suddenly feels young, foolish, and she bares her teeth. But she holds her ground, waiting for the human woman to speak.
“Do you really think we could steal from the Crow Lords?” the woman asks. “Think about it, and look at this place. We’re just starting to rebuild, re-learn everything we’ve lost. How could we take anything from them? We have no magic of our own. That’s why we built all this.” She waves her hand at the machines around them. “And look where it got us.”
War. The fox-girl nods, but says nothing aloud. The tower, beautiful on the outside, isn’t a stronghold. It’s only the gathering place where the shattered remnants of humanity have come to try to put back together what their greed tore apart.
The fox-girl sees now what she should have seen the moment she walked into the Crow Lord’s tower. The Crow Lords, tricksters still, are playing a long game, setting humanity and the fox-girls against each other in the hopes they will wipe each other out. They didn’t send her here to steal; they sent her hoping she would be captured, tortured, broken, the secrets of fox-girl magic ripped from her skin. They sent her here to make her less, and make the humans more, tipping the balance just enough to start another war.
“What were you doing here?” The fox-girl points at the monitors behind the woman, speaking to hide her shame.
“Trying to wipe out the old programs before our people can unravel them. These machines did us no good the first time. I don’t want to see she same mistakes made again.”
The fox-girl grins, sudden and quick in the half-light.
“I think I can help you. Can you get me the chip out of one of those?”
The woman looks at her askance, but after a moment she turns and opens a panel beneath the desk. As the woman digs within the machine, nimble fingers working, the fox-girl wonders if her trust is bravery or stupidity. She decides on bravery, holding on to the image of the woman as a kindred spirit, a fellow thief.
“What’s your name?” the fox-girl asks. She doesn’t think humans earn their names the way fox-girls do, but she would still like to know.
“Ani.”
The woman straightens and holds up the thing she has dug out from the heart of the machine. Blue radiance slides across a pattern of frozen quicksilver printed on a small square of plastic. She holds it out to the fox-girl, but the fox-girl shakes her head.
“I want you to cut me open and stitch it up inside my skin.”
Yuki turns, snorting in his sleep before moving on to another dream. The fox-girl remembers the chafe of leather against her wrists, the prick of the needle going into her skin. She remembers the look of fear and doubt in Ani’s eyes, the salt-tang scent of fox blood, a moment of hot pain, then drifting into the dark.
She glances down at the chip in her hand, flecked with rust-colored flakes. She remembers everything now. She meant to change the programming, re-write it with her being, imprint her memory on its quick-silver patterns and give it back to Ani: a fox-girl virus, thief quick, spreading throughout the human machines and bringing the tower crashing down.
She meant to infect the humans themselves, instilling them with defiance against the Crow Lords, starting a war of her own. She turns the chip, studying it in the light. But now, she is different. The fox-girl she was, all cocky anger and defiance, lives only in the chip. The self that came out of the tower has changed, gentled by eyes like tea, illuminated by a human thief in a tower, and darkened by a crow shadow that tastes like oil on her tongue.
Something brushes against the window, a feathered wing. Ani opens the window and leans out. The sloped roof isn’t so far that she can’t catch hold as she turns her back to the tower and wiggles out into the cold night air. She pulls herself up, nails scrabbling on the tile, and then she stands on four paws on the roof. Eleven crows circle against the stars before dropping to join the shadow of a man whose eyes are no longer as hollow and hard as they used to be.
The light in his gaze speaks of fear. He doesn’t belong with his brothers anymore, as she no longer belongs with her sisters.
“You took something from me.” He echoes his words from the night before. “I want it back.”
Ani cocks her head, ears alert, eyes bright.
“Give it back!” He lunges for her. His voice breaks, becoming a crow’s call.
She sidesteps, and eleven ragged birds rise into the air, maddened by pain. His shadow swarms, but doesn’t dive, doesn’t strike. His birds beat at her with their wings, and she feels the answering stir of shadow-slick feathers under her skin. She tastes oil at the back of her throat. She can read his mind now, a Crow Lord trick.
He wants her to take away the pain, and he hates himself for wanting it. He wants to roll, like her sisters, whine and show his belly. He hates what he has become, but even more, he hates what he has been. He wants—he needs—to feel her teeth in his skin.
Ani jumps, catching a shadowed bird. She holds it gently between her jaws, a precious thing. He doesn’t fight her. Above her, ten crows scream their confusion and speak their divided minds. She bites down, exquisite needle teeth piercing feathers, bone and skin. The shadow slides down her throat. She savors it—Crow Lord power running through her veins.
A truth beats in time with her heart, one half-felt in the moment she tasted the first piece of his shadow, but fully realized now. She owns him. This Crow Lord is hers, and it doesn’t matter that she is on all fours on the ground; he can’t look down on her, not anymore.
Ten birds coalesce beneath the man crouching on the red roof tile, holding himself against the pain. He looks up, and his eyes aren’t hollow, and they never will be again. They shine, heavy with tears.
Ani pads forward, burnt-black paws hushing over the tile. The Crow Lord doesn’t move. He whines a little in the back of his throat; he raises his head, baring skin. It is not a crow gesture; it is a fox gesture—submission.
She licks his throat, but doesn’t nip. He lowers his face. Her long tongue cleans his cheeks, tasting his tears. Salt mingles with the shadows and blood as she swallows them down. When he stops crying, she sits back on her haunches and looks up at him.
“I’m going into the tower,” she says. “Tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going hunting.”
She turns, tail blurring in the moonlight. She jumps, changing before she hits the ground. Two feet land, then four paws run over the broken asphalt. She glances back, grinning, tongue lolling, devouring the night air.
“There’s blood on your mouth,” Yuki says, waking her.
Ani looks up. Yuki stands over the pallet with a tray of plain rice and steamed vegetables. She sits up and the sheet slides away, revealing naked skin. She pushes a hand through her tangled hair, and then licks her lips clean. Blood flakes onto her tongue, cold and dry.
Yuki looks at her sadly, but he doesn’t turn away anymore. She isn’t his Ani, and it breaks his heart.
“I could be,” Ani says, reading his thoughts. “I could be her.” She rises, and takes the tray from him, setting it down. She takes his hand. His skin is cool, and she presses it to her breast, over her heart. Her nipple is hard beneath his palm.
“There,” she whispers. “Can you feel it? She’s inside my skin.”
Ani is hungry. The fox in her, the crow in her, she struggles to hold onto to them, because part of her knows she is still changing. Before Yuki can pull away, she digs her nails into his hand, holding it against her sleep-warm flesh. She catches his hair with her other hand, pulls him close. She tastes his mouth. Unlike the Crow Lord, he doesn’t respond. Like the Crow Lord, she tastes his tears. They taste just as she imagined.
Ani lets go. Yuki’s eyes are infinitely sad.
“What do you want from me?” Yuki’s voice is hoarse, heavy with salt.
She reads his mind again. He is thinking about the old tales of fox-maidens seducing young men and stealing their souls. Like the fox-girls who roll over for the crows, Yuki is ready to roll over for her. He thinks he has lost everything that matters, and that there is nothing left to care about anymore. He tried to help her, and she threw it back in his face—taking the last thing that was
“I’m sorry.” Fox-Ani means the words, and they surprise her. She is a fox, a thief. She bows to no one, not even the Crow Lords. She takes what she wants because she
“I’m sorry. I’ll take you into the tower, if you still want me to. Then you’ll never have to see me again.” She
