pain and understanding of death in Minaito’s eyes before he died. That was as strong as ever. The vigilante justice side of his plot…well, he had taken out the people who were directly involved with his siblings’ deaths. There were more corrupt people, many of them, but they could be someone else’s problem. He wanted to end this.

He turned back for the soft glow of the camp fire, clean bowls dripping in his hands. He sent a flash of heat through them to dry them and his fingers tingled from the temperature shift, hot after cold.

Xanas was where Kai had left him but there were a few more sticks on the fire showing he really had tended it. Kai put the bowls back in their proper pack and sank back down next to Xanas again.

The clouds were clearing up. More stars were visible and the moon was starting to rise, just a glimpse of yellowish light between the bare trees.

Kai glanced at Xanas. He was looking at the fire, expression abnormally blank and distant. An immortal servant of a god probably had deeper things to think about than Kai could begin to guess. Still, Kai had some other thoughts of his own.

 “…Xanas.”

“What?”

“I know what I’m getting out of this,” he waved his hand vaguely to indicate everything, not just revenge and not just his relationship with Xanas, “but what about you?” Xanas was only a few inches from Kai’s side, but Kai could feel the gap between them viscerally. The why had not mattered much until now; Kai was glad to have someone with him to keep him from becoming too obsessive and to remind him that life was more than revenge, but they were moving into more and more dangerous territory and if Kai was going to even tentatively dream about a lifetime after revenge, one with Xanas in it, he needed to know where Xanas stood. Kai leaned over to nudge Xanas with an elbow. “If you say something stupid like ‘I only want what you want,’ I’m going to throw a fire ball at you.”

Xanas snorted and shifted a bit away. “I wouldn’t.” He settled down again, staring at the fire. He was frowning in the way that made his eyebrows almost meet in the middle and made tense lines around his eyes that Kai wanted to soothe away. “It wouldn’t be a lie that I want to help you get your revenge,” Xanas said after a moment, “but that wouldn’t be the whole truth either. And it’s not a lie that I want you to live past killing Minaito either… I want to keep traveling with you, somewhere, somehow.” He paused, frowning deeper. His hands fidgeted in his lap as he mulled words over, never looking away from the fire. “But I’m selfish too.”

He looked at Kai then, meeting his eyes and Kai thought about the times before he knew for sure that Xanas wasn’t just a cat, those half waking moments where he would wake up to red eyes watching him, gone before he’d done more than blinked. Even now there was something unreadable in Xanas’s eyes, some part Kai didn’t, and probably never would, know.

“In the mortal realm, I have freedom,” Xanas said. “For a day, a month, years…I can be who and what I want for a little while and I want to keep that. But I want you in that with me. It might sound shallow, but part of what I like about you is that I chose you. And I can be possessive of what I view as uniquely mine.”

Kai swallowed. There was something dark in Xanas’s eyes. They had the same dangerous light as they held when he rescued Kai from the pit cell. It was a reminder that Xanas wasn’t mortal in a way Kai found himself forgetting and taking for granted. “I’m yours then?” he asked feeling inexplicably nervous.

“Yes.” Xanas smiled in a way that had too much teeth and the edge of ferocity.  “If you don’t like the thought or want to argue about definition, go right ahead.”

“I’m not sure the thought sits comfortably,” Kai admitted. “But I guess part of me also views you as ‘mine’ so I can’t argue too much about how you view me. I should probably ask what your definition of being yours entails though.”

“No one can break you,” Xanas said immediately, closing the distance between them. His arm hooked around Kai’s waist, pulling him close. Kai let him, shivering when Xanas’s breath tickled his neck. “Only I can hold you like this. Only I get to see all of you; when you’re happy, angry, sad, vulnerable, I want to hoard your expressions and keep them only for me. I want to know all of you and know that no one else knows you as I do.”

Kai took a breath and let it out without forming words. He tried again, slipping his arms around Xanas in return until they held each other in a loose embrace. “If it helps, you know me better than anyone alive does.”

“Not enough.” Xanas laughed, but it was an unhappy sound. “I don’t know what your childhood was like or what your dreams were when you entered the academy or what you used to fear or love or hate.”

“I can’t promise you everything,” Kai said thinking about how much he didn’t know of Xanas and how myths were vague and contradictory and would never capture everything Xanas refused to talk about.

“I know.” Xanas pressed his face against Kai’s collar bone and stayed there. “And I won’t ask you to. It doesn’t stop me selfishly wanting all of you without giving you all of me in return.”

It should probably make him more uncomfortable than it did hearing that, but Kai had not considered himself normal in a long time and their relationship had never fit what he expected when he was younger and idly thinking of marriage in his far off future. As the second son, he probably would have had more leeway than Blake had had in marriage prospects, but it still would have been arranged and it would have been to a woman his parents chose. Kai had vague memories of playing with Alyssa, a merchant’s daughter, who in retrospect had probably been his parents’ first choice in possible wives before Kai declared his intention to study as a mage. This was nothing at all like the future he or his family would have chosen. He didn’t regret it though. He only regretted the pain and loss that put him on the path to where he was now.

“There’s probably something wrong with me that I find that a lot more comforting than if you planned to blindly follow me to help me with my goals just because I wanted to get revenge,” Kai said finally. He petted the back of Xanas’s head absently, noting the difference between the feeling of human hair and cat fur in a distant way. Xanas snorted against Kai’s chest, a little tension easing from his shoulders. “There will probably come a time when I push for all you’re willing to give about you. But I accept that I can never know all of you.”

“I love you,” Xanas mumbled. The words were muffled by Kai’s shirt and coat, but they were still spoken and Kai froze because they didn’t say them often. He could count on one hand how often they’d said it.

He breathed out. “I love you too.”

****

The capital was nothing like what Kai expected. As he and Xanas rode in, side by side, Kai’s head feeling oddly cold with his hair shorn as short as he and Xanas could manage with a knife and dyed dark, it felt big. It was easily as big as the city where he studied to become a mage, probably larger, but the buildings were taller. Where it was rare for villages to have a building higher than one story, and rare for cities to have buildings higher than three, he saw places with four or five floors, towering above the streets and blocking out winter sunlight. For the largest city in the nation it wasn’t nearly as busy as he imagined, but whether that was because of the season or the obvious guards posted at every other street corner, he wasn’t sure.

The snow in the shadows was trodden down to ice, but the cobbles kept the horses from slipping. Leading the horses in and not getting a glance felt like a victory. Even more so when he stopped to think that he was entering alive and of his own volition.

Kai chanced a glance at Xanas and found him looking at the tall buildings with fascination. He had to smile. Xanas hadn’t seen buildings higher than two story manor houses traveling with Kai.

“Do people live in them?” Xanas asked, nudging the sorcerer’s horse closer to Kai’s. 

“Some of them,” Kai said. From the look of it, the upper floors of the building were living spaces, but the bottom two floors had signs for shops.

“Are we going to live in one?”

Kai had to smile again. They had talked about what they would do when they got here. Finding a living space foremost among them, then any employment they could scrounge up to last the winter. Settle in first, figure out a way into the palace later.  “Did you want to live in one?”

“…Probably not.” Xanas’s eyes followed a woman hanging her wash in the chill air. “The view would be nice, but it would be inconvenient to try and leave from in a hurry.”

“We probably couldn’t afford to rent a room anyway.” Kai guided his horse past a group of children chasing a chicken. They were chased by two scruffy dogs.

“An inn?” Xanas raised an eyebrow.

“Probably.”

“That’s fine. We can probably pay for some of the cost doing odd jobs.”

“That’s what I am hoping on.” They’d have to find an inn with space and a need for helping hands first.

There were signs for inns, lots of them, but this close to the gate they were big and flashy, surely too expensive for them to afford. Kai wasn’t sure where to look to find a more affordable one though, so they kept riding. The shops with their orderly storefronts became a bustling market with open air stalls after a few turns and men and women bundled against the cold as they sold their wares. This was more what Kai had expected in a city. There were guards, but there were too many people to have any real order here. The shoppers were all on foot too. 

“We’ll have to go around it,” Xanas concluded out loud as if anticipating the direction of Kai’s thoughts. “We’re not getting a horse through there at this time of day.”

Kai nodded and noted where carriage and horse traffic diverged from the bustle of walkers. He nudged the horse in that direction.

“Sirs!” a young voice called out, and Kai didn’t realize he was being addressed until a hand tugged at his stirrup and his horse side stepped to keep from crushing the body that went with it. “Sirs, if you could spare a coin.”

Kai looked down to see a child, clothes tattered and hair filthy and legs scrambling to keep up with the horse’s walking pace. He couldn’t have been older than eight. One hand was upraised in supplication for a coin, but there was something about his face that looked off, like Saki’s face when Cain had been riding her mind. “You…”

“Please, sirs,” the child said, almost stumbling over a cobblestone.

Kai glanced at Xanas to find him staring the child down. Kai nudged the horse toward a side street. It was quiet there, filled with crisscrossing wash lines with laundry half frozen to the lines as it dried. The boy’s hand left Kai’s stirrup. He was breathing heavily, but his face was the same blank determination that Saki’s had held when she warned Kai against Kala.

“You’re one of Caecus’s,” Xanas said. His eyes were narrowed like he was trying to see if it was a trap or help.

The boy blinked. “I am the Beggar’s eyes in this city. He can offer little help aside from guidance.” He sounded too old for his appearance, a high priest in a child’s body. “You do not know the city. I do.”

“What help can you give us?” Kai asked. Xanas frowned at him. Kai raised an eyebrow back. It wasn’t as if they didn’t need the help.

“I can—” The boy cut off as the horse took her chance to try and nibble at his hair. While it did look a bit like hay—and was probably blond under all the dirt—Kai had to despair at her timing. It was always something with her. He tugged her head back. The boy blinked again, face frozen somewhere between shock and indignation. Kai held back a laugh as the boy smoothed his hair back down with a scowl. For a second he looked like a normal boy, the weird whitish tinge to his irises a normal dark grey, then the god presence in him was back. “I can help you find a place to stay,” the boy said, eying the horse. “It will be up to you to learn the city streets yourself though. The guards are heavy around the market and the main roads. The alleys and side streets are homes of criminals and the poor.” He tilted his head. “Those you will also have to learn to navigate.”

Kai felt his magic stir at the implied challenge in the words. “We’ll manage.”

The boy smiled and it was Caecus’s smile. “I am sure you will.” The boy turned away. “Come.”

He didn’t wait for Kai to agree to follow or to ask where they were going. Kai glanced at Xanas to find him still frowning.

“Is something wrong?” Kai asked.

Xanas shook his head. “No, just…” His horse shifted under him and the air felt heavy. Xanas’s eyes flashed with a red glow. “While I trust Caecus not to screw us over, I’m not sure what he thinks he’s doing with his guide.”

“Not much of a guide,” Kai said thinking about the brief conversation. “He hasn’t promised much.”

“No,” Xanas agreed. “He’s usually more thorough. Either he is being kept from interfering more or something with his sight is making him hold back.”

“Or for the kid’s sake?” Kai guessed. The boy stood at the other end of the street, waiting for them to follow, face giving away nothing.

“Maybe,” Xanas said. He nudged his horse forward. “He does take favorites.”

“Don’t all gods?” Kai muttered to himself as he followed. There seemed to be a lot of favoritism getting twisted up in things lately.

The boy looked back at them with wide eyes that held hints of knowing humor. “If you’ve decided I won’t kill you…”

Xanas snorted.

The boy didn’t smile, but he looked more relaxed than he had before, even as the god-presence hung over him. “This way.” He turned and led them down a street so narrow Kai’s boots almost scraped the walls on either side of the horse’s girth.

The horse didn’t like being hemmed in. Her ears were flat as Kai guided her after the boy, but with Xanas behind them she had no choice but to keep walking. The narrow street became a slightly wider side street with a drunk curled up on a doorstep. The boy didn’t give the man a glace, but Kai felt a prickling feeling on the back of his neck that the man wasn’t as drunk as he appeared and that there was more than one person touched by Caecus on the street. Then again, it could be paranoia. Kai wasn’t any fonder of crowded places and narrow streets than his horse was.

Xanas seemed to be handling it better than Kai was, but then he could always turn into a cat with far more escape routes if the situation called for it.

“How much further?” Kai said when they turned down another street strung up with washing that had him bending over double in the saddle.

“Not far,” the boy said.

They cut across a fairly busy street and Kai glimpsed guards that the boy sent a wary look toward before they were in back alleys again passing only a few people, all of them from a poorer class. The road they finally came out on had a few shops, but was largely residential. The buildings here were shorter and narrower than when they entered the city, and noticeably poorer—the paint on the signs was faded and in places repairs were boarded over without any attempt to make them more visually appealing.

“There,” the boy said pointing. A little ways down the road was an inn with a stable built into its side, understated compared to the ones they passed earlier, but large enough that it was the most prominent building on the street. The sign, when Kai managed to make out the faded writing, declared it the Silver Willow. At one point it might even have had silver paint to color it, but now it was only a washed out gray. “They’re in need of workers and are reasonably priced. You should not have too many problems if you stay there.”

“Thank you.” It didn’t look welcoming, but it didn’t look like someplace he’d be afraid to sleep in for the off chance he would end up covered in lice and fleas either.

“Be careful,” the boy said. He didn’t leave.

Xanas moved until he was shoulder to shoulder with Kai and raised an eyebrow. Kai blinked and then remembered which god was helping them. He dug into his saddle bag for one of the coins he knew was stashed there and handed it to the boy.

It was taken in an instant and inspected. Rather than looking satisfied, he almost seemed disappointed.

“What?” Kai asked. “Is that not enough?” He would willingly give more, but he hadn’t expected frowns.

The boy shook his head. “No, it’s more generous than I expected. But since you paid me, I can’t pick your pocket.”

“That’s a strange code of morals.”

Xanas nudged Kai’s shoulder with his elbow. It reminded Kai of how he’d press his whole weight against the back of Kai’s legs as a cat and make Kai stumble. “It’s part of being a follower of Caecus,” he explained.

“You don’t steal from someone that gives freely,” the boy explained seriously. “Or from someone with less than you. And you don’t steal from friends.”

“That seems like it would limit your prospects,” Kai said.

The boy lifted an eyebrow. “You over estimate humanity’s generosity.” The coin vanished somewhere on his person. “You do not have to worry about me stealing from you though.”

“Because we’ve given freely or because we fall into another category?”

“Guess.” The god presence left the boy and he narrowed his eyes. “If you need me, ask around for Musca. I’ll come if I can. But it’s for Caecus, not for you.” He nodded at Xanas, ignoring Kai completely and left down the alley they came from. Kai couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed.

“Well, that went well,” Xanas said.

“It’s a start, Kai said. They nudged the horses for the Silver Willow.

*****

Kai shuffled into the barn, his breath clouding on his lips and food from one of the city’s many food stalls in hand. In the weeks since he and Xanas had arrived, the weather had taken a dip for the worse, which made him glad for the room he’d bargained for and the shelter for the horses. He had spent the weeks doing odd jobs for the Silver Willow and any other work he could get nearby, leaving most of exploring the city up to Xanas as he could better go unnoticed. Kai looked around, hands warring between warmth of the food and cold of the air as he tried to find Xanas. A loud meow came from the hay loft. Xanas, for one reason or another, had taken to meeting up with Kai as a cat, though he always came back as a man in time for bed.

“What are you doing up there?” Kai grumbled. “And why are you a cat again? Why meet up for supper at all if you can’t even talk.”

Xanas twitched his whiskers and walked neatly along the length of the loft to jump down to the stall nearest Kai’s head. He batted at Kai’s face with a paw.

Kai wrinkled his nose. “You know the cute act doesn’t work. Really, I should be saving money and having you hunt your own meals. I’m sure there are plenty of mice and rats in a city.”

Xanas laughed with his eyes as he hooked claws into one of the pieces of food in its oiled paper tied up in string.

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re so impatient.”

A testy mrowr answered him.

“Like I haven’t been working too?” Kai snorted. He fumbled the knots to pull out sausages and slices of thick brown bread. “I was up before you this morning riding the horse on errands, and trying my hand at fixing shingles well past lunch. For the record, I am terrible with shingles, but I did a passable enough job to be paid and the roof shouldn’t leak. I just hope no one noticed me using magic to keep my hands warm.”

The paw batted him in the face again, this time with a bit of claw. Xanas’s tail lashed back and forth.

“I know, I know.” Kai pushed the paw away. “But if I didn’t, I’d have lost a finger.” He laid the meal on a stool. “Do you want a whole sausage? Or half?”

The look he got in return shouldn’t have been possible on a cat’s face. If Xanas was in human form, one eyebrow would have been up in exasperation. Kai handed over a whole sausage.

“Right, what am I even asking, or course you will eat a quarter of your current body weight in meat and not explode. What am I thinking?”

“Mrrrerr.”

Kai shrugged. The one sided conversations felt like before he knew Xanas wasn’t actually a cat. He bit into his meal. The sausage was cheap but flavorful, and the bread that went with it was soft in the center with thick crust. They didn’t have much coin to spare, and while they got meals included when they were doing errands for the inn, if Kai wasn’t needed for the day, he had to find his food elsewhere.

“I think I’m finally comfortable with the west side of the city,” Kai said between bites. They had entered through the western gates, but it was the northern part of the city that housed the emperor and his advisors. The palace sat on a hill rising above the capital city with a second set of walls to enclose its gardens and grounds from the walls of the city and its inhabitants. “We could probably get into the palace if we got work, but we haven’t been here long enough to build good references.”

Xanas didn’t look up from pulling chunks out of his sausage. His ear flicked once to show he was listening.

Kai tickled the fine hairs on the inside of that ear to make it twitch again and kept thinking aloud. “Even then, there’s no guarantee that we wouldn’t be recognized. They should have a description of me, if not from the people they’ve sent after me who’ve lived, then from Kala. Not sure if they have one for you.”

Fur brushed Kai’s wrist as Xanas’s tail lashed. His eyes were narrowed in Kai’s direction.

“Right, probably your cat form. But not your human form.”

There was an un-feline snort in return. Kai finished off his sausage and bread and wandered to check that the horses had been fed and watered. His horse blinked sleepily at him before reaching out to try and nibble at his hair. Kai shoved her nose away gently.

“You have perfectly good hay to eat. Why do you always insist on trying to eat things you shouldn’t?”

She huffed breath at him, and it was visible in wisps against the colder air of the barn. Kai scruffled the hair between her eyes and made his way back to where Xanas was finishing the last of the sausage with single minded determination.

“You’re going to make yourself sick,” Kai said.

Xanas flicked his tail and kept eating.

“Suit yourself.” He patted his pockets for a purchase earlier in the day and pulled out the spiced honey cake he’d been tempted to indulge in. “There’s dessert if you want it,” Kai offered.

Finished with the sausage, Xanas sat back and began to groom his face, cleaning his whiskers of lingering oil and bits of meat.

“I take it that’s a no?” Xanas showed no interest when Kai unwrapped the cake. “You know, it’s nice if you’d answer rather than just ignoring me.”

Xanas slanted a look his direction, not even pausing as he licked his paw to wet it. Kai knew when he was being messed with, though he didn’t know why Xanas chose now. Maybe he was bored. There were days when Kai didn’t understand Xanas any more than he had when they first met.

“Well, all the more for me then.” He broke off a piece and was about to eat it when he felt something touch his ankle. “What on—” Xanas stopped bathing; ears pricked forward, pupils wide. The something on his ankle was suddenly a tickling, prickling itch on his calf and Kai looked down to see a mouse tail sticking out of his pants cuff. Kai yelped, dropping the cake and kicking his foot to dislodge the rodent. In a flash, Xanas was off the stall and darting after the blur of grey-brown fur as it arced through the air. It was dead before it hit the ground, caught in Xanas’s jaw. “Damn,” Kai said.

Before he could get further than that, another mouse shot out of the hay with a rustle, grabbing a chunk of the cake as it went. It made it halfway up the ladder to the hay loft before falling backward, twitching. The mouse dropped from Xanas’s mouth.

The mouse stopped twitching.

“Is it dead?” Kai asked.

Xanas flicked an ear as he crossed the barn floor. He kept his distance when he got to the mouse, mouth open to better get its scent. He sneezed and his ears and whiskers went back. The strip of fur along the back of his neck and right before his tail were beginning to puff up.

“Well?” The morsel of cake was still clenched in the mouse’s teeth and Kai wondered if he should be stepping away from the rest of the slice he dropped.

In a blink, Xanas was human, shivering with the lack of protective fur. “Poison,” he said. “Where did you get the cake?”

“A food stand.” Kai shook his head. “There were dozens of people buying from there, not far from where I got the sausage. How…?” He shook his head again.

Xanas crossed his arms where he was crouched over the mouse corpse.  “We were warned,” he said softly. “By Caecus. Minaito is favored by The Poisoner, remember?”

“But…there were dozens…” Kai feels a chill. “Are a bunch of people going to show up dead just because she tried to poison me?”

“No,” Xanas said, and he sounded so sure that Kai relaxed a little. “She could have ensured that only you got the poisoned cake. She’s subtle; mass poisoning to reach one target wouldn’t be her style.”

“That is good to know.”  Kai shivered. The sausage felt like a lump of lead in his stomach. “We’ll have to start checking our food.” And potentially kill who knew how many unsuspecting animals in the process. “What should we do with the cake?” He couldn’t leave it sitting there where something other than pests like mice and rats could eat it.

“Burn it,” Xanas said. “Or bury it. Neither in the barn,” he added.

 Kai rolled his eyes, his muscles unfreezing a bit. He picked up the waxed paper square that had been holding the cake and tried to ignore how his hands were shaking. “Change back to a cat,” Kai said. “I feel cold just looking at you.” Xanas rolled his eyes, but he didn’t protest. He did, however roll the dead mouse Kai’s way to burn with the cake. “I’ll meet you in our room in a bit. I just…” He waved a hand at the pile on the ground.

Xanas nodded, rubbing the length of his body along Kai’s leg as he left the barn. Kai stared at the cake and mouse a little longer before scooping them into the paper and burning them in the gutter with a short burst of fire magic he hoped no one was around to see. He shuddered again as smoke coiled from the remains, smelling of burnt hair and cooked flesh and charred fat. This was hardly the first time he’d had a brush with death, but he never would have thought a slice of cake could almost be his downfall. If it wasn’t so serious it would be laughable.

He watched until the mouse’s brittle bones crumbled under the heat of the flame and there was nothing but a small bit of ashes and bone fragments left in the gutter.

*****

It was almost a month into winter proper before either of them had a stroke of luck. It was just long enough for Kai to feel simultaneously stir crazy and at peace, the paradox not lost on him as he couldn’t stop jiggling his foot even as he was enjoying the magical theory books he had managed to get a hold of. Xanas was little better, spending more and more time when he wasn’t working roaming the city as a cat or falling asleep in Kai’s lap when he was in—in either form.

The restlessness, Kai knew, was to be expected. For most of the last year or so he had been traveling, never staying more than a few weeks at a time in any one place. In the city, the buildings that had initially been fascinating were quickly becoming stifling. They blocked light solidly in ways trees never did, the air was clogged with the scents of waste, too many bodies, fires, animals, and more, and on still days even the snow didn’t cover the smell. They were both used to the relative solitude of the road with its open, fresh air. The more time he spent in the capital, the more Kai hoped never to stay in a city longer than was necessary in the future. The novelty had long since worn off.

Kai knew it would be bearable if they had only made some progress.

His foot jiggled harder until his heel was tapping against the floorboard. Xanas, who had been on his lap, squirmed away with a sound of disgust. Kai read a line about reaching to the earth for the third time in the last minute and still couldn’t make heads or tails about the actual mental process that went into the action. He shut the book. “I’m going for a walk,” he said.

Xanas grunted, his tail flipped over his muzzle where he sat on one of the pillows.

“Want to come?” Kai asked. He pulled out a scarf and gloves he had purchased two weeks prior when he’d almost got caught doing fire magic to keep them warm. Better to blend than to get caught.

The tail flicked to the side so Xanas could look at Kai from one eye. They stared each other down before Xanas huffed a put upon sigh and stretched.

“You don’t have to come. But if you do, go as a human? You haven’t been seen as human enough lately, and I do enjoy holding more than a one sided conversation more often than updates on day’s events before we go to bed.” A coat joined the scarf and gloves. He had a hat somewhere too, but he kept misplacing it.

Xanas shifted with an even more put upon look. “It’s cold,” he complained. “What sane creature would choose a body that’s practically hairless when the weather is freezing?” Still, he reached for the pile he’d left his clothing in, pulling one article on after another until he was bundled more than Kai was. “Well?” he said, his hands stuffed in his coat pockets. “Where are we walking to?”

“Anywhere but here,” Kai said.

It was snowing outside, big, fluffy flakes that looked like down and had the unpleasant habit of sticking to Kai’s eyelashes. Kai didn’t really choose a direction so much as he started walking and let his feet take him where he would. Xanas trailed a few steps behind, watching snowflakes as Kai slowly started to relax.

“Better?” Xanas asked fifteen minutes into the walk. They were in the richer district now, closer to the palace grounds. The snow here looked cleaner than in the poorer districts, though there probably wasn’t much difference beyond the fact that this district was better lit with mage-fire lamps on street corners and lanterns hanging from shop doors. There were no open air stalls here; the streets were orderly, even shop fronts with high quality glass windows, even cobbles, and guards walking through every ten minutes. They cast looks at Kai and Xanas as their clothing clearly wasn’t of fashion or as expensive as other people walking along the street. Ahead the shops would start to transition into nicer and nicer homes until the street reached the wall surrounding the palace ground.

Kai stopped. The wall loomed over the homes around it. The inner wall was even higher than the city walls, and was a good story higher than the nearest building. He and Xanas had both walked its perimeter at least once before. Seeing it now only made him more agitated. Kai shook his head and turned away. Xanas sighed and followed along.

“Scowling doesn’t solve anything.”

“Well neither does doing odd jobs or sitting around,” Kai said. He ran a hand through his hair, the gloves making it stick up in the back. “I’m sorry, I’m just…I’m starting to get really frustrated.”

“We set a deadline for progress at spring,” Xanas said. “It’s barely a third of the way through winter. The pace of our progress in light of that isn’t so bad. We’ve learned the city and know the shifts of the guards in many areas and we haven’t been caught. That’s good.”

“I know, but…” He stopped, turning to Xanas. Back the way they came, a fancy carriage pulled up to one of the shops, more ornate than any of the others going up and down the road. “It feels lik—” He stopped talking. Exiting the carriage was a man that felt strongly enough of magic that Kai could feel it half a street away. He was tall and thin with dark colored robes with silver embroidery. On his head was a circlet with a disk of obsidian, the sign of office one step below the emperor’s. The man had to be Minaito’s head advisor, and with so much magic, it could only be Schul. Kai felt his stomach twist in anger and excitement.

“Xanas,” he said. “Look.”

“Is he—”

“That’s Schul.” The feeling of magic was oppressive and Kai wondered if Schul was using magic constantly when he was in the open or if this was his usual presence and the carriage had some kind of buffer. How could Kai fight that, or no, how could he kill someone that felt like they could burn Kai and his magic away without even thinking?

“He’s strong,” Xanas said. He took a few steps back until he was closer to the shadows near the building. He looked uncomfortable.

Schul walked to the shop door and paused. For a second Kai was sure he looked in their direction, but he couldn’t say for sure as that was when one of the guards approached.

“You there. No loitering.” The guard frowned, taking in their appearance.

Kai felt shabby, not for the first time aware of how his clothing was worn and darned and the coat was patched. Xanas’s clothing was not much better.

“We were just moving on, sir,” he said, keeping his voice as even and respectful as possible. Even then he could see the man’s eyes narrowing and the way they flicked down him like they were looking for a weapon or some other excuse to arrest him. Xanas stayed silent and tense at Kai’s side as Kai took his arm and pulled him back toward the poorer end of the street.

The guardsman didn’t look convinced. He followed two steps behind them, burning a hole in the back of Kai’s head with his stare that felt like it should be magically enhanced with its intensity. Part of Kai didn’t blame the man as they were shabbier than any of the servants, shop keepers, or carriage men on the street. Mostly he was annoyed that they’d been singled out for just walking.

They passed where Schul’s carriage was parked and Kai felt a tingle of magic rush through him strong enough to make his hair stand on end, and the guard behind him made a choked sound as Xanas staggered and the man’s hand shot out to catch Kai’s shoulder.

“You, you’re…” the guard started to say, eyes fixed on Kai’s head, above his eyes where his hair stuck out from under his hat. Xanas was wide eyed and staring at it too. The guard’s eyebrows were lowering with some connection and Kai knew that he wouldn’t like it.

Kai wrenched his arm free. The other two guards on the street were looking their way, but there was only one option. He and Xanas ducked left down a side street, running with their breath puffing clouds behind them and their feet skidding on patches of ice. Behind them, the guard shouted and gave chase.

“Your hair,” Xanas said as they ran. “It’s red again.”

“Shit,” Kai muttered. It wouldn’t be that hard to dye it dark again, but if it was enough to be recognized in a split second, he would have to be a hell of a lot more careful in days to come. Provided they got out of their current situation intact.

The street ended at a gate and someone’s backyard, but beyond the yard were more streets and all it took was a moment of eye contact for Xanas to scramble over the gate with him. Thank goodness there were no guard dogs on the other side. The guards following were slow, hampered by their leather armor and heavy weapons. Kai let Xanas take the lead as he had been exploring more than Kai had. They went over a fence, then another, into what looked to be a potter’s yard with a kiln in the back before Xanas pulled Kai down to crawl through a bush to a hole in the fence, rotted away and hidden by the bush’s branches.

It was a tight fit, but beyond it was another side street and from there it was easy to take turn after turn until the sound of guards faded and there was no one around at all when they turned one final time and came up against the high palace wall.

Kai let himself rest now, sliding down the rough stone at the base of the wall to sit in slush and gasp for air. The seat of his pants was getting soaked with freezing water, but he didn’t much care at the moment.

“Well,” he panted as Xanas slid next to him. “That was eventful.”

“I can’t believe they recognized you,” Xanas said. He was far less winded than Kai was and for a half second, Kai almost felt jealous.

“I’m not too surprised. Kala always had a knack for drawing.” And red hair wasn’t common, even rarer to find than blond in a country whose population had hair ranging more toward the darker side of browns and blacks. In all honesty, Kai could have been any redhead and the guard might have reacted the same because a red-headed young man so close to the palace walls would have been enough to incite over caution rather than err on the side of innocence. “What’s bothering me though is that my hair changed red at all.” Kai tugged at some of the longer strands, just managing to glimpse a bit of the reddish color. “That was spell work, but I’m not sure if it came from Schul or if there was a spell already set in something that I triggered.”

Xanas shook his head. “It could have been Schul, but it was timed too perfectly. That reeks of godly interference.”

“Of course.” His head hit the wall as he leaned back, softened by his hat. “Who was it this time?”

“Eligius?” Xanas said, but he didn’t sound sure. “That would explain the guard’s timing.”

“Would removing a disguise count as an equalizer in this case?”

“Possibly?”

Kai snorted. “You don’t sound very sure.”

“Excuse me if I don’t instantly recognize which of several dozen gods and goddesses might have interfered.” Xanas slumped next to Kai, crouching so he didn’t get wet in the slush. “But…”

“What?”

Xanas frowned. “It might have been Cecil too. Chaos is more her style and if she thought it would be interesting there’s a chance she’d help Eligius.”

“I thought she liked me,” Kai said. It came out a bit more petulant than he would have liked, but he figured he could afford a bit of petulance after today.

Xanas shrugged. “It might not have been her. Or maybe there was some other reason for her to do it.”

Kai grunted. This was...frustrating, frustrating was a good word. The walk hadn’t done much to calm the jangle of restlessness after all.

“At least we saw Schul,” Xanas said hesitantly.

“I guess.” Not that seeing him did any good. Now Kai could pick him out without a doubt from a room full of people and he’d confirmed that Schul was the strongest mage in the country, but he couldn’t even begin to think of how to kill him if Schul was in the way of Minaito. Kai was quite certain that in a fair fight, Schul would burn through any magic Kai sent at him and kill Kai before he had a chance to realize he was going to die. “We should head back. I need to get hair dye…”

Kai stood and winced at the feeling of ice water seeping down the backs of his legs. His butt was numb from the cold. He reached out to the wall to keep his balance on the icy patch closest to the wall and nearly fell flat on his face as the stone he put his hand on shifted and ground free from the mortar holding it. Of course it landed on his foot. “Gods damned shit walls and can the next rock fall on the builder that failed to place it properly!” Kai growled, half hopping, half sliding back from the wall.

Xanas’s hand on his elbow steadied him, but Xanas wasn’t looking at Kai.

“What?” Kai snapped. He didn’t think his toes were broken but it was hard to tell with the cold. The rock that fell was bigger than his head.

“There’s a hole,” Xanas said. He let Kai go when Kai was on two feet again to squint through the gap where the rock had been. “There’s light. It might go all the way through.”

“How big?”

“I’m not sure, maybe…half a foot at its tightest?” Xanas pulled Kai to the hole. “Look.”

The hole wasn’t quite straight; it had dips and divots of other wall stones taking up its space and curved right so that the light on the other side was just a sliver, but it was a sizable hole. A gap like that had to have been an intentional building design, but by whom or for what, he couldn’t imagine. “Do you think you could fit?” It was wide enough in the parts Kai could see, but the curve….

Xanas squinted. “I…maybe?” He leaned in close. “Probably, since I can fit through a hole with a five inch diameter easily. But even if I got in it would only be me on the inside.”

“Do you think you could get a rope through and over?”

“I can’t really say without going through and trying it,” Xanas said. “And you’d need an anchor for one. You might as well just try a grappling hook to get on top of the wall walkways.”

“But if you got up there you could make sure it was safe to climb.” Ideas sparked behind Kai’s eyes of sneaking into the palace undetected, assimilating with the palace staff and catching Minaito off guard.

“Even if you got in there would be wide open space where guards can see you once you get past the wall.”

“Still. It’s a possibility.”

“Wait until I test it out?” With a sigh, Xanas began pulling off his layers. “Don’t let them get wet. You might be fine soaking in ice water, but I’m not.”

Kai grinned. “You know, you’re probably going to get wet one way or another.

Xanas glared as he pulled down his pants. “Skin and fur dry faster than clothes, and if you get snow down my boots, I will piss in yours while you are sleeping.”

“Ew.” Kai’s nose wrinkled. “Please don’t.”

“Hold these.” A bundle of clothes was shoved into Kai’s arms as Xanas stood shivering and naked in a half inch of slushy water. Kai took the clothing and the boots, and Xanas changed as soon as they were safely out of his hands, growing fur and condensing into his cat form. He shook himself, like he was settling into his skin or trying to will away the lingering chill before hopping up into the hole.

It was a difficult entry—the angle from below wasn’t ideal to enter the hole—but after a pause to get his bearings, Xanas started squirming deeper. Kai tried to follow the progress, but Xanas’s body blocked the light from the other end. He could hear the scrape of claws on stone and the occasional grunt as the hole presented some difficulty or another, but Kai wasn’t sure Xanas had gotten through until light was suddenly visible on the other end again. “So I take it you fit?” he called through the hole.

The light was blocked again and a short, loud meow came back.

“Good. Can you get back through?” The meow in return was exasperated. Kai tried not to grin too hard. He thought he might be a bit more enthusiastic than he would have been largely from the high of escaping a life threatening situation yet again. He held Xanas’s things until the cat wiggled back out of the hole. His fur was ruffled and his ears were flat with irritation but no worse for crawling through the palace wall.

Xanas turned human, grimaced at the splash of water beneath his greater weight and grabbed the first article of clothing he could get from Kai’s arms. “The hole comes out a little higher on the other end,” Xanas said between shivers, chattering teeth, and pulling on clothes. “It would still be a hell of a climb up the rest of the wall, but I might be able to do it because the walls are angled differently on the inside than the out. Not sure if it could be done with a rope.”

“It’s a start.” Kai was still grinning. “Hell, it’s probably better than the idea of trying to get hired into the staff.”

“Probably,” Xanas grunted. He pulled his pants on and scowled at how his feet got them wet. He scowled deeper at how his toes were steadily getting purple. “Boots,” he said. “And can I borrow your scarf?”

“Sure.” Kai handed them over. “Why?”

Xanas bunched the scarf up and, balancing on one foot, wiped his foot dry with the scarf and slipped on his sock and boot before repeating the action with the other foot.

“Hey!” Kai scowled as he was given back a wet scarf.

“Don’t complain,” Xanas said. “You’re not the one that stripped naked in the winter and crawled through a wall.”

“Use your own scarf.”

“I need mine to keep warm,” Xanas said primly, adjusting said article of clothing more comfortably on his neck.

Kai narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t wearing his scarf again until it was clean. Who knew what the slush had in it.

Xanas smirked and held out an arm. “Shall we head back?”

“What makes you think I want to take your hand?”

“You’re not really angry,” Xanas said. “You’re too excited about the hole.”

Kai snorted, because it was true. He was annoyed, but hardly angry. “Should we cover it back up?”

“Do or don’t, I don’t get the feeling that this area’s patrolled much.” There hadn’t been a sign of life the entire time they’d been standing there and the slush wasn’t churned by very many feet.

Kai took Xanas’s hand. “We’ll be back.”

“Of course we’ll be back.” Xanas snorted. “But first we need to get hair dye for you without running into any guards.”

“We’re really doing this aren’t we?” Kai asked, feeling dazed. Somehow some part of him never expected to get the chance.

“Of course we are. Not immediately. I have to come back and go through and explore the palace and its patterns, but we’re doing this.” Xanas’s fingers tightened around Kai’s. Kai leaned closer.

“Good. That. That’s good.”

*****

Xanas made whistling sounds as he snored, one paw curled over his face where he was curled against Kai’s thigh. His black fur was warm under Kai’s left hand as Xanas’s chest rose and fell with each breath. A book was in Kai’s lap and a candle by his side. Outside it was storming and the shutters rattled every once in a while with a particularly strong gust of wind, giving off shill noises when wind managed to squeeze through their barricade. It made the candle flicker, but the bed was warm and Kai had the evening to himself with Xanas for once which was even more valuable than before now that it had become more of a rarity. He didn’t even mind that Xanas was sleeping through it. There was something soothing about having his cat form next to Kai and reaching out just to know he was there.

There had been another poison attempt yesterday. It was probably why Xanas had decided to stick close today, storm aside.  This time the poison had killed a stray cat Kai had offered to share the food with. He felt guilty even though he couldn’t have known. It was too much like hurting Xanas. If Kai had offered that bite to Xanas first… Well, Kai was willing to bet that he had Caecus or Cain to thank for both times they evaded death. 

Kai flexed his fingers in Xanas’s fur absentmindedly. Xanas purred sleepily. He twisted a bit under Kai’s hand pushing Kai’s fingers more firmly into the soft fluff of his belly fur.  Flipping a page, Kai smiled. If only he could always feel this comfortable.

The reading left something to be desired though. The book was one of the second or third hand magic theory books he had found from a used book vendor. While he had read theory before when he attended the academy, he couldn’t remember reading any theory books quite as nonsensical as the one he was reading. The book had a few good points about proximity elemental influences, but most of the theories in it Kai couldn’t relate to at all. Any magic user could parse out that emotions could affect magic, but Kai had never had any experience of magic affecting his emotions. On the other hand, Kai had experience with his magic having a will of its own where the author of the book seemed to experience magic as a blank, biddable thing as a whole. For the majority of the theory Kai was resigned to agree to disagree and accept what aspects seemed helpful. Next time he had money to spare and nothing to read he would see if there were any guides to practical magic or the effects of elemental affiliation. He couldn’t be the only one that had trouble with magic that had nothing to do with his element.

The other day he almost managed a wind spell. He managed to blow out his candle at the time. The air had been warm, but then anything he touched with magic tended to end up warm or burning unless it was a burst of magic to dispel something. He was good at canceling out magic, but then that was just another form of destruction. Kai once looked at healing spells as his stretch goal—if he could manage to heal something, anything, then he’d celebrate more than if he graduated. Somehow he didn’t think he’d ever reach that goal. If anything he made a mastery of doing the exact opposite.

Xanas twitched and stretched. He yawned, his jaw stretching wide in the hinge-like manner that cats had. Red eyes blinked up at Kai sleepily. Xanas mrred in the back of his throat.

“Have a good nap?” Kai ran his fingers across Xanas’s belly fur one last time before letting him up. Xanas stretched with his whole body and flexed his claws into the blankets.

“Mowr,” Xanas said. He rubbed his cheek against Kai’s free hand, squirming his way onto his lap between Kai’s body and the book.

“I was reading that you know,” Kai said with laughter in his voice. He let Xanas kick the book away. “But I guess I can put it down.”

A rough tongue swiped Kai’s nose. Xanas was smiling with his eyes.

“Are you feeling like staying a cat or making out?”

Xanas flicked an ear and tapped Kai’s chest, pushing imperiously. Kai rolled his eyes and flopped back against the pillows so that Xanas could sit along his chest more comfortably. A deep purr vibrated from Xanas’s body along across Kai’s chest and throat and tingling through his jaw where Xanas had wedged his muzzle.

“Cat it is.” Not that Kai was protesting in the least. This way was more relaxed than any make out session would have been. He curled one hand against Xanas’s back and the other against the soft fluff around Xanas’s ears and throat. The purring got louder. “Hugs are nice. We should do this more often.”

Xanas licked his cheek. Kai wasn’t sure how he should be interpreting that one. Agreement? A cat kiss? Whatever. It was comfortable.

“Where do you want to go when this is all over?” Kai asked. He closed his eyes and listened to Xanas’s steady purr. It was soothing as wind through leaves or the sound of the Horse breathing or the little hum Gramps used to have under his breath as he worked. “I was thinking going south to where it’s warmer. All the way south until we reach the ocean and then going farther.” A short, sharp meow interjected. “I take it that’s a no? But a no to south or a no to taking a boat?” Xanas chirped, never stopping purring once and Kai smiled. “So no to both then. East then? We could just keep riding forever. We can see where the roads take us. I hear there’s a great school in that direction with magic nothing like we use here. I’d like to see it someday if you’d come with me. And if there’s anywhere you want to go we can go there too.”

If Xanas purred any harder he would vibrate right out of Kai’s arms. If Kai had a choice he’d be in a campsite with the horses standing nearby, but this was nice too.

“Is it lazy if I fall asleep like this?”

Xanas snorted with laughter and tapped his paws over Kai’s eyes before curling up more comfortably on Kai’s chest, clearly planning to sleep more.

“That was your plan all along wasn’t it? Get me all comfortable and sleepy and use me as a bed?” The soft meow in response felt like an affirmative. Well, no arguments there.  Kai drifted off to sleep with whistling purring in his ear and pictures of a far off magic school forming in his head. In every dream that night a black-furred cat walked at his side.

***

Kai woke to fingers in his hair and a low, soft humming. It was still dark, the faint moonlight the only light to glimpse Xanas where he was curled against Kai’s head and shoulders in human form. Xanas’s eyes were calm and warm as his fingers carded through Kai’s hair, slow and repetitive. Kai blinked up at him. “What are you doing?” he rasped, voice sleep-heavy.

Xanas smiled, and there was faint humor in the crinkle around his eyes. “Human grooming you.”

“Oh really?” Kai blinked again and let his eyes fall half shut as Xanas’s fingers never paused.

“You like it,” Xanas said. His smile widened a little more.

“Mm.” Kai turned into the touch. “It’s much nicer than your cat grooming me.”

Xanas snorted. “That’s it, no more human grooming for you,” he said, but his fingers didn’t stop. Kai grinned against Xanas’s hip.

“It feels nice.”

The fingers in his hair switched from stroking to rubbing loose circles around his temples and up toward the top of his head before back down. “You’re always petting me,” Xanas said, “but I rarely have the chance to return the favor.”

“So you pet me in the middle of the night?”

“Yes.” Xanas’s fingers worked the circles backward toward the base of Kai’s skull and he tiled his head to give better access. “Sometimes when you have bad dreams, it calms them down.”

Kai knew he had nightmares. Before he met Xanas they had been terribly frequent as all his frustrations and perceived failures rose up to meet him when he didn’t have the awareness to block them out. Lately he couldn’t remember their contents, or at times remember having them at all. He curled an arm around Xanas’s waist, burying his face against the warmth of Xanas’s belly. “Thank you.”

“I sleep better when you sleep soundly.”

They sat together in silence as Kai faded in and out of drowsiness. After a while, Xanas began to hum again, in the back of his throat like a substitute purr, soft and tuneless with the rise and fall of his chest. Kai closed his eyes. Eventually the fingers stilled and Xanas leaned down to kiss Kai on his forehead.

“We should sleep.”

“Mm.” Kai turned his head blindly to kiss Xanas back and got his jaw before Xanas met his kiss. For all they knew, tomorrow they might not live through the day. He’d take all the kisses and cuddles he could get. Xanas shifted until he was curled next to Kai, limbs tangling with his, and drew the blankets close. Kai let himself sleep a little longer.

*****

The Silver Willow was busy that night, and Kai was spending it carrying dirty dishes and glasses from the tables to the kitchen and wiping the tables clean. Outside it was snowing heavily, and boots tracked water across the floor that, when everyone left, he’d be cleaning. Ordinarily these tasks would have fallen on someone else, but the man that usually did the work had left to take care of his sick sister leaving the job to Kai or sometimes Xanas to fill for the indefinite future.

He wouldn’t have minded quite so much if Xanas was there working with him, but Xanas was gone again, still learning the castle and its grounds.

“Another table’s clearing,” the Silver Willow’s innkeeper said. He was still a young man to own a business of his own, barely into his thirties, but he had a good business sense and little patience for those that failed to pull their own weight. Kai thanked Caecus that they had arrived at a time where he needed help or Kai was sure they wouldn’t have been able to bargain quite so cheaply for a room and board for the horses otherwise.

Kai moved for the table as the door opened again, letting in another burst of cold air and a swirl of snow. The rush was slowing down as evening shifted toward night, but people were lingering, not relishing braving the cold.  The dishes went in the dish bucket, and his rag swept crumbs into his hand. He tossed the crumbs to the fire as he passed it on his way back to the kitchens. He was almost there when something touched the back of his leg. Kai jumped.

Xanas patted Kai’s leg again and Kai glanced at the innkeeper who was taking orders for food.

“Kitchen,” Kai said. “I’m in the middle of working.” Xanas trotted past Kai like he owns the inn when Kai nudged the kitchen door open, but Kai couldn’t say anything until he dumped the dishes in the sink and shot a quick, “I need to use the outhouse,” to explain why he wasn’t working. He dragged Xanas out the kitchen back door into the snow with him and managed to make it to the barn without getting too wet. The barn wasn’t empty, but if he was lucky, it was a conversation they could have one sided. He carried Xanas to their horses’ stalls and ducked into his horse’s stall.

“What?” he hissed.

Xanas chirped and rubbed his face against Kai’s hand.

“Yes. Hi. They’re going to be missing me soon and we can’t afford to be kicked out. What?”

That got him an annoyed look and a nip on the fingers. Kai rolled his eyes and scratched behind Xanas’s ear. Since it wasn’t safe for Xanas to turn back, Kai surmised that he’d have to play the guessing game. “So, did you find something? But what on earth could be so important that you’d come now?”

Xanas meowed and tugged on his sleeve.

“What, you want me to follow? Now?” Kai scowled. “Are you crazy, I can’t leave now. We could get kicked out and then where would we be?” He jumped as the horse took an interest in them crouched in her stall to try and lip at his hair. Kai shooed her away.

Xanas tugged on Kai’s sleeve harder, paced in a circle and tugged again with a meow that was starting to sound annoyed.

“I’m going to need something convincing to get me to drop everything,” Kai grumbled.

Xanas growled and launched himself at Kai’s chest, changing human halfway there to tackle Kai into the straw next to the horse’s front hooves. She looked down at them, bemused, while Kai tried to get air back into his lungs. “For the gods’ sake, Kai,” Xanas hissed, “don’t you think I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important?”

“There are too many negatives in that question,” Kai muttered back. Ow. Xanas wasn’t light either.

“Schul left yesterday to attend to something in another town. He’s not due back for two days, and this storm might be your only chance to get in the palace unnoticed.” Xanas scowled. “I already have rope and some of your stuff waiting at the hole and I can get you to the palace without anyone seeing you if we go while the snow is heavy. This is probably the only chance you’ll get to reach Adair and Minaito without having to worry about Schul in the meantime. The man hardly ever leaves, so choose fast because the window of time is closing.”

Kai stopped breathing and felt his hands go clammy with more than snowmelt. He wasn’t ready. They  weren’t ready. The palace wasn’t fully mapped, they didn’t have escape routes, this would be suicide, but…. Xanas was right. How many more windows would there be with the guards unable to see and Schul away? He’d planned to get a job in the palace come spring and pray he wasn’t recognized long enough to get the job done but…. “Do you think we can do it?” he asked softly. “If we go now and we make it inside the palace, would there be too many guards? Would we be able to make it out alive or…?”

“I don’t know.” Xanas clenched his fingers in Kai’s shirt. “But I’m with you one way or another.”

“Even if it comes down to the backup plan?”

Xanas winced. The backup plan in any scenario called for his demon form and it was hardly his first choice in plans. “Yes. You know I’d raze the palace to the ground if it gave you a chance to get out alive.”

“I know.” Kai closed his eyes. Shit. “I…yes. I’ll come. You have to come up with the excuse for why I vanished later though.”

“Fair enough.” Xanas didn’t smile. They were both too tense for anything approaching levity. Xanas’s eyes widened and he turned into a cat so fast that he was still an inch above Kai when he finished changing.

A head peered over the stall door—one of the grooms. “You okay?” he asked, eying Kai and Xanas on his chest warily.

“Ah. Yes. Just…” Just what? Talking to his cat? Rolling in the straw? Checking on his horse? He sat up and brushed straw from his hair. “It’s not important. I thought I left something in here but it seems I didn’t.”

“This your horse?”

“Yes?” Kai winced inside as it came out as a question.

The groom’s eyebrows were both up now, but he didn’t ask any more questions as Kai left the stall. Xanas leaned against Kai’s legs to get him walking. “Good luck finding what you’re looking for. Might want to try less public areas to go talking to animals.”

Kai’s face burned. Still… If he made this chance happen…. His magic stirred. Kai went to get his coat.

*****

Climbing the wall was harder than anticipated. For the life of him, Kai wondered why they hadn’t at least practiced once to see if it was possible. Attempting it for the first time in a blizzard when he could barely see the hands in front of him and the rope was icing over and his gloves were freezing shut  with every jerky haul upward was not the smartest move Kai had ever had. But honestly, if he could barely see what he was doing, there was no way a guard could see him. He made it up the wall in one piece—though there were a few close calls—and managed to fumble the rope secure enough to climb down the other side. It was the strangest feeling, freezing from the cold and wind and now choking his vision and chilling his face, and yet burning in his muscles from the strain. He was shivering from where sweat had dripped lines down his back and his hands wouldn’t close or open all the way no matter how much he flexed them.

Xanas was barely visible along the ground, his fur covered almost as soon as he shook the snow off. His ears were pinned back though if it was in annoyance or in an instinctive bid to keep them from freezing, Kai couldn’t say.  The bag he had mentioned was next to him, half buried. Kai picked it up and slung it over his shoulder. Xanas’s tail was a dark, wavering marker as he started the slog toward the palace. Kai leaned into the wind and snow and followed.

***

Kai almost passed the door to the kitchens the snow was so heavy. Even Xanas was lost in the white, the flakes sticking to his fur until he looked like he was some kind of ice creature. Kai would have passed it up if Xanas hadn’t slammed into Kai’s legs to stop him from walking. It took two tries to get the door open. Surprisingly it wasn’t locked.

The kitchens were empty, the coals banked for the night and the servants asleep in their beds.

Xanas changed back next to the soft red glow of the fireplace, shedding snow and water droplets as he shook the slush from his skin. Kai handed him the change of clothing from the bag. Xanas wiggled into them. He shivered as the wind howled outside and stirring a draft that had the door creaking in its frame.

“Where next?” Kai asked.

“Bedrooms are this way,” Xanas whispered. He tilted his head to the right and the dark kitchen beyond. There was a door toward the back that Kai could barely make out, a darker shape against a gray outline. “Minaito has his own wing, but we’ll have to pass his advisors’ rooms to reach it. He keeps them close, though it’s as much to watch them as it is to keep them close if he needs them.”

Kai scowled. If he could he’d get all of them, but that wasn’t possible. Adair wasn’t magical, but he was still a threat and had guards, and Minaito was the real target. He had wanted….but no, this would be enough. Kill Minaito and he’d get his revenge and he could sleep at night without the faces of his siblings haunting him.

Kai tried not to think about how it happened less since Xanas joined him. At least he wasn’t deluding himself so far as to think his siblings needed vengeance to rest in peace. The dead were dead. He knew that they didn’t care about the living at that point.

Xanas padded forward, as silent in his human form as he was as a cat. The low light level didn’t seem to bother him too much. Kai tried to follow as much in his steps as he could. “Follow me as closely as you can,” Xanas murmured as they neared the door. “If I tell you to hold still, don’t even breathe. If I make you hide, stay there. If I make you run, run.”

Kai nodded. Xanas knew the territory a lot better than he did.

***

Kai could tell they were getting close to Minaito’s chambers when the number of guards patrolling doubled. Xanas motioned to proceed carefully. Kai stuck to his side like a second shadow, barely breathing as they ducked into alcoves and hallways when guards passed. Xanas knew all the rotation patterns and the best human sized hiding spots and Kai realized that Xanas must have made this trip in human form at least once. He wanted to be angry about the risk, but that would be more than a little hypocritical especially as it was what was letting them avoid being caught now. Instead he felt a moment of retrospective worry and set it aside. After tense minutes moving far too slow for Kai’s nerves Xanas raised a hand and pulled Kai close.

“That’s his door,” Xanas said, pointing out a set of double doors flanked by two guardsmen. “There’s a series of rooms on the other side that eventually lead to Minaito’s bedroom.”

Kai felt his stomach clench. He hadn’t been this anxious even when he was captured and locked in the pit cell. “What if he’s not there?” Another thought hit him on the heels of the first. “What if he’s in the first room and he sees us enter?”

Xanas sighed. “Breathe. I’ll check and be back in a few minutes.” Xanas pressed Kai back further into the shadows of the window ledge they were perched on. The hiding space would have been useless in the daylight even with the heavy curtains covering a small corner of the ledge. In the dark and storm, there was only a risk of someone noticing if they caught the candle light reflecting wrong. “Stay. Don’t move from here if you can help it.”

 Kai nodded, not trusting his voice. Xanas shrunk against him, his clothing falling to Kai’s feet as he became a cat. Squirming free of the cloth, Xanas pinned Kai with one last stare before he melted into the shadows.

Clutching at Xanas’s shirt still warm from his skin, Kai tried to breathe evenly. He wasn’t sure if he was managing it. If anyone caught him standing there, maybe the empty clothing could be used in some convoluted excuse. He didn’t even know anymore.

Why couldn’t he reach that state of resolve he found so easily the other times?

A guard passed with a candle in hand. Kai caught a glimpse of Xanas past one of the guard’s ankles. If Kai wasn’t looking for him, he would never have noticed. One of the door guards nodded to the guard on patrol. Kai lost sight of Xanas, but the heavy door to Minaito’s rooms was open a hand span, just enough for a cat to pass through. He would have to ask Xanas how he managed that later. Then nothing. The loudest sound was the rattle of the window glass in its casing where one of the panes wasn’t as secure as it should be. At least the sound covered his breathing.

Kai waited. His legs started to ache from not moving even to get comfortable. He waited some more. The guard on rotation passed by again. His candle flickered with every step until he rounded the corner in what Kai could only guess was a circuit since he never turned around and came back the other way. Kai was staring so hard at the door that he flinched violently at a brush of fur and whiskers against skin along his ankle where his pants had ridden up.

Xanas glared up at him like it was Kai’s fault for being surprised.

A shivering human Xanas was pressed against him moments later, squeezing into the hiding place even as he pulled his shirt from Kai’s hands and pulled it over his head. He ignored the pants.

“Well?” Kai hissed.

“He’s not there.” Xanas scowled, his face pinched up and tense.

“What?” Kai felt colder than he snow or wet clothing merited. Even though he was the one that thought of the possibility, he hadn’t really expected Minaito not to be there. “What did we come this far for then?”

Xanas ran a hand through his hair making it spike even more than it did naturally. “He might have gone with Schul or be with someone else.” His eyes said he didn’t believe that though. “He’s not in there but Adair is.”

“What?” Kai repeated. Xanas grabbed one of Kai’s arms and pinched it hard enough to bruise. “Ow!”

“Adair, Kai,” Xanas said. He sounded frustrated and concerned. “Adair is in Minaito’s rooms, possibly waiting to talk to him. If Minaito left the castle, he didn’t tell anyone. It’s more likely he’s late returning to his rooms.”

“Middle of the night late?”

Xanas raised an eyebrow. “If Adair was allowed in the rooms this late, Minaito keeping odd hours can’t be that strange. He was here every other time I visited this late, but I didn’t go this far that often.”

Kai took a breath. “What do you think we should do?”

Xanas looked at him, unblinking. “You tell me. This is your revenge.”

Ok. Ok, so Minaito wasn’t there, but he could soon be there, and Adair was there, and Schul was out. Right. Kai took another deep breath hoping it would make his heart stop pounding. “We probably won’t get another chance like this.” One shot so he couldn’t waste it. Even if he didn’t get Minaito, he could still set the palace on fire. It would be a bigger blow than anything else he had managed. “We should take out Adair at least,” Kai said finally. “If Minaito doesn’t come back we’ll have to leave. Before dawn. It’s too big of a risk otherwise.”

Xanas nodded. “I’ll distract the guards as a cat. Use the time to get inside ok?” He must have seen something in Kai’s expression, though even Kai couldn’t say what he was feeling in that moment because Xanas leaned closer. “You know we can turn around and leave if you want? We could find a way back in the palace another time, or we could leave the capital and the country tomorrow if you wanted.”

“I know.” Kai’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment as he felt the ghosting of lips against his cheek. Cool air crept against his skin when Xanas stepped back.

“Worst come to worse, windows are the exit strategy. The hole is around the left of the castle once you exit any of the left handed windows. Follow the wall until it ends then go right following the perpendicular. You’ll find the wall eventually and I’ll try to catch up to you regardless.”

“Ok.” The anxiety was starting to pass. Whatever happened from here on, Xanas would be right behind him. Kai hoped they weren’t diving toward their deaths.

Xanas smiled and the shirt fell at Kai’s feet again as Xanas returned to cat form. Kai couldn’t hear him jump to the ground. Silence and waiting again. It was a bit less suffocating this time.

Not three minutes later, there was a crash just a little way down the hall and a shout. The two door guards looked at each other and the left hand one went off down the hall toward the sound. Kai waited to see if the other would leave too. Another shout and crash, this time with more yelling; the guard shifted from foot to foot. Surprisingly there weren’t reinforcements marching down the halls.

The guard abandoned his post, walking toward the sound and glancing back at Minaito’s door a few times as he went. The moment he was looking around the corner at the end of the hallway, Kai was out of the windowsill and squeezing through the gap Xanas had left in the door before pushing it all but that hand span of space closed.

***

The other side of the door was about as opulent as Kai would expect for an emperor. There were expensive couches, rich fabrics covering decorative tables and making up the curtains, and there were gilt decorations placed artfully around the room. It was actually more tasteful than he was expecting, but he dubbed it tacky because it was one more thing to be angry about. There wasn’t anywhere to hide in the first room. A door led off to the right, left open and showing a room full of books. The door to the left was a sitting room with even more elaborate and luxurious seating where Minaito probably entertained guests. One of the directions likely led to Minaito’s bedroom and bath.

He couldn’t see Adair in either direction. Kai would have expected him to wait in the study or the sitting room, but apparently Minaito’s advisor was familiar enough with Minaito’s rooms to go deeper. Or maybe he was taking advantage of the fact that Minaito was out. Kai didn’t know the whole story between Adair and Minaito, but he had heard rumors that Adair was power hungry.

He didn’t hear anything from the hall; the thick wooden doors blocked any sounds that might have reached him. The rich carpets and drapes in Minaito’s rooms dampened sound within them similarly so that he could cross the room in silence. Still no Adair. He stepped into the study. The candles there were burning low, blobs of wax pooling around the candleholder. Their light reflected off the windowpanes. Kai’s reflection was there too, pale and shabby among the splendor. There was a door leading deeper, probably to Minaito’s rooms, and it was open only a hand’s width like the main doors had been—Xanas must have opened it when he entered. Kai looked through the gap.

Adair sat at what had to be Minaito’s private desk, his head in his hands looking tired. Papers were in front of him, strewn haphazard along the desk’s surface. They were at odds with the neat stack of maps, books and documents on the ground next to the desk. There was a distinct possibility that Adair had been rifling through them. Whatever he had found must not have been positive.

Caecus had said Adair’s patron god was Ren the Ambitious. Kai wondered if the man had pushed ambition too far.  He remembered Caecus’s advice to pray to other gods to sway their attentions. Kai couldn’t say he’d done much praying. Even with concrete knowledge that gods existed, he wasn’t a pious person. And after knowing Xanas, it felt strange to pray to someone that was not much different from a human in all the ways that mattered. Kai was regretting it a bit now. He’d prayed to Suhayl and Aulus each a few times and even to Lian the Complete once but Kai didn’t have the devotion gods looked for in believers. The gods would choose sides how they would. He tried not to think about how Ren in legends could kill with a well aimed glare. Kai hadn’t prayed to Cecil—no one prayed to Cecil unless they were desperate or crazy—but he hoped Ren’s eccentric twin would keep him safe from a direct threat by Ren at the very least.

There was a knife at Adair’s waist, but nothing more. He wasn’t magical, and he wasn’t expecting anyone but Minaito’s return.

The funny thing, Kai reflected as he eased the door open quietly, was that of all the people Kai had planned to kill, Adair didn’t have anything to do with his family’s murders. Back when they happened, Adair was still working his way up to his current position and trying to earn Minaito’s trust. He was appointed to the position half a year after everyone died and hadn’t even dealt with their direct killers by proxy. Still, Kai wouldn’t feel the least bit of remorse killing him. Because he knew how men like Adair’s minds worked. If Adair thought it would have gotten him in Minaito’s good graces, he would have killed Kai’s family with his bare hands and enjoyed it too.

There wasn’t any obvious sign that Kai was there; he wasn’t breathing hard or scuffing the carpet and the door made no sound, but as Kai stepped fully into the room, Adair looked up.

Their eyes met, Adair’s wide and brown, Kai’s cold and finally focused. Adair opened his mouth, probably to shout, even as his hand moved down toward his belt for his knife. Kai was quicker, slamming into the desk chair and sending Adair over sideway with a ragged gasp of pain as Adair’s elbow caught the desk on the way down.

Kai followed him to the ground, magic gathering at his finger tips only to freeze as the air in the room felt wrong and someone who was not Adair stared up at him with Adair’s face. Kai was starting to hate godly possession.

“Well if it isn’t Cecil’s champion of chaos,” Adair said. Even without knowing the man, Kai could tell that the voice wasn’t quite his. Slightly nasally with a growling undertone, it didn’t quite fit with Adair’s bland, square face. He didn’t look the least bit alarmed at Kai’s magic-focused hand inches from his face. “I wondered when we would meet.”

“Ren the Ambitious, I presume,” Kai said. He wanted to plunge his hand down and kill Adair before this escalated, but he found he couldn’t quite move his arm. In fact, moving at all was near impossible since the moment Adair’s eyes met Kai’s. Kai didn’t think Ren would be able to kill him with a thought since he was using a medium, but this was unnerving enough.

“I wondered when you would make your move,” Ren said as if Kai hadn’t spoken at all. There was nothing in Adair’s face to show his consciousness the way Saki and her brother or Musca had shown through Cain and Caecus riding them. “You really made a stir, and that makes me like you, but if you succeeded?” He grinned and whatever Ren’s true face, the expression didn’t mesh well with Adair’s features. “It would ruin everything. Can’t have Cain’s faction winning, and I can’t let you kill Minaito before one of my men gets the chance.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Kai said through gritted teeth, “but considering the monarchy has been in existence for several hundred years, I don’t think you’re doing too well on the whole regicide side of things.”

Ren scowled. It probably wasn’t the best idea to antagonize the person holding you in paralysis. “Human life spans are short. A hundred years is hardly any time.”

“And yet Alain is still the patron god of the Nightwing family throne centuries later.” Kai twitched his fingers. The magic there grew thicker, starting to spark. It wanted to burn the person beneath them and for once Kai would have loved to let it do what it pleased.

Ren’s lips formed a hard line along Adair’s face, pale from the pressure as he firmly refused to reply to that. Ren reached up and pressed Kai’s sparking hand aside. It moved without protest, like Kai had told it to move there himself. The magic rushed through Kai trying to break free of the bond and free his body. Ren hadn’t blinked once yet. “I meant it when I said the life of a mortal is a blink of an eye. Even to Cain’s Demon who you’re running around with, this is just a moment that will soon pass.” There was a cruel directness in the words that reminded Kai of his encounters with Nona and Cain, and much like their words, Ren’s struck at Kai’s insecurities and hit hard. “Whatever he might say now, in a few decades you would be dead and he’d forget you and move on to another lover. If Cain lets him have any.”

The familiar empty feeling mixed with frustrated anger swirled through him. Kai’s hand sparked more as the magic in him fed on the emotions. The carpet smoked from where sparks burnt into the wool. “I know.” It hurt a little to say it out loud, but it took the power away from Ren. Because Kai did know that in the long run, no matter what Xanas felt now and even if he still cared for Kai after Kai died, their time together was a hell of a lot shorter and impacting than the whole of Xanas’s lifespan. Ren stilled, his face inches from Kai’s own for reasons that only Ren knew. Kai met his eyes even though he was going a bit cross-eyed this close up and said it again. “I know and fuck lifespan and meaning, I might die today and I wouldn’t regret my relationship at all.”

Ren’s eyes grew big until Kai could see the whites of Adair’s eyes. He blinked, and that was all Kai needed to slam his magic up and out.

Ren-Adair—Kai wasn’t sure if they were still one entity or not—screamed and blocked his face as the magic ate at his arms and tried to go for his eyes. Some of it rolled off around him, probably Ren’s work, and singed Kai’s legs as he scrambled back. He had no control over the magic now; once it left his fingers, all emotion and hunger without direction, it did what fire did best and ate and destroyed.

Fire licked up the side of Minaito’s elaborately carved desk and left long scorch marks along the carpet that flared and died and smoked with the scent of burnt hair. After the first second, the fire parted around Adair leaving his clothing full of charred holes and sweeping spirals of burns along his arm and side. Kai took one step back, then another. Ren twisted Adair’s face in a snarl and Kai was stuck again, but this time with fire inching along the wall tapestry next to him. As Ren stepped forward, Kai felt his lungs seize up. His heart beat wildly, and he bet that if Ren was here in his true form he would have stopped it as well.

“Time to die now,” Ren said. He lifted a hand.

Kai felt magic gather there, magic that felt like it came from nothing because Adair didn’t have a speck of magic in him, and he tried to move, breathe, anything. All he managed to do was panic himself further.

Something brushed his mind, bright, burning and invasive. It felt like he was shoved away without going anywhere at all in a shuddery, painful jar. Kai’s chest rose in a much needed breath, then another. His arm swung up on the command of someone that wasn’t Kai, and it wasn’t Ren. The roiling coil of presence filling him forced Kai’s face into a smile. “Not yet,” his voice said, a bit higher than it usually was. Fuck. Was this what being possessed felt like? Like his body was a puppet and his very being was being crushed and sheltered at the same time. It hurt in a way he couldn’t quantify and felt equally soothing.

Ren opened his mouth. “Cecil you bi—” He didn’t have a chance to finish. Magic—pure magic, not fire or will or even clear desire—ripped through Kai like needles and out his outstretched hand to punch straight through whatever shield Ren had managed. He screamed and something in Kai wrenched.

Kai stumbled as he had control again feeling raw even as the screaming man in front of him became…less. Ren was gone and Cecil with him and Kai never ever wanted to feel that again.

He coughed. Smoke was filling the room and the fire had crept back along the wall almost to Minaito’s bed. There would be no getting out of the window there. On the ground Adair stopped screaming. Kai felt chills when he realized the man was laughing, high and hysterical.

“They knew,” he said between laughs that were turning into coughs that bubbled blood. “Those bastards knew.”

“Who?” Kai croaked, throat stinging from the smoke. “Knew what?”

Adair’s laughter became gurgling. Kai wasn’t going to get answers now. So much for a quick, silent assassination while he waited for Minaito to return, Kai thought bitterly. Even with Xanas’s distraction someone would notice the smoke soon. Someone might have even felt the flare of magic or heard Adair’s screams.

Kai turned from Minaito’s bedroom and shut the door firmly behind him, taking breaths of clean air. The closed door would stop the fire from spreading for a bit. Adair could choke or burn to death. Kai hoped his bones were ground to ashes.

He was halfway across the room and moving toward the window before he saw the man standing in the study doorway. Kai’s mind went blank for the space of a breath. Over Minaito’s shoulder he could make out Schul and Kala. Thoughts tumbled against each other—Cecil’s powers are a two edged sword a voice like Caecus’s said in his memories, Schul wasn’t supposed to be there, Kala—why, I can’t feel Schul, Minaito. Minaito, there in front of him looking exactly like the portrait every family kept in their home; long straight black hair tied back, high aristocratic cheek bones and a broad mouth set in a cold line. He had a few more lines around his eyes than the portraits suggested. Myst used to look at that portrait every day like she was reaffirming her loyalty to her country. Myst had always been the most straight laced and loyal of all of them. The man in front of him probably didn’t even remember having her killed.

Minaito’s lips were moving as he walked further into the room. Kai didn’t hear a word. He was distantly aware of Schul and Kala moving to file in at Minaito’s heels. Then Kai didn’t see them at all. Minaito took one step toward Kai and something in him broke.

He didn’t remember crossing the room but he must have done so. Kai made it inches from Minaito before pain registered and he was knocked off balance as Kala threw herself bodily into him. Kai’s magic raged even as some minute part of his subconscious tried not to kill the woman pinning him down.

“You!” Kai spat. Magic flickered out of his mouth, one more route to reach open air where it coiled and burned fruitlessly. Once Kai had fantasized holding Minaito down and listing all the reasons why he was going to die and what personal grievances were held against him, but Kai found he could barely think to string more than one word together let alone make sense.

Kala’s fingers dug into his arm leaving bruises. He could feel magic rising from her, a spell of binding, and whatever was hiding Schul’s magic peel back layer by layer until the whole room felt like a volatile magic cocktail that could explode at any second. Minaito watched with a blank expression. Somehow Kai had expected gloating.

Nona: I never liked Ren. All that ambition, but no brain, no subtlety or flair of the dramatic.

  Kai broke the spell Kala was trying to put him under, ripping it apart the way he had done to Nona’s curse on Xanas ages ago; his will was stronger than her technique. It didn’t stop her from pinning him to the ground though. His face ground into the carpet. Past Minaito’s feet Kai could see black paws. Xanas. Kai kneed Kala in the gut and squirmed free when she doubled over gasping for air.

This was a no win scenario—but Xanas was here, so back up—it was a no win scenario and they’d talked about this and the window was still behind him and there was only Kala there. Kai knew he should run, or at least try to. He didn’t though. Instead he gathered magic, fast, wild and unfocused fire-hunger in a loose arc. If he wasn’t running and wouldn’t be winning, he’d damn well cause some property damage.

Fire parted around Minaito and Schul like water around a rock in a stream, greedily eating up the decorations and books. Schul looked at Kai and made a hand motion. Kai could feel his magic seize up, much like with Ren earlier, but it was magic overpowering magic rather than oppressive god will. Another spell had him trapped, hands behind his back and on his knees like he was facing the chopping block. The dark part of Kai’s mind laughed at how it quite possibly would be his trial and execution all in one go. A final pulse of magic put out the fire, snuffing even the smoke. Schul made it look easy, but Kai could feel every lingering twist of his magic trying to keep burning until Schul’s will dissolved it. He put out the bedroom as well. No matter; Adair was dead for certain and the damage to the room had been done.

Minaito stepped forward again now that Kai was immobilized. His eyes didn’t leave Kai’s face as Kala finally regained her feet or when Schul glided past to check the bedroom before snapping the door shut after a glance. “So,” Minaito said. He had a deeper voice than his narrow frame suggested. In Kai’s mind, Minaito didn’t have any right to look so calm after having his private rooms invaded and finding one of his advisors murdered. “This is the man that sent my best knights and mages in circles for months and played havoc on the nobility.” He kept staring. “I expected you to look more unkempt and intimidating. You just look like a poor apprentice.”

Kai bared his teeth. “So sorry to disappoint.”

Minaito didn’t respond to that. His eyes looked right through Kai as his hands fiddled with a chain around his neck. A smooth stone hung from it, no larger than Kai’s thumb nail and a glossy black that might have been obsidian. “I suppose it’s time to settle this,” he murmured. His thumb circled the stone and it resonated with god power. A token then, one from his patron god, or perhaps, considering it was obsidian, a token of the country’s patron more so than Minaito’s personal one.

In the empty space between the bookshelves and the comfortable reading couch, six people burst into existence. Kai recognized Nona, Cain and the goddess who could only be Cecil from how she felt—tension and like falling backwards and the presence in his head from a few minutes ago. Why they were there he had to wonder, but the other gods that appeared with them looked a bit annoyed to see that they had followed. Nona waved cheerily smug at the other goddess. Kai guessed it might be Nyara the Poisoner since she was Minaito’s patron. She felt a bit caustic in how her presence clashed with the other god-presences in the room. The remaining gods were two men, one tall and pale with a disc of obsidian hanging from a cord around his neck over surprisingly plain, faded clothing. The other was in an obsessively neat robe with the belt knotted decoratively. He held a book and pen and looked like he wanted to get this meeting over quickly.

Minaito bowed to the goddess and the tall god next to her. She smiled at him, managing a sharp expression that was also warm. Everything about her prickled on Kai’s subconscious as dangerous. Unlike with Nona he had a feeling this goddess wouldn’t confront anyone directly. Xanas was inching around the room toward Kai, his fur slowly standing on end. Cain’s eyes scanned the room. They didn’t stop on Xanas, but the way Xanas’s fur puffed abruptly, Kai knew he had been seen. Kai’s attention flicked between Xanas and the meeting in front of him.

“It is an honor to be in your presence,” Minaito said smoothly. Behind him, Schul was also bowing. Kai didn’t bother with any respectful gestures. Even if he had been able to bow, he wouldn’t. They were not his gods. “With the capture of the rogue mage, I hope balance will soon be restored.”

The god in the robes nodded once. He must be Eligius then, the Balancer. It made sense for him to be there then, especially as he was Schul’s patron. Kai shivered as Eligius’s serious look fell on him. It felt like his soul was being weighed and found lacking.

“Although there are more here than I was expecting,” Minaito continued. He raised an eyebrow at the three gods Kai knew.

Nona smirked. “Why not? I like a good show, and let’s make history. This is the most gods corporeal in one place at the same time in centuries. Aren’t you honored?”

“They are directly involved,” Eligius said, ignoring Nona’s commentary. “Cecil has claimed the mage as hers and both Cain and Nona are responsible for the presence of Cain’s Demon on the mortal plane.”  He lifted his chin in Cain’s direction like Xanas’s existence was a personal offense to his person. Cain ignored the gesture completely. He was watching Kai in a way that was unnerving. Considering that Cain had once warned him in a roundabout way, Kai wasn’t sure what Cain was thinking. Was he angry? Or was he planning to take Xanas back? Or maybe he had expected something more from Kai in general. Eligius continued a moment after pointed glaring. “Whoever is at fault, it must be said that the demon’s presence here has greatly disrupted the balance; without him, this would have been settled long ago without our involvement.” His eyes flicked toward Xanas as did Nyara and Alain’s. Xanas slunk against the backs of Kai’s legs in plain sight.

Cecil stood straighter. “If you think Xanas’s presence in the mortal plain is causing the disruption, you’re wrong. If you were doing your job properly, you would have noticed the balance has been teetering for years.” Eligius matched her stare for stare. “Perhaps you should check your scales again. I am volatility, and this whole country has been chaos waiting to happen for some time now. This isn’t disrupted balance, it’s just the final explosion it’s been moving toward.”

“There’s natural order and then there is legal order,” Eligius snapped back.

“Legal order is arbitrary and you know it. A few hundred years and it has changed all over again.”

The two stared each other down. Minaito stepped forward, clearing his throat. Schul hovered at his shoulder, eyes on Kai rather than the gathered gods. “Instability in the human realm or not, the main issue here is the mage.” All eyes turned to Kai now. Kai felt cold sweat trickle down his back and his shoulders start to ache from tension.

Kai wished the bloodlust would return; it was preferable to the subconscious portion of his brain screaming that he was going to die. That same part of his brain kept pointing out the window no matter how impossible it would be to reach it with two mages and six gods and the emperor in the room. Xanas pressed firmly against Kai’s legs, a warm presence that he could be sure was on his side at least.

“I think,” Minaito said coldly, “that you are operating under false assumptions. Kala informs me that you were once a student at the academy, a pyromancer by nature which fits your preferred method of killing.” He walked forward and came to a stop in front of Kai, staring down at him, his face wiped of emotion. “When your family was found guilty of treason, you ran from the academy and slipped through the cracks. I assume that your acts of murder and terrorism were aimed as revenge for your lost family?” Minaito raised one eyebrow. Kai gritted his teeth and said nothing. His whole body ached from holding his muscles taut. “While it is true that I ordered the deaths of your parents, as they were the ones that committed the treasonous acts, the rest of what happened was not on my orders.”

Minaito leaned forward, still outside of Kai’s range, but close enough that Kai could tell that at one point in the man’s lifetime he’d been cut deep enough to scar near his right temple. “However, I think it is you who are at fault for turning Blue Skye against me.” Minaito looked Kai in the eye. “His death is on your head.”

The tension building in him broke and Kai jerked forward as much as the magic would allow him, still not far enough to even bite Minaito’s robes, but he strained upward anyway. “You didn’t fucking order Myst or Rowe or Lake dead but you sure as hell didn’t stop it or keep it from happening again!” His throat hurt like the magic was trying to suppress even his words. Kai fought past it, feeling a mix of rage and regret for his family, and for Blue, who had only been trying to protect the people in his care. “And more fool you. You’ve killed one of the few good men you have…” He trailed off feeling strangely empty now that the words were out. He always thought he’d feel vindicated. Or in the better. Or something. He felt damn tired and, under the hollowness, sad. Minaito’s face let none of his emotions through. Kai could have been yelling at a statue for all the good it did.

“Well put,” Cain said. It was the first he’s spoken and Kai had almost forgotten about him. His hand moved up and behind him Eligius went pale. Eligius dove for Schul, catching him around his middle and hauling him back. Behind Kai, Xanas went rigid.

There wasn’t time to wonder what was happening. Eligius pulled Schul away, Kala and Minaito turned to look at them and Nyara and Alain looked at Cain. Kai had only the briefest moment to feel fear, because whatever could scare a god was something he should be afraid of, before energy erupted behind him.

It felt like burning. Schul’s magic was torn to shreds with the first pulse of it and Kai crumpled forward as the same energy tore through him and his magic. He tried to scream, but his throat was locked, every nerve in agony. Above him he could hear snarling as pulse after pulse of energy filled the room. Kai rolled away from the source, ending up on his side staring as Cain grinned and Nona stepped back into the shadows with a smirk.

“What are you doing?!” Nyara was yelling and Kai only heard because the pulses were ebbing to a steadier, less painful pressure. “You! I thought you hated each other!”

Cain laughed and the energy spiked in response. “Did you really think I would lose my most valuable asset in a bet?”

“Unlikely alliances are much more interesting,” Nona said. Her eyes were focused just past Kai, past where he and the other mortals in the room were on the floor in pain. Eligius and Schul weren’t in the room anymore. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

The snarling rose to a shriek that struck some primal portion of Kai’s brain and left it shuddering in terror. He rolled his head to the side to see, as much of an instinctual reaction as the urge to flee was, like his brain couldn’t decide how afraid to be until he saw what was causing the fear.

In the center of the room where Kai had been moments before was a large cat-like creature. It had fangs the size of his hand and a line of black spines down its back, starting from the middle of its head and vanishing into the puffy sweep of its tail. Its fur was like looking at an ember in a fire, hints of orange and red and yellow undercoat shifting under a coal-black overcoat of fur. Its eyes were red and glowed with an inner heat. Kai searched for Xanas in those eyes and found only Cain’s Demon. He closed his eyes. It was too late. He could remember Xanas’s voice saying that anyone who saw him had to die.

Something ripped and cracked—the carpet? The stone floor?—and there was a gasp that cut off with a gurgle and another crunch. Minaito? Kala? One of the gods? It hadn’t been his own or Kai didn’t think he’d be thinking still. There were screams from the gods in the room. Kai wrenched his eyes open. There was blood on the carpet to his right and he was pretty sure a human finger was a foot from his face, but when he told his body to move, it did.

He rolled to his feet, slow, too slow, pain from the overbearing presence in the room making each step difficult. Behind him was the sound of chaos. He kept moving toward the window.

Glass was cold under his palm. There was hot breath on the back of his neck. Still not dead. Kai looked over his shoulder. Cain’s Demon stared back, eyes blank. “The window’s the exit strategy,” Kai rasped, echoing Xanas’s reminder from what felt like hours ago. There was a flash of recognition in those eyes, there and gone in an instant.

“Xanas,” Cain snapped.

Xanas whined and it settled into a rumbling growl. One clawed paw lashed out at Kai. Kai felt the impact of the paw and the slice of claws into his side, then nothing.

*

It felt like floating. Kai felt like he was forgetting something, but it couldn’t be that important. If it was important, he would remember when he needed to. That was what always happened after all. He once lost Lake’s training sword. He’d borrowed it to play a game with Rowan and they’d spent the day running through town and around the pond in Alyssa’s yard. Somewhere in the day he had set the sword down and hadn’t thought of it until he got home. Lake had been furious and Kai had spent hours backtracking and running around trying to remember where it had gone. Only when he had been about to fall asleep had he remembered putting it in the willow tree so Rowan wouldn’t steal it from him again.

That was years ago now though. Funny how he almost felt like he could feel the sword’s worn leather grip and hear Rowe’s taunting. Kai flexed his hand. It was empty and bigger than the memory said it should be. There were scars on his palm, shiny and pinkish. He flexed his hand again and marveled that he had a full range of motion. He’d burned himself, hadn’t he? On a knife fighting for his life. They’d been bad enough that he shouldn’t have been able to use his hand again let alone use it as well as he had before. As he stared at his hand, for a second he could feel the pain and the more terrifying absence of pain and could almost smell the charred flesh. He looked away from his hand.

There was space around him, filled with swirling vapor. The ground beneath him was solid. A touch said it was dirt, but looking down it was covered with the same mist as everything else, like the fog that rolled out of the bogs near Gramps’ home. There was a distracting moment where Kai felt the weight of Gramps’ lantern in his hand and the wet of fog on his face and thought he saw Gramps’ back ahead of him, bending down to get herbs on the full moon night when their magic was most potent, then the memory was gone again.

He sat up. The mist parted around him in curls and eddies that never actually touched his skin.

Kai watched the mist twist and float, growing thinner and thicker but never letting him see much more than a few feet in any direction.

It felt like forever and yet only a moment before a shape formed in the swirling white and a man stepped through. His wavy, shoulder length hair almost covered the blindfold on his face. “Come,” the man said, “this isn’t where you’re meant to be.”

The name Caecus flitted through his memory and a night with a smoldering camp fire came to mind. Kai reached out and took the offered hand. It was rough and scarred, the olive skin crisscrossed with dozens of thin white lines.

“Where am I meant to be?” Kai asked as he was tugged forward. His legs moved without conscious thought where a moment ago he wasn’t sure he could have walked if he had wanted to.

Caecus didn’t say anything and they stepped into the mist. It parted around them in spirals and seeped back together in a formless haze behind them. It was impossible to tell how far they traveled or how long it took. Time and space did not seem to matter as much here. The ground beneath Kai’s feet—bare feet, how had he not noticed?—changed abruptly from soft earth to smooth paving stones and the mist parted to reveal an open space. In it were a tree, a wall, and a crossroads. Under the tree sitting on a wall was a woman. The deep brown of her skin stood out against the green leaves around her and her dark hair was tied up in complicated knots.  She seemed even more serious than Caecus.

“This is Merula,” Caecus said quietly. The still air seemed to eat his words until they made barely a sound. “The watcher of crossroads, the Dark One, the guide of the dead.”

A strange feeling rested at the pit of Kai’s stomach, but he couldn’t identify it. “Am I dead?” he asked, because it seemed like the thing to ask when being introduced to the guide of the dead.

Merula touched the wall at her side. “Sit here for a moment.” Kai sat. “Do you remember what happened?”

He tried to think of the last thing he could remember. Without a physical reminder to jumpstart him memory, it didn’t seem to be working. “No. I don’t think I do.”

Merula nodded. “That happens sometimes. To answer your question, you are both dead and you are not.”

“That’s possible?” He tried to think of what might have killed him but it was like there was a wall between him and the memory.

“It is rare, but it happens.” Merula looked down one of the crossroads, off into the swirl of white. “You were on the edge of death and Cecil interfered. She couldn’t change what had already happened with her power, but she could stretch the probability of your survival.”

“What is this probability dependant on?” Kai asked.

“You,” Caecus said blandly. He leaned against the wall a bit away from where Merula and Kai sat, his face carefully controlled.

Merula raised an eyebrow. Caecus turned away like he wasn’t listening in and she continued. “You have a choice: would you rather remain living or would you like to cross over to the realm of the dead?”

Kai looked at her and at the crossroads that suddenly held a bit more meaning than they had a moment ago. On the one hand, why wouldn’t he want to keep on living? On the other, he was fairly certain his loved ones were dead already, so what did he have to go back for? “Is there a way to see what lies down each road?”

Merula shrugged and the mist melted away. On one side of the path was a great tree with branches and roots arching off in mirrored splendor. Somewhere toward its base, Kai could see his siblings, looking much like the last time he saw them before he went off to school. He couldn’t see their expressions, but they seemed to be looking in his direction, waiting for something. Maybe waiting for him. On the other side, like a view from a window, was a scene of carnage. As he watched, a large cat-like creature left a crumpled figure on the ground. Something in him jolted as he realized it was his body. Then the memories hit.

Pain. Pain, Xanas, love, nights around a fire, chasing the horses, the smell of burning flesh, Xanas’s face above the pit cell, Xanas as a house cat balancing on Kai’s saddle, Blue’s sword at his throat, seeing gods, Schul, Minaito… Kai closed his eyes and swayed with the force of it. The dreamy, hollow feeling was gone.

“Gods,” Kai choked. He gripped the wall and the rough stone bit into his fingers, grounding him. “Xanas is going to be crushed.”

There was a stifled, disbelieving sound from Caecus. “That is what you’re worried about, not that he killed you?”

“Well yes,” Kai said. “He can’t control what he kills in that form from the sound of it so I can’t blame him for that, but he’s certainly going to blame himself.” Xanas moved across the window into the living world like a fly moving through sugar syrup, unnaturally slow and exaggerated. He seemed to be aiming for Nyara who had a stormy expression on her face. On the ground forgotten were Minaito and Kala’s bodies, already dismembered and streaking the room with blood. In comparison, Kai’s body was very much intact. “What happens if I pass on?”

“You walk down that path and into the realm of the dead proper,” Merula said immediately. “There you will reunite with anyone that waited for you, and proceed to have your souls weighed.”

Kai could guess where things went from there. He’d rather not think too hard about it. “And for Xanas?”

“I suppose he finishes his killing spree, Cain reigns him in, and he returns to the god realm,” Merula said after a moment of thought.

“Won’t I still die if I go back now?” Kai watched the puddle of blood around his side get larger bit by bit. It wasn’t dismemberment, but it still looked fatal to him.

“Perhaps,” Merula said. She tipped her head to the side. “Perhaps not.”

Kai looked at Caecus. He was the one that was the seer after all. Caecus shook his head. “It’s up to what you choose.”

The figures standing near the tree were still staring in his direction. They had waited this long, they could wait a bit longer. He wished he could see Gramps with them, but then Gramps wouldn’t have waited. He’d know that Kai would rather him enjoy the afterlife than sit around. In the other direction, it was only a matter of time before Xanas reached the other gods. “Can gods die?”

“No, but we can experience a great deal of discomfort,” Caecus said with a bitterness about him that said he’d been through suffering enough times to know just how far that truth went.

Kai looked at Merula. “I would like to go back, please.”

She nodded. “I thought you might choose that path.” The mist covered up the tree and his family. Kai only felt the slightest pang of regret. Before Xanas, he knew he’d have chosen that path in a second.

“What now?”

Merula lifted a hand to Kai’s forehead. Behind her, Caecus looked as amused as a man could without his eyes visible. “Now,” she said, “you wake up.”

*

Kai choked on a gasp. His whole left side was a mass of pain and he couldn’t draw in air right. The room spun as his vision had starbursts of white spots. It didn’t stop him from seeing Cecil wink out of existence, holding eye contact with him as she did. Kai tried to move his left arm, but couldn’t. A glance showed that it was broken and that his chest was a bloody mess. It was a miracle he didn’t pass out looking at it.

Across the room, Xanas lunged for Nyara, who was trying to reach Cain. Alain had set up some sort of shadow wall to block Xanas from direct reach, but it seemed it wouldn’t last long; already it looked frayed from where Xanas’s claws had caught its edges. Kai coughed and tasted blood. He came back, damn it, so there had to be something he could do. He struggled upward, using the wall for leverage. Nona caught his eye and grinned. He didn’t know what that meant and didn’t want to. If it wasn’t a waste of what little energy he had left, he’d make a rude gesture, but he didn’t really have that energy to spare.

His legs shook and the footing was poor with the ground slick with blood, but Kai took a step forward, then another. Xanas roared and magic-rich fire, almost white in its heat, curled from his muzzle. Kai felt an echo in his own magic, resonating for the first time with Xanas as Cain’s Demon. He took another step.

Something squished under his foot. Something else almost tripped him. He didn’t look away from Xanas.

“What the hell are you even trying to accomplish with this?” Nyara yelled. She dodged back behind Alain as claws hit a bit too close.

“A bit of an upset,” Cain said. “Things are too settled. It’s been centuries.”

“Do you really think you’ll gain power?”

“No more than I already have, but that’s not really the point. This is fun.”

There was no one watching him, Kai realized. Nona knew he was there and alive, but everyone else counted him dead. And why shouldn’t they? He was half there already. What could a man slowly bleeding out and drowning in his own blood do? Kai coughed and wheezed another breath and took another step. He called on his magic.

The magic that was usually so frantic to burst from his skin came reluctantly; he’d used too much tonight already and it was hard to keep a hold of it with so much god magic in the room. Still, it came to him and he pulled it forward in him, pushing it to that earlier resonance. The magic fought him, but he was used to that. It always fought, even when he was letting it work how it wanted to. He knew he had found the right resonance when Xanas froze mid attack to whip his head around and stare at him.

Kai swayed on his feet. Yes. Distract the demon. Good job. Now what? “You’re going to hate yourself when this is over,” Kai said to Xanas, or tried to say. It came out garbled from the blood in his lung and how he couldn’t get a good breath of air. Xanas didn’t move.

The gods were frozen as well, staring like he was an even bigger shock than Cain siccing Xanas on everyone. It was all very funny in a morbid way that he was sure he’d get the whole afterlife to enjoy after this finally killed him. He kept his hand outstretched and the magic pulsing with Xanas’s resonance. It was a hungry burn, destructive and desperate all in one and it was no wonder that they’d bonded if that was at Xanas’s core.

No one moved, not even to escape like Kai thought Nyara and Alain might. Maybe it was too bizarre a scene for them to look away from.

“Xanas,” Cain snapped, breaking the silence.

Xanas didn’t look away from the magic flickering in Kai’s hand. That flicker of recognition sparked in his eyes again. One ear tilted in Cain’s direction, but when he moved it was toward Kai.

“Finish it,” Cain said, voice like ice. “He’s fulfilled his role like you fulfilled yours.”

Xanas’s muzzle touched Kai’s hand. Hot air hit his palm, laced with that resonant magic that made his perk up and surge toward Xanas. It felt like his magic wanted to leave him entirely. Xanas pushed his head forward. His muzzle was sticky with blood, matting the fur down so it was black without a hint of the reds and oranges beneath.

Their magic met and didn’t clash. It felt like sticking his hand into a fire he had under his control, wild and wanting to devour, but counting him as part of itself.

“Xanas!” Cain snapped.

Nona started laughing. “Mage!” she said, face gleeful. “Ask him to do something.”

“Kai, if you back down, I’ll let you live,” Cain hissed.

Kai swayed on his feet. Magical resonance or no magical resonance, he was at his limits. Still, he tried to speak. There was something big happening here. “You can come back now, Xanas,” he said. His voice choked off on the last syllable of Xanas’s name and he had to cough. He leaned heavily against Xanas, pressing his face against the mess of Xanas’s fur. “You can stop.”

Xanas’s magic latched onto Kai’s own and it felt like being invaded and supported all at once, like being possessed by a god without the loss of control. Some of the pain lessened, but whether it was from the magic rush or blood loss, Kai couldn’t tell. He closed his eyes. Still not dead and Xanas still breathing on him.

“What did you do?!” Cain yelled.

Nona laughed and laughed. “Exactly what you think I did! I transferred your temporary control spell to someone else and made it permanent!” She gasped for breath. “It took so long, I though it wasn’t going to work!”

“This time, I am going to kill you.”

“Not without your weapon you can’t.” There was a smirk in her voice and Kai could picture her expression curling arrogantly on her face. He didn’t move from Xanas, focused on the feeling of magic and the effort of breathing. “That should even the playing field.”

“Or I can just kill him and everything can go back to normal.”

Kai tried to open his eyes. It was too much work to open both, but he got one open and there was Cain with a god-like glow of power around him that Kai thought should probably be making him writhe in agony like Xanas releasing his power earlier had done. It didn’t and that was confusing in and of itself, even if he hadn’t been confusingly numb already. It was like the pain in his body was muffled, cut off by the magic. Kai tried to brace, but at most he twitched. Xanas finally moved, muscles shifting under fur.

“No, you won’t.” Xanas said. His voice was deeper than usual, more of a rumble beneath it than a human voice could achieve.

“Excuse me?” Cain drew up short, energy hanging around him like some sort of cloud, all anger and possessive hatred.

Kai found himself cradled against Xanas’s side, one large forepaw curled around him careful not to jar his wounds.

“I said no.”

“You can’t do that. I command you.”

“Well you don’t command me anymore,” Xanas growled. He released his killer intent in Cain’s direction, but this time the magic didn’t hurt when it touched Kai. Instead it made breathing easier. HE could feel Xanas’s magic melding with his own.

“A mortal can’t be the Demon’s master,” Nyara said from somewhere behind Cain.

“Well he is,” Nona said. She laughed again. “This is too perfect.” She stopped laughing, though it still lingered in her voice. “You can’t kill the mage, Cain. That would ruin the fun. Now we’re all on even footing. Think of it as a challenge.”

“I’ll give you a fucking challenge,” Cain growled.

Kai felt the strange displacement of energy that meant she had vanished. With a frustrated noise, Cain followed. Kai moved his face out of Xanas’s fur enough to see Nyara staring at the two of them with frustration. Alain looked like he wanted to have no part in any of it.

“This is not going to work. A mortal and immortal shouldn’t be bound together like that and it’s too much power in a mortal’s hands.” Nyara crossed her arms.

Xanas snorted. Kai felt the vibration in his bones. “It’s in the hands of the one mortal that wouldn’t force or manipulate me into using that power on a whim or against my will. He won’t abuse it. And it’s only for as long as his mortal life lasts.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then I will hopefully be free, and not under Cain’s control,” Xanas said calmly. “Unless you would rather I was contained regardless of who held the reigns?”

She looked uncomfortable.

“I’m not going to lay waste to the world. In fact I might not use my powers again. What we were trying to accomplish has been accomplished….not how we wanted it to be, but it was.”

Kai shivered. There was too much blood. Quite a bit of it was Kala’s and it was too soon to digest how he felt about that or about Minaito being dead.

Alain touched Nyara’s shoulder. “Let him have his time on earth. He deserves it after dealing with Cain for so many centuries.”

She scowled. “He killed your emperor. My human.”

“I never asked for a country to be dedicated to me. I’d rather not get summoned every decade when problems occur.”Alain scowled back at her. “I am going home. Inform Eligius it is safe to come out.”

“Not until the Demon is in another form; he’s protecting his human.” Alain vanished and Nyara turned back to Kai. “You have a human lifespan. Goodness knows why I’m being so lenient.”

Xanas bared his fangs. “I have an idea.”

She rolled her eyes. “Have your speck of freedom. Stay out of the power struggles. Don’t kill too many humans.” She glared at Kai. “And mage, get greedy and we know how to find you.” She disappeared without giving Eligius any news.

Kai relaxed into Xanas’s side. “I think I’m still bleeding to death,” he said. “It’s not as painful as it was ten minutes ago.”

“Shit,” Xanas said. He shifted, going from giant cat to human in seconds in a way that left Kai reeling and his senses confused as fur became skin. Kai blinked against Xanas’s collarbone. He was still caught in Xanas’s protective hold. “Just…can you walk?”

“I don’t know.” He felt like he wasn’t connected to his body. Was that normal? How much blood did he lose? More importantly, how was he even still alive? Kai was pretty sure that given how he woke up he shouldn’t still be breathing at all.

Xanas settled the issue by picking Kai up. It hurt like hell, breaking through whatever cloud of non-feeling he had been in and Kai couldn’t manage to even get a sound out. The world spun with black and white specks and then he was on the couch and Xanas was peeling back his shirt. There were four gouges in Kai’s side and broken arm, already starting to clot over. Moving his shirt made them bleed sluggishly. More worryingly was how his rib cage looked off. Xanas went pale. “How are you breathing?”

“I don’t know.” Kai panted. The pain filtered back, which should be a good thing in some way, but it made focusing difficult. His chest rose and fell and he saw his ribs move unnaturally with the movement. It scared him that he couldn’t feel the pain he should be feeling from his ribs, only the pain from the claw marks and the bruises from where he hit the wall. He was breathing easier too, and there wasn’t any more blood bubbling up with each breath. “I was drowning on my own blood just a few minutes ago.”

Xanas took a breath, then another. He touched Kai’s chest with a trembling hand. “I can’t fix this. I don’t know how you’re even still alive.” His voice shook. His eyes were looking at Kai’s wounds, but his focus was inward, caught in his own mind.

“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” Kai growled. “It was Cain controlling you.”

“But it was still my claws.” Xanas’s fingers came away damp with Kai’s blood. He stared at them, and the blood around the room. “No matter what it’s still always my claws.”

“I’m not dead yet.” Kai tried to take Xanas’s hand, but he tried to move his bad left arm and all he got was a bolt of pain that made the room spin. When the world settled, Xanas had a determined expression on his face.

“I’ll be back. I promise. I’m going to fix this.”

“I’d rather you were here in my last moments,” Kai said.

Xanas turned away. “I’ll fix this,” he repeated, like he was trying to convince himself. Kai felt Xanas’s magic coiling with emotion. It was funny that he’d never felt it before. Xanas had a lot of magic that seemed to just exist around him.

Kai stared at the ceiling and breathed. It was easier than taking in the blood in the room or the scorched furniture. Air flowed into his lungs as if he didn’t have a punctured lung. The air still felt charged with magic and maybe that was why everything felt different.

There was blood on the ceiling, and a line of scorch marks that could have come from Kai or Xanas. The blood’s location suggested that it was Minaito’s blood. Kai’s stomach did a twist he couldn’t interpret. A door opened and closed and opened again. Someone was struggling and then there was retching.

“Gods,” someone moaned.

Kai tilted his head. Schul stood in the middle of the room with Xanas’s hand clamped tight around his forearm looking at what had been Minaito. It was funny how his lost expression looked so similar to the conflicting feelings Kai had.

Xanas dragged the gagging Schul past the bodies and blood toward where Kai was. Behind them Eligius trailed. He was pale and uneasy.

“Heal him,” Xanas said, shoving Schul forward. “Heal him or you’ll join the bodies on the floor.”

Schul shook his head, eyes wide. His long silver-blond hair was disheveled and half out of his hair tie, falling messily around him, an extension of his upset. “I…no. No, you killed… No.”

“Do it!”Xanas growled. Kai knew he was the only one that heard the desperation in Xanas’s voice.

Kai met Schul’s eyes. In them was loss, pain and confusion. He knew that soon there would be anger. “I didn’t get revenge; this was an act of the gods.”

Xanas laughed a bit hysterically. “Quite literally.” He ran a hand through his hair and glared at Schul again, his eyes glowing red. Kai watched magic spark and whirl around Xanas in interest. “Heal him.” Schul shook his head. The glow in Xanas’s eyes increased and Kai could feel Xanas’s magic on his skin. “Heal him or die.”

“I would rather die,” Schul said.

Xanas raised a hand. Eligius intercepted it.

“Stop,” the god said. His voice was tired, a far cry from his earlier indignation. “I didn’t save him for you to kill him.”  Kai met his eyes. There was judgment in them, but it was something Eligius likely couldn’t help. Judging was part of what he was like the fire magic’s hunger was part of Kai. “When you are healed, you will leave this country and never come back.”

Kai laughed. It hurt and it didn’t, the magic in the air doing weird things to his head. “There is no reason to stay.”

Schul clenched a fist, but he didn’t go against his god’s will. Instead he looked at Minaito and shook. Eligius let go of Xanas to touch Schul’s shoulder. Schul didn’t react.

Eligius reached out to Kai with his free hand. He wiped a drop of blood off Kai’s face, frowning like Kai was a puzzle to be solved. “You are not the same as earlier tonight. You have changed.”

“Does it change the cost?” Xanas asked harshly.

“No.” Eligius withdrew his hand. “My cost remains the same. Get your balance disrupting magic vortex selves out of this country before you mess it up worse.” He sighed. “Healing is not my specialty. I’ll do the best I can.”

Kai closed his eyes as he saw a wave of pale blue magic moving toward him. His mind let go as he felt the first rush of magic start its work. By the time the pain of his ribcage being shifted back into rights hit his brain, Kai was already unconscious.

***

The horse snorted, her head held high as she scented the wind. Below, in the valley, there was a herd of wild horses running. Kai wondered if she was thinking about running with them, leaving her rider behind and running free where she could eat anything she wanted without getting yelled at. Beside him, Xanas’s horse showed similar interest, so perhaps it was a less of a personality thing and more of a herd animal thing.

Xanas nudged his horse closer to Kai’s left side. “What are you thinking about?”

“Freedom,” Kai said. The air here smelled different from home. There was spiciness in it from the small, thorny bushes that grew in the foothills and a chill that had lasted into late spring. The air was cleaner, crisper, and it didn’t have the scent of humans living in close quarters. Kai liked it. He was finding he liked a lot of things that didn’t remind him of his birth country.

“Are you now?” Xanas said, soft and teasing even as his hand reached out to rest on Kai’s scarred left arm. The scars were a source of guilt for him, but also a reassurance; they had lived past that winter day with both of them mostly intact.

Kai grinned. “Do you think if I didn’t tie the horse up tonight, she would join the herd?”

“I don’t know, she’s come back to you from a lot of things.”

“True.” He patted the horse’s neck and followed her gaze back to the horses. The nearest settlement was a day’s ride in the opposite direction. Maybe once those horses had been domesticated but circumstances had freed them.

Xanas let go of Kai’s arm, but not without brushing their magic together. It left Kai’s arm tingling pleasantly. Since the day he almost died, Kai’s magic had changed. It was still fire at its core, but it had kept its resonance with Xanas and he had better control over it than he used to. He could do more than fire magic now. He could also see magic in a way he hadn’t before, and somehow he could always tell where Xanas was no matter what form he was in.

“That magic academy is over the mountains, right?” Xanas said, looking off into the distance. Every day the mountains got larger the further they headed east. A merchant had told them about a trail that went through them. It was only accessible in the summer. By Xanas’s calculation, they would arrive right about when it was passable.

“There’s no guarantee we can study there.”

“No, but if we can’t we’ll keep heading east. There’s plenty to see.”

Kai smiled and leaned over to kiss Xanas on the cheek for no reason other than he felt like it. Somewhere west Schul was picking up the pieces of an empire they had left behind. If they ever returned, they would be killed on sight. There wasn’t anything he was leaving behind. The distance was helping him keep the past in the past and heal. He still had nightmares some nights, but those nights became further and further apart the closer they got to the mountains. They wouldn’t ever be gone, he knew, but he felt lighter lately. The anger that had been his center had dropped away and he was still trying to figure out who he was without that.

“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Kai asked, thinking of their nights in the capital curled up against the winter on an inn bed.

“Anywhere I felt like in the moment,” Xanas said immediately, “so long as you were coming with me.”

“Sap,” Kai laughed. He nudged the horse forward toward the gentle slope down into the valley.

“Your answer’s the same.”