The vial was small — smaller than I expected for something meant to fix a wound this size — filled with something that shimmered faintly between silver and gold depending on how the light caught it. I yanked out the stopper with my teeth and knelt beside him. "Hold still." He let out a short, quiet sound that might have been a laugh. "Not planning on going anywhere." I tilted the vial carefully, letting the liquid run in a slow, thin stream directly into the wound. It made contact — and the effect was immediate. The bleeding stopped as if a hand had pressed down over it. The torn edges of skin drew together, knitting closed with a faintness I could almost hear, leaving nothing behind but a thin seam of new gold-tinged skin and the dark stain already soaked into his sleeve. Mousikí let out a long, slow breath. The tremor in his hand stilled. I sat back on my heels and stared at the empty vial. "How did you even have this?" He had the audacity to look sheepish. "Snatched it from the shelf at the tavern while I was looking for the flute." A beat. "It seemed like the practical thing to do." I closed my eyes briefly. "Of course you did." "You're welcome," he added. I set the vial down, stood, and turned toward the fox. It was still suspended in the air where Mousikí's spell held it — legs churning, teeth bared, a low continuous growl vibrating through its chest. Up close, with the immediate terror of the lunge behind me, I could look at it more carefully. Beneath the wrongness — the blackened fur tips, the too-long teeth, the bottomless eyes — there was something else. Something that didn't fit the creature Forá had sent after us. I thought of the dream again. I replayed it carefully, the way I had learned to replay things that mattered — slowly, detail by detail. Forá kneeling. The fabric pressed beneath the fox's nose. And then her hands at its neck, fastening the collar, and the change that followed — the fur darkening, the eyes going black, the jaw stretching wide. The collar. It had been the collar. The creature hadn't been violent before she put it on. It had simply been a fox — enormous and golden and strange, but not cruel. The cruelty had come after. The cruelty had been given to it. I approached slowly, keeping my steps soft and deliberate, the way Ying had taught me to move when something was frightened and dangerous in equal measure. The fox tracked me with those black eyes, still snarling, still twisting against the invisible hold. I circled wide around its snapping jaws and came up behind it. The collar was thick dark metal, warm to the touch in a way that felt wrong — not the warmth of a living body but something hotter, something that hummed faintly against my fingertips like a held note. I could feel the magic in it. Forá's magic, coiled tight and purposeful, sunk deep into every link. "It's alright," I murmured, more to myself than to the creature. "I've got you." My fingers found the clasp. It resisted for a moment — stubborn, as if the metal itself didn't want to let go — and then it gave, and the collar fell. It hit the dirt road with a sound heavier than it should have made, and lay there, dark and still. The change moved through the fox like a tide going out. The black bled from its eyes first — slowly, like ink dissolving in water — leaving behind a warm, clear amber that caught the dappled light through the canopy. The fur at its tips softened, the burnt darkness fading back into gold until the whole coat gleamed clean and bright. The stretched jaw contracted, the cruel points of its teeth receding until they were simply teeth again, sharp but natural, the teeth of a wild thing rather than a weapon. The growling stopped.
The fox hung in the air for a moment longer, trembling faintly — and then it made a sound I hadn't expected. Small. Uncertain. Something between a whimper and a sigh, like a creature surfacing from a very bad dream. Mousikí lowered the flute. The spell released, and the fox dropped lightly to the ground, landing on all four paws with the fluid ease of something built for exactly that. It stood there for a moment, sides heaving, head low. Then it looked at me. I took a slow step back, giving it space. "It's okay," I whispered. "You're okay now." The fox held my gaze for a long, still moment — amber eyes steady and oddly clear, as if it understood more than it should. Then it turned, slipped silently between the trees, and was gone. The forest closed behind it like water closing over a stone, leaving nothing but the distant rustle of undergrowth and the sound of our own breathing. I stared at the space where it had disappeared. Behind me, I heard Mousikí get slowly to his feet, brushing dirt from his knee. He was quiet for a moment before he spoke. "You knew about the collar," he said. It wasn't quite a question. "From the vision." I looked down at the dark metal still lying in the road, and felt a faint, instinctive revulsion at the sight of it. "Forá put it on him before she sent him after us. Whatever he was before — that wasn't him." Mousikí was silent. I could feel him looking at me, though I didn't turn around. "You freed it," he said quietly. "You could have just let me hold it and walked away." "I know." I finally turned to face him. His sleeve was still stained gold, his hair disheveled, his mismatched eyes watching me with an expression I couldn't entirely read. "But it wasn't his fault." Something shifted in his face — that same unguarded look I had caught glimpses of before, the one that appeared in the spaces between the performance. He held it for just a moment before he glanced away, turning the flute once between his fingers. "No," he said softly. "I suppose it wasn't." He reached down and picked up the dark collar from the road, turning it over once in his hands, studying it. Then he tucked it into his bag without a word. Evidence, maybe. Or a reminder of what Forá was capable of — not just power, but the particular cruelty of taking something living and bending it to your will. I watched him shoulder the bag and straighten, already scanning the road ahead with those careful mismatched eyes. "We should keep moving," he said. I nodded, falling into step beside him. The forest was quiet around us now, the earlier tension dissolved into birdsong and the soft percussion of our footsteps on the dirt. But the weight of what had just happened lingered at the edges of everything — the golden blood soaked into Mousikí's sleeve, the dark collar in his bag, the memory of amber eyes looking at me with something that felt, impossibly, like gratitude. Forá knew where we were. She had sent Chrysós as a warning, or a test, or both. Whatever came next, it wouldn't be a fox.
