Page 50 of The Cinders

‘I am?’

Feverishly, Xian searched for the word.‘Aglow.There is a…light around you…’

William Black’s wolfish smile reappeared.‘Are you sure it is not a trick of the light?’

‘I am very sure.’He’d never been more certain of anything at all.

The most brilliant hues radiated from the man, hugging his every curve.Far too bright to be cast by the lantern behind him, which hung from a hook high up the wall; too high to have sent such a defined ring of light around the man’s outline.

‘What sort of light?’William asked.‘Tell me what you see.’

Xian still rested on his knees.His legs were far too jellied to stand, and he was grateful for it, because he saw now what he had missed before.He stared, making certain he did not hallucinate.

‘The light…it’s not around you…it is…’ he played the word in his mind before he brought it to his tongue.‘It is beneath your skin.Firelight…’

‘Clever little fox,’ Sir William said, grinning as wide as his lips would allow.

‘What did you just call me?’

His mother’s voice still held him; Xian never wished to let its echo go.

‘Never mind that.What do you see beneath your own skin, little prince?’

‘Mine?’Xian frowned.‘I do not see…’ The words turned to ash as he stared down at his hands.Not firelight so bold as William’s, with its orange and red and gold, but the rich glow of sunlight on topaz hinted beneath his skin.‘What have you done to me?’

‘Granted your wish, as promised,’ William sniffed.‘Don’t get all odd about it now.I said I’d untie your knots and show you what you truly are.So, there you are.You’re welcome.’

Xian stared at his hands, mesmerised by the colours that shimmered like the summer heat off terracotta tiles.‘Am I a…a daemon, too?’

William’s barked laughter made him jump.‘Of course you’re not a bloody daemon.That aura belongs to a huli jing.Can’t say I’ve met many of you in the British Isles, plenty of damned kitsuné though.Come to think of it, you’re the first huli jing I’ve met here in the Orient.’

‘A huli jing?’Xian pushed to his feet, stumbling as he reached for the wall.‘Are you sure?’

‘Do you not see your own light?I know we do not see ourselves so brightly as we see others, it would drive us mad to see our own aura, day in and day out, but surely you do not seek to deny what is so plain?’

Xian’s head spun.Of course he saw the light, the glow of a gemstone emanating from him; seeping from his skin like a faint mist.

‘You are suggesting I am a fox spirit?A creature of myth.’

‘Not suggesting, telling.And clearly you are more than a story, aren’t you?Now see here, are you going to throw up?Because you look as though you are, and I’d rather be out of range.’

‘No…I’m not…I don’t think.I feel rather strange.’

Which hardly described the sensation at all.Xian would say of how he felt — so light and hollow of bone he was grateful for the ceiling which would stop him drifting away — was that it was not awful at all.

‘Oh gods, you’re not rabid, are you?’Sir William backed away, and Xian raised his head.

‘Of course not.’

‘Well the moment you froth at the mouth, don’t think I won’t put you down.’

Xian sensed a darkness behind the jest, a hint of the daemon within, perhaps.He did not doubt William Black would do just as he promised.

‘I am not rabid, William.’But he did feel unusual.A heat bloomed in his belly, soothing as the huangjiu Song Lim had given him to calm his nerves, but a shiver touched the back of his neck.

‘Can anyone see this?’He held up his hand, the topaz aura swaying like wheat bending to the wind.‘Shall Mandarin Feng…all the guests…notice this aura?’

‘See this comes of being buried for so long, you are not the sharpest fox, nor the cleverest.’William patted his belly.‘I am famished, what about you?’