The Color of Being Found

I managed two nights without sleep.

On the third, I fell asleep standing against a cedar and woke in the black mist.

The woman was waiting.

"You haven't eaten," she said.

"You haven't introduced yourself."

"There are berries beside the stream when you wake. The blue ones are safe."

"Did you put them there?"

She looked away, or seemed to. I could not see her eyes, only the angle of her head.

"They're safe," she repeated.

I hated that I checked. I hated more that the berries were exactly where she said.

I did not eat them until I watched a bird take one.

The dreams continued.

Sometimes she guided the magic through my chest. Sometimes she only sat behind me while I slept, her hand hovering near my shoulder. When I refused her touch, she withdrew, but the mist remained.

I could not banish her. I could not follow her out.

"Do you serve the Shadow Queen?" I asked one night.

"Why?"

"Because she wants white foxes, and you seem unusually interested in making me stronger."

The woman's fingers curled against her knee.

"She won't hurt you."

"People who won't hurt me could stop hunting me."

No clever answer came.

The next morning, I found a strip of black cloth snagged in the cedar bark. It smelled of cold stone and blood, the scent that followed her through my dreams.

I burned it.

For half a month, I moved through valleys and over ruined bridges. I crossed a river inside a dead tree and slept beneath the floor of an abandoned watchtower. Each time I closed my eyes, she found me.

The fourth seal opened at last beside a mountain pool.

Power rushed through my limbs. I shifted into fox form to release it and felt a fourth tail unfold behind me.

For one glorious moment, I forgot to be afraid.

Then gray fur began falling into the water.

White grew beneath it.

Not the ordinary white of winter coats, but a luminous color that held moonlight long after the moon vanished behind clouds.

I stared at my reflection.

The queen's soldiers would not need a lantern to find me now.

I rolled in mud until the water turned brown. The mud slid off within minutes, repelled by the awakened blood.

"Wonderful," I told the pool. "An ancient gift that won't let me be dirty."

In human form, my hair had become pale at the temples. A silver mark appeared beneath my collarbone. I wrapped my scarf over it.

There was nowhere left to hide safely.

The White Fox Court had ancient wards, a king, and enough pride to resent foreign soldiers. I did not expect affection there. I needed walls.

I traveled home to a place I had never lived.

The valley entrance smelled of smoke.

Black-armored soldiers lined the bridge. Above them floated a bronze lens, turning slowly toward every person who approached. Courtiers emerged from the gate in neat groups, their hands folded, their eyes lowered.

A white fox woman protested that she had already been examined.

"Then you'll be examined again," the captain said.

"Your queen has no authority here."

"Tell her that when you reach the palace."

He reached for her arm. A black chain appeared around his wrist, tightened once, and vanished. He released her with a cry.

The other soldiers looked away.

"No injuries," their captain muttered. "I know the order."

I watched from the undergrowth, trying to understand whether the queen feared damaging her prisoners or simply enjoyed punishing her own people.

Neither possibility helped me.

I turned to retreat.

The bronze lens swung toward the bushes.

Light stripped the mud from my coat. Every soldier saw the white beneath it.

"There!"

Chains flew.

I shifted into human form and cut the first with my bone blade. The second caught my ankle. I burned it with foxfire, surprised by how easily the silver flame answered.

Surprise nearly killed me.

The captain crossed the distance while I stared at my hand. His spear struck the ground beside my foot, and a cage of dark bars rose around me.

I sent four blades of fire through the nearest gap.

He deflected them. The bronze lens descended, its rim unfolding into hooks.

"Hold still," he snapped. "You'll only make this worse."

Something in those words emptied my lungs.

I was no longer in the valley. For a blink, I saw marble, a dark sleeve, and fingers held beneath my ribs.

The memory vanished as the lens reached me.

I ducked and raised both arms.

Bronze exploded overhead.

The cage shattered with it. Soldiers fell to their knees, some bleeding from their noses. Across the spinning fragments, a pair of dark eyes appeared, doubled at their centers like an eclipse around another eclipse.

The captain dropped his spear.

"Your Majesty."

The eyes looked at me.

Not at my white hair. Not at the mark on my chest.

At my face.

I felt the same terrible recognition I had felt in the dream, although it did not belong to my mind.

The fragments burned into ash.

A roar rolled from the court gate. Gold light spread across the bridge as a dragon descended, scattering the remaining soldiers.

She landed in the form of a woman with dark hair, a gold mantle, and a long spear. Her eyes held the sea's pale green beneath their gold.

"Withdraw," she ordered.

The captain did not argue. His soldiers carried their wounded away, avoiding my gaze as though I had become more dangerous than their queen.

The dragon woman approached slowly.

"Are you injured?"

"No."

"May I look?"

The question was so unexpected that I nodded.

She examined the burn around my ankle without touching it.

"Aurelia Thalor," she said. "Princess of the Tide Kingdom."

"Evander Vale."

A procession emerged from the gate. At its head stood a silver-haired man wearing a crown of intertwined branches.

He stared at me, then at the four tails I had not yet managed to hide.

"Evander? The lost heir?"

I inclined my head.

His astonishment became calculation so quickly that I almost smiled.

"Four seals," he murmured. "Pure blood. After all this time."

Aurelia glanced at him, then stepped between us with exquisite courtesy.

"Perhaps we should offer him a chair before discussing his blood."

I followed her through the gate.

Above the ruined bridge, the last bronze fragment dissolved into black mist.

For a moment, it looked like a hand reaching after me.