Kuroki had promised they'd patrol together.

  Yuki had not fully thought through what that meant until 10 PM, standing at the edge of the shrine grounds in the dark, her fox ears tracking every sound in a three-hundred-foot radius.

  "You're tense," Kuroki said quietly, beside her.

  "I'm not tense. I'm alert."

  "Your ears are ft."

  Yuki forced them upright. "Better?"

  "You look like a fox pretending to be rexed."

  "I am rexed."

  She was not rexed. The forest at night sounded completely different from the forest in the day. Things moved. Things called to each other in sounds that had no clean expnation. And her fox senses, which were annoyingly good, picked up all of it.

  "What do we do?" she asked. "Just walk?"

  "Perimeter first. Then check the barrier markers."

  "The barrier markers." Yuki had pced those herself, three days ago—small slips of paper inscribed with purification seals at each corner of the shrine's outer boundary. Tsukuyomi had guided her through it. "Are they holding?"

  "That's what we're checking."

  They moved into the tree-line, Kuroki in front by half a step—not protectively, exactly, more like she'd already mapped the path and was simply leading. Yuki fell into step behind her and found, after the first minute, that the darkness was less frightening with someone else in it. Her ears stopped straining and started simply listening.

  Leaves. Wind. Something small moving through undergrowth twenty feet away, probably a rabbit.

  Nothing threatening.

  "How long have you been doing this?" Yuki asked, keeping her voice low. "Night patrols."

  "Since I was fifteen. Training." Kuroki ducked under a low branch, held it back so Yuki could pass. "My cn used the mountain passes near our estate. Youkai were common there."

  "And you hunted them?"

  Kuroki didn't answer immediately. "I learned to. I didn't always like it."

  Yuki looked at the side of her face—just visible in the moonlight filtering through the branches. "There's a difference? Between learning and liking?"

  "Most things worth doing are learned before they're liked."

  "That sounds like something someone unhappy says."

  Kuroki gnced back at her. "Or someone practical."

  "Can't those overp?"

  The only sound for a moment was the crunch of pine needles beneath their boots. "Sometimes."

  They reached the first barrier marker—a folded paper seal wedged into the bark of an old pine. Yuki leaned in and felt the faint pulse of energy still running through it, warm and steady, like a heartbeat.

  "Still holding," she said.

  "Good." Kuroki watched her check it, expression unreadable in the dim light. "You can feel that?"

  "Yeah. It's like—" Yuki searched for words. "Like pressing your hand against a wall and feeling the house is still standing inside it. That kind of solid."

  Kuroki considered this. "I've never been able to sense spiritual energy like that. I can channel it through my bde, but I can't feel it the way you're describing."

  "Is that a human thing?"

  "Probably. Youkai are more naturally attuned to it."

  Yuki hadn't thought about that as an advantage before—something she had that Kuroki didn't. She tucked it away.

  They moved on to the second marker, then the third.

  At the third, Yuki's ears snapped forward.

  She held up one hand—a silent signal to stop—and Kuroki went still instantly, hand moving to her sword without a word. They didn't need to communicate it. They'd been on the mountain together long enough that some signals were just obvious.

  Something was in the undergrowth six feet to the left.

  Not moving. Watching.

  Yuki could feel it—the particur weight of attention that wasn't human. Not rge. Not hostile, exactly, but present in the way that things with intent are present. Her fox senses mapped it: small, approximately cat-sized, two points of heat dimly glowing.

  She kept her voice very low. "Something's there."

  "I know." Kuroki's bde was half-drawn. "It's been following us since the second marker."

  "You knew?"

  "I suspected." She didn't look away from the undergrowth. "What is it?"

  Yuki reached out with that sense Tsukuyomi had been developing in her—pressing outward gently, like testing the temperature of water. Not a massive, bloodthirsty oni like the one from her first night. Just something curious. Feral.

  "Minor spirit," she said quietly. "It's not here to fight. It's just—looking."

  "Should I drive it off?"

  Yuki thought for a moment. "Let me try something."

  She reached inward, tracing the flow of her energy like a map, found the fox-fire, and let a small fme bloom in her palm—blue and soft, not aggressive. She held it up like a mp.

  The two points of faint glow in the undergrowth blinked.

  Then there was a small sound—something between a bark and a chirp—and the rustling retreated, fast, away into the dark.

  Yuki closed her hand. The fme went out.

  "Huh," she said.

  "It left."

  "Fox-fire. Not threatening, but it signals what I am." She looked at her palm, letting out a slow breath. "Tsukuyomi mentioned something about that. Minor spirits give space to kitsune by instinct. That's the first time I've actually used it for something."

  Kuroki studied her for a moment.

  "Good," she said. Just that. Her bde slid back into the scabbard.

  At the fourth marker—on the downhill slope facing the vilge—they stopped.

  Through a narrow gap in the trees, Wakaba Vilge was just visible below, nterns still burning in a handful of windows. Small and warm-looking from up here. The valley was wide and dark beyond it.

  "Every night you can see this?" Yuki said.

  "Every night."

  "Does it ever get old?"

  "No." Kuroki's voice was quiet, but certain. "Proof that things are still standing. That's worth looking at every time."

  Yuki turned that over. She thought of Hana talking about the attacks. The fear in the vilge. The shrine going quiet for decades.

  Proof that things are still standing. "I'll get better at this," she said—not to Kuroki exactly, more out loud to herself.

  "You're already better than st week."

  "Last week I did a purification ritual and the incense burner fell over."

  Kuroki tilted her head slightly. "The marker didn't fall over. Progress."

  Yuki ughed, short and surprised. Kuroki looked at her—not the way she usually looked at things she was assessing, but something softer. She looked away before Yuki could pce it.

  "Last marker," Kuroki said.

  They found it intact.

  The walk back was easier than the walk out. Yuki's ears had fully rexed by now, tracking sound without arm. The forest felt less like a threat and more like a pce that simply existed around them.

  At the shrine gate, Kuroki stopped.

  "You did well," she said.

  "I didn't do anything. I just walked and touched some paper."

  "You didn't startle at every sound. You read the markers correctly. You kept pace without falling behind." Kuroki met her gaze steadily. "Last week you tripped on a ft surface."

  "I tripped twice. Let's be accurate."

  "You did well," Kuroki repeated, and this time it nded without any space for argument.

  Yuki didn't argue.

  She stood at the gate and watched Kuroki cross the courtyard—back to her quarters, back to her half of the night shift. Her footsteps were perfectly even on the stone.

  She notices things about me, Yuki thought.

  Then she thought: Stop that. Then she went inside.

  Author's Note

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