Prologue

The copper taste of my own blood coats my tongue. I bite down harder on my thumb, tearing the skin until the crimson wells up, thick and warm. The polished wooden floorboards of the eastern corridor dig into my knees. Outside the paper sliding doors, the courtyard is a chaos of panicked footsteps and ringing armor.

"Seal the gates! The Crown Prince is gone!"

The shout bleeds through the thin rice paper. They haven’t checked this abandoned storage wing yet, but they will. I have exactly three minutes before the Imperial Onmyoji sweep the perimeter with their hounds and their truth-seeking lanterns.

I drag my bleeding thumb across the coarse grain of the summoning paper. The red line soaks into the fiber, hissing like a drop of water on a hot iron pan. My pulse thrums a frantic rhythm against my temples. I don’t draw a prayer for protection. I don’t draw a circle of containment. There is no time for the safe, sanctioned rituals of the court. I need the predator, not the pet.

I finish the final curve of the summoning sigil, a jagged, tearing shape that burns the air around it. The paper trembles. The air pressure in the narrow corridor drops, sucking the breath from my lungs. The shadows in the corners of the room begin to elongate, reaching toward the blood-soaked talisman on the floor.

They are hunting for a missing prince. A prince I helped place on that throne. If they find his empty chambers, if they realize what is truly missing, the entire Heian capital will drown in its own blood. I press my palm flat against the center of the sigil.

The magic does not answer to mere blood. It demands identity. It demands a piece of the soul that signs it.

Beneath the heavy layers of my silk court robes, hidden on the inside of my left forearm, the ink of my true name burns. The Fuda-witch’s contract with the paper is absolute. To create a double, to summon a force, a stroke of my written existence must be sacrificed.

I feel the exact moment the transaction clears. It is a hollow, tearing sensation, a sudden cold draft blowing through a room that has just lost a wall. The third stroke of my family name simply ceases to exist. It peels away from my flesh, turning into a wisp of ash that floats up from my sleeve.

This is the math of my existence. A piece of my truth in exchange for a lie that keeps the kingdom from burning. I have surrendered so many strokes over the years that my legal signature in the court registry is becoming a fragile, skeletal thing. When the last stroke is gone, the magic will consume my mind, leaving me an empty husk, a forgotten ghost walking the palace halls.

I accept the cost. A lie that saves a nation is a lie worth dying for.

The talisman on the floor ignites. Not with normal fire, but with a cold, violet flame that consumes the blood but leaves the paper untouched. Smoke billows upward, dense and smelling of crushed pine needles and old, dried blood. The shadows snap instantly toward the center of the smoke. The temperature in the corridor plummets, frosting the edges of the wooden floorboards.

The pull is a jagged hook in the back of my skull. It drags me through the void, yanking me by the collar of my existence.

I materialize in a suffocating cloud of violet smoke. The air tastes of cheap incense, polished wood, and human desperation. My boots hit the floorboards with a heavy thud.

The scent hits me before my vision clears, and it triggers a visceral, violent reflex. The metallic tang of human blood used as a leash. For a hundred years, that smell meant the collar. It meant the crushing weight of a master’s will forcing me to my knees, forcing my claws to rend flesh I did not care to rend, forcing me to listen to their pathetic justifications. I do this for love. I do this for the realm. You are mine.

My jaw clenches. The phantom weight of a hundred different invisible chains settles over my shoulders, pressing down. The last master who tried to bind me with a blood sigil died screaming, his throat torn open by my own hands, the contract breaking the moment his heart stopped pumping the blood that fueled it.

I let the smoke clear, my golden eyes adjusting to the dim light of the paper lanterns outside. I am not in a dungeon. I am in the hidden corridors of the human palace.

And kneeling before me is not an armored warlord or an ancient, decrepit sorcerer.

It is a woman.

She wears the layered, cumbersome silks of a court official, her dark hair cascading down her back in a strict, formal cut. But her sleeve is rolled up, her thumb is bleeding, and the air around her hums with the reckless, self-destructive frequency of a Fuda-witch who has just sold a piece of her own name.

She looks up at me. There is no fear in her dark eyes. Only a cold, calculating desperation.

I step out of the summoning circle.

She hasn’t drawn a containment ring. A fatal error.

I close the distance between us in a fraction of a second. The velvet silence of my movement is a stark contrast to the heavy, armored chaos echoing from the courtyard outside. I crouch before her, invading her space, looming over her kneeling form. I let my aura bleed out—a suffocating, primal pressure that makes the paper sliding doors rattle in their tracks.

"A summoning without a cage," I whisper, my voice a low, rough rasp that vibrates in the narrow space between us. "You humans are getting either very brave or very stupid."