“What’ll you be wearing, Emma?” Nancy said absently, trying to tease a snarl from one of the twins’ hair.
“This, I suppose.” Emma looked down at her brown dress from the Court tailor. It had been ugly enough when it was new. Now it was smeared with Sara’s ointment and Library dust. Though sheknew it shouldn’t matter, not against her escape and her business with the Turnbulls, Emma’s cheeks heated at the thought of wearing it into a ballroom.
Her sisters exchanged looks.
“Your face will shine the lovelier in a plain setting.” Frances patted her hand with sympathy, which made Emma feel worse.
“You aregoingto look smashing, darling.” Emma was pulled into a cloud of platinum curls and Shalimar. Selina’s enthusiasm was so overwhelming, it sometimes sounded downright threatening. “Trust me.”
“Is it time to go?” Saskia set down her book, seemingly bored by the talk of ball adornments. The other fox maidens fluttered to their feet.
Soon only Emma was left helping Nancy clear the table. She heard her sisters call farewells from the hall. The front door slammed.
“Where are they going?”
“To hunt,” Nancy replied.
Emma’s gaze dropped to her feet. She had not been on a single hunt. The thought of it made her stomach clench. Despite the fox maidens assuring her that they drained only the smallest sip of energy from a mortal. That it barely hurt the mortals, or not so badly they couldn’t get over it in a few days. Their defenses only made Emma feel worse. Because they wouldn’t call it a hunt if someone wasn’t about to become prey.
“What if—if I don’t want to hunt mortals?” Emma stammered.
“Emma, it’s not just ball gowns and frippery we buy. The meals we eat, the warmth of this house? It’s all paid for by our hunts,” Nancy said gently. “The City doesn’t give them for free. All thosecosts add to our debt, which means more years of service. Why do you think Frances has been here so long, or Gertie? More’n a hundred years, both of them. We’ve all been covering your costs till now, love—and happy to do it—but it’s time for you to try.”
Shame flooded Emma’s cheeks. “I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t think you did.” Nancy patted her hand. “Hunting’s also part of your contract with the Night City, so you’d be getting a mighty unpleasant visit from the Boars if your dues aren’t paid. When you’re ready, just ask one of us take you to hunt. Best have fox form ready for that.” She took in Emma’s face. “You have transformed back into a fox, haven’t you?”
Emma grimaced. “I tried reaching down into my mind, where I feel the fox, and—nothing. Managed to switch my fingernails for claws, but that’s it.”
“Hmm. And what did you feel, when the change started?”
“It was like drowning. I—I couldn’t breathe.” Even remembering it, Emma felt that same awful vise around her chest. “I heard the fox inside me.” The taunting whisper, so close to the surface.
we are the hunt
prey hung limp in dripping jaws
teeth so sharp to rip the meat
“And I was afraid—am afraid,” Emma corrected. “If I shift, she could devour me, all there is of me. I’ll be stuck, just like before.”
“Ah, the fear. That would do it. Magic is a force of will, like Saskia says. All in the mind. Fear can throw it off in funny ways. You can choose to believe it.” Nancy held Emma’s gaze. “Or youcould sit with the fear, breathe through it. See what’s on the other side. And if you don’t want to be lost to the fox, then don’t be. Up there, maybe you were what other people decided. But here, you can be what you believe yourself to be. You decide.”
“I decide,” Emma repeated. She had not been good at that as a mortal, she realized. At saying who she was, or what she wanted.
She had hated moving around with her mother. Losing her friends, her home, over and over. But however much she had wanted to stay, it had never seemed like it mattered. Not when her mother needed to move for her next big academic chance. As a child, she had never stopped to consider whether her pain at leaving her home might ever outweigh the damage to her mother’s career. Whether what she wanted was important, even if it hurt someone else. Perhaps here, she could be different.
Nancy heaved another stack of plates with a sigh. “Now, let’s get this lot into the kitchen. It’s my turn to watch over Sara later, but I’ve enough time to hear more about your mother’s tree-home.”
“Research station,” Emma corrected, with a laugh.
“Right enough, love. And tell me again of the snake-tailed striped beast—lemur, did you call it?”
Emma’s mind had split in two. She agonized over it in the Library; in long night watches over Sara; curled in her claw-marked bed at the House of Foxes.
The longer she refused to hunt, the more she betrayed the other fox maidens. She could not let them keep paying for her from their own earnings. But if she went hunting, she would become someoneshe didn’t recognize. The real Emma, the mortal one, never hurt anything. She freed the spiders in the bathroom rather than killing them. When it rained, she walked with her eyes trained on the ground to avoid stepping on snails. Going hunting would feel like giving up on that Emma. It admitted the possibility that she might never return: that there would be no escape from the Night City. It was too hard let her old self go.
Then, days before Midwinter, Emma trailed in from the Library. She was weary and sore, smudged with sweat and dust from another fruitless book search. But her bedroom was not as she had left it. There was something on the bed. A ball gown, silver-white and glimmering, like a dress of morning mist. And beside it, a note:
