The one consistency between cultures is that every generation of every civilization complains about their juniors.

  -An excerpt from Crossing the Seas: A Bruxman’s guide to the Summoned Isle by Lyle Neuvan.

  “I don’t know where she gets all this energy,” I admitted as I sat down at the street-view table. The table’s occupant was reading, as he almost always was, and didn’t even look up as we sat down. Satoro’s favorite game was seeing how long he could pointedly ignore us when we invaded his table.

  “It’s a teenager thing,” Lin said. “I bet your masters used to say the same thing about sixteen-year-old Yoru.”

  “Nonsense, at sixteen, I was a model student filled with the patience of the heavens.”

  Satoro choked on his wine and coughed violently for several seconds. It turns out he lost his game early today.

  I raised an eyebrow at the Oni Prince. “Something wrong about what I said, Satoro?” He just rolled his eyes in response.

  “Somehow, I think your sister would disagree with you, Yoru,” Lin teased. “You’ll forgive me if I take her opinion over yours.”

  Xinya emerged from the kitchens a moment later, stopping briefly at the counter to make sure all the cups were properly arranged on the tray. Her brow was furrowed as she shifted several cups around and rotated the teapot a few times to make sure everything was just so. As she did, several moon moths descended from the roof canopy and landed on her tray. They waved their feelers at her curiously, and she waved them away, only for them to land on her hair instead while she continued fiddling with the tray.

  I smiled at the image. Personally, I didn’t care how the tray looked, or what kind of significance there was to the specific orientation of the teapot in relation to the rest of the tray, but she did. Ever since she’d turned thirteen, Xinya had been taking lessons from Sect Leader Iza on how to be a proper lady, something the Sect Leader had insisted was necessary for any young woman. Those lessons came with a fairly thorough education in literature, poetry, and mathematics; which was the part Xinya actually cared about. Yet, despite her wild demeanor, she still listened when Iza corrected her serving style and manners.

  It made me proud, seeing the woman she was becoming. She was strong and just, and she always knew what she wanted. Most of the time, that seemed to be pretty clothes and jewelry, but Lin told me very quickly that I was in no position to judge. Even the beautiful purple dress she wore today, one of the simpler ones in her ever-expanding wardrobe, shimmered with silver thread woven into tiny lightning bolts around the flowing sleeves and collar.

  Yet, despite her love of shiny things, Xinya was always ready to help others. Just the other day, the two of us had been walking home from the Eighteenth District, only to have a stray kitsune child run in front of us, being chased by an oni shopkeeper from the Chusei Oni clan. As the leader of the Chikara Oni, Xinya stepped forward and challenged the oni to a duel, and seeing the difference in their strengths, the oni backed down. She paid him for the meat the child stole, then ushered the poor orphan back to the Fourteenth, where Hei Shenshou’s grandmother was happy to take him in.

  That day, Xinya practically shone with the light of life and joy, and I couldn’t have been prouder.

  Only once the tea was perfect did the girl lift the tray once more and bring it to the table. She knelt and expertly passed out the cups to Lin, Satoro, and myself.

  “Hei Shenshou said he’d bring out some food,” she explained. “Something about not letting me near his supplies.”

  “Wise fox,” Lin praised just as the kitsune in question entered the room.

  Hei Shenshou was dressed in impeccable cultivator robes, despite having been poised over a hot stove until only moments ago. His orange fur was neat and clean, right down to the black tips of his ears and five tails.

  “Highnesses! I brought some dumplings—no fish, as I know the princess doesn’t favor it,” he reached over the table and set down a basket with the treats.

  “Thank you for keeping the royals out of the kitchen,” Lin praised.

  The kitsune glowed under the acknowledgement. “Of course. It is one of the standing overrides of Prince Tsuyuki’s orders that is followed by every member of the Fate’s Eclipse Sect.”

  I sighed, spying the blue and black badge that was tied around Hei’s arm. As a former member of the Shattered Moon Sect, he was required to wear an indication of his involvement for the duration of his community service. It was a safety precaution for every one of the sect’s defectors and was meant to be removed as soon as their penance had been served.

  However, some of those former sect members had gotten it into their heads to form their own sect after their service was completed. After much deliberation, they’d decided on forming their own sect to counter their former colleagues with the Shattered Moon. That sect was first called the Full Moon Sect, then the Black Moon Sect, then the Fate’s Rising Sect, and had most recently settled on Fate’s Eclipse. That badge of theirs was also new, featuring a blue circle of flame around a voidlight moth.

  “Is that what you’re calling yourselves, these days?” I asked gently.

  Hei nodded vigorously. “You are the Demon of Misfortune, sir. It is our honor to reflect your principles with our name and insignia.”

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  “Even though I’ve told you that I don’t need a sect of my own?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s the other unanimous override of your orders which we agreed to during our last council meeting,” he explained with a mischievous glint in his eye.

  “And there’s nothing I can do to get you to drop it and live your own lives?”

  “Of course there is, Your Highness!” Hei said with a smile. “Just say the word, and we will follow our dreams with no regard for your feelings on the matter.”

  I frowned. For three years he held firm to his stance that nothing I said or did could change their desire to form a sect around me. Did he have a change of heart? Or was the tricky fox working another angle.

  “And if I asked you, very nicely, to go follow your dreams, what would you say in response?” I asked skeptically.

  Hei grinned. “I’d say that every member of Fate’s Eclipse is here because we want to be and that our dream is to serve you and see you retake the Black City for the good of all!”

  “With no regard for my feelings on the matter?”

  “Correct, your highness.”

  I sighed but couldn’t help the soft smile that crept across my face. Hei Shenshou could be so ridiculous at times. Barely a few hundred years old, and yet with all the cunning of a fox twice his age. How his grandmother managed him growing up, I didn’t know, but I counted my blessings every day that he had defected from the Shattered Moon Sect rather than staying.

  “Can I get you anything else?” he asked sweetly, mischief written plainly in his eyes.

  “Unless you know a way of regulating unstable qi within an ancient and complex array, not at the moment. Thank you,” I answered.

  Hei seemed to ponder the problem at hand, as I knew he would. Kitsune were wise and cunning, but when presented with a problem, they tended to fixate on it until a solution was found. Lin beckoned him to sit with us as his expression grew more and more contemplative.

  “If it helps, I have been putting some thought into this, myself,” the wood artist said.

  “Might this have something to do with the ‘trouble-making’ you mentioned earlier?” I wondered, prompting a coy smile from my sworn brother.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I take pride in being the voice of reason within our little family.” He hid his smile behind a sip of his tea before continuing. “I just happened to hear of an artifact in the Blood Stalking Demon Sect that helps to stabilize the unstable qi of their rituals. I hear it’s quite the treasure within their sect.”

  I raised an eyebrow. How had he known? I only found out about the qi regulation problem that morning, yet he’d already done some digging and come up with a solution. How had he done it?

  Lin’s eyes met mine, and a spark of amusement lit up his expression. He calmly sipped his tea, as if daring me to ask how he’d done it. I looked away, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

  “Did you happen to hear what type of qi it’s aligned with?” I asked.

  “Most of the rumors suggest that the sect uses death qi most, but I can’t confirm for certain without seeing the treasure itself.”

  Satoro snorted, and every eye turned to him. His eyes flicked up from his book. “Have any of you ever watched one of them fight? They don’t fight like death artists.”

  “I have, but I can’t say I’ve known many death artists,” Lin admitted.

  Though I knew several death artists in my time, most notably the Dead King of Daying who was one of the more prominent victims of the Darkened Moon’s madness, I hadn’t had the chance to see any of the Blood Stalking Demon Sect up close. Every time they came to the Fourteenth District to harass its people, it had happened when I was in Half-Moon Manor, or otherwise occupied with the Starlight Path.

  But, I’d heard plenty of rumors. They were a sect as black-hearted as they came. They were one of three major sects to operate within the Black City, the other two being the Shattered Moon Sect, and the Stormchaser Sect. With Shattered Moon splintering under the strain of civil war, and Stormchaser burying their heads in the sand, the Blood Stalkers had the most political pull by far.

  They were a wicked sect measured best by their cruel impact. It was thanks to them that blood stones were the primary form of currency in the Black City. The despicable stones were born through the sacrifice of innocent mortals, often kidnapped straight from their homes. They terrorized shopkeepers for centuries, collecting the taxes only in those stones, until the entire economy had bent to their wicked whims. They were a sadistic group of cruel cultivators who were no better than parasites. As the founder of the city, I considered it part of my duty to rid their influence from my darkened streets.

  Unfortunately, with the armillaries in such disrepair, investigating them further than rumor was not high on my priority list.

  “I’ve watched them. Many of their techniques seem to have their roots in the techniques practiced by my clan,” Satoro explained. “They manipulate the blood in a living thing, altering the properties for a variety of affects, all of them pathetic.”

  “That would make their techniques closer to those of Life artist,” I mused.

  The Oni Prince just shrugged. “You know I don’t believe in your view on limiting qi categories, Xiao-ru.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that your techniques are considered Life arts in the modern paradigm.”

  “The modern paradigm is childish and ill-informed,” he glared at me before I could argue, “or would you rather be nothing more than a second-rate illusionist in addition to being a lunar pipsqueak?”

  I bit my lip and said nothing. Keeping my silence was better than giving him the satisfaction of agreeing with him. However, the sneer that crossed his lips was enough to say that he knew perfectly well that I’d been convinced. Rolling my eyes was a better reaction.

  “So, what I’m hearing is that we need a way into the Blood Stalking Demon Sect’s headquarters where they keep this artifact?” Hei Shenshou mused. “Or has Grandmaster Tenri already considered that angle, as well?”

  Lin’s cheeks colored slightly from the use of the honorific, which he tried to hide behind another sip of tea. “When it’s not in use, I believe they keep it in a small shrine on the edge of their main compound. Seeing as how my brother and niece so enjoy getting into trouble, I thought I’d leave the plan to them.”

  “Wait, why am I getting roped into this?” I protested. “I’m not the one who had her second-in-command dump kappa eggs on her crooked business partners!”

  “Actually, he hired a few mercenaries to do it for him,” Xinya corrected with a casual sip of her tea. “Extra layer of anonymity.”

  Lin smirked at me. “And where did she get that attitude from? Because it certainly wasn’t me.”

  “It couldn’t have been me.”

  “Of course not...and brazenly challenging the Shattered Moon Sect by sneaking into an Ascendant’s death trap just to find a way to grow rice couldn’t have influenced her at all.” Lin poured himself another cup of tea.

  “My own sworn brother cannot afford me even an ounce of face. Perhaps I should leave and share a home with Satoro instead.”

  The Oni glared at me and growled. “Don’t you dare.”

  I flashed him a winning smile, and the rest of the table laughed heartily. Hei Shenshou clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, your highness! You’re always welcome to stay with us at the Fate’s Eclipse Sect!”

  I couldn’t keep the sarcasm off my tongue. “Oh yes, how generous.”

  “Anytime, highness,” Hei answered with a grin. “Now, about that artifact. I think I have just the plan.”