Sweet Romance15 min read
My Fox, My Daoist, My Lie
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I kicked the little bundle of fur off the edge of the bed and glared at the man grinning at me.
"Why foxes?" I asked, pointing at the wriggling litter.
"Because you're a little fox," he said, still smiling, like the joke landed perfectly.
I grabbed a paper talisman from his desk and slapped it at his face. "I know you're a daoist. But why did we have—why did we give birth to—pure-blood fox kits?"
He tightened his hold on my hand and pulled me close. He breathed in my ear and said softly, "Because I'm a fox too."
1
I can beat a black-bear demon with my bare hands. I'm a charm-fox trained to seduce, and the one thing I couldn't learn was the cheap little charms — the pretty whips of fox magic everyone expects.
"My mother forced me to be proper," I told him. "She said: be a fox who seduces from strength, not trickery. Don't come home until you've made a human fall in love."
That was a prayer and a threat all at once.
After I knocked that black-bear demon flat, he rubbed his head and agreed to help me stage a play.
"Oh, sister, heroic rescue scenes are so old…" he whined.
I flashed my fist. He straightened up, put on a fierce face, and chased me into the woods. We ran for an hour, him pretending to be clumsy, me pretending to be weak, and then I fell right into Declan Vieira's arms.
2
Declan had eyes like stars wrapped in the dusk.
He tossed the talisman with a clean, practiced motion. One arm around my waist, the other scaring that bear into yelping pain.
I fumbled for the lines where the weak woman clutches her savior. I grabbed his sleeve.
"How can I repay you?" I began, making my voice tremble.
"Marry me?" he said without missing a beat.
He spoke so fast and soft I blinked. There was a faint amusement in his eyes, petals of humor hiding stars.
Are all daoists so unserious?
3
I moved into Declan's house.
Night fell, rain tapped the panes, and I played the homeless maiden. It made sense. I hoped making him dinner would buy me points, but my cooking was a catastrophe.
He cooked well.
He said he had no home, that his sect had thrown him out. The candlelight cut his face just right. He looked like a man wronged — and I believed a man wronged more easily than I should have.
I planned to drain his life force in a week. He placed a bowl of tofu before me and dipped it into a stew that smelled like the sea and hearth both.
He watched me eat like he was storing the sight.
4
That night I crept from the bed to find which room was his. Old floorboards squeaked. The moon was bright enough that his figure blocked it.
"Aha," I thought. "He didn't lock me in."
I reached the corridor and a talisman slapped my forehead. I froze.
…
Time stretched. The wind moved my hair; there was nothing else. It was the first time I saw confusion in his face.
I had nervous sweat. I wasn't great at charm, but I was fast at controlling my aura. I hid my fox-fire just fast enough to beat him.
"Ah… I misjudged you," he said, gently pulling the talisman away. Moonlight softened his features.
"It's not your fault," I began, and then he stuck another talisman to my chest.
Nothing.
He laughed, quietly. "Looks like I made a mistake."
I forced a smile and bowed. "What are you doing here at this hour?"
He waited like he had been waiting for me.
"And… why are you at my veranda?"
My stomach chose that moment to growl loudly.
"I am hungry," I confessed.
5
We ate by the little fire and watched the pot bubble.
He picked a piece of tofu, salted it, and handed it to me.
"It has a little 'chi' powder," he said. "It won't hurt you. It's to stop demons. You aren't a demon, are you?"
Chi powder killed foxes and kept tea lukewarm. I almost choked.
"Are you okay?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Fine. I choked," I lied.
He smiled the way people smile when they're curious. "What are you hiding?"
6
By day he walked the rice fields, hunting spirits and selling peace. He said it was his only skill.
I stayed in the room and plotted.
My friend Iris — a rain-serpent who had been keeping the rain on my side — peered through my window with alarm.
"Your face is pale," she said. "Are you sick?"
I waved her away. Days of chi powder slipped past guards. For a fox, that toxin wears on you.
"You take forever to seduce a daoist! You're a pure fox," she scolded.
"He's different," I sighed.
"Humans are all the same," she said. "Just crawl into his bed and take what you want."
I frowned. But these days with Declan, I felt something else. It was not seduction; it was a clench in my belly whenever he smiled.
"He's coming."
Valentina, a red-bird friend, piped from the eaves. We watched him climb the steps beneath the thinning rain. He walked like the world gave him room.
"Don't let him find you," Iris hissed.
I hid until he was almost at the door. He looked at me, and the rain blurred him like an old painting.
7
"Funny thing," he said, arms folded, like he owned the night. "It hasn't stopped raining since you arrived."
"Maybe the sky misses me," I teased.
"Or maybe you don't want to leave."
"I don't want to leave."
The truth came out before I could swallow it. I tried a softer voice. "The sky listened."
I tucked little Iris up in my sleeve and smiled.
He moved slow, watching me.
"I can't keep you safe if you stay," he said eventually. "You're too pretty for this road."
"I won't go."
He called me "lady" like a joke. I hated it, but it was warm.
8
He didn't argue long. He gave me a paper umbrella woven from snake-bone handles and asked me to go to town. "You're pretty. Someone will shelter you."
"Why won't you stay?"
"I would if I could," he said, his voice odd. "But if I keep you here, people will try to break you."
I clutched the umbrella. "I won't go."
Iris flinched at my wrist.
9
He left. I planned poison — a subtle mesmeric powder rolled into daytime stew.
A purple-robed woman burst through the door that afternoon like a storm of virtue.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"I… my father just died of fever. Declan took me in," I lied, wrapping my sleeve over half my face.
She stared. The squad behind her wore white and copper; they were exorcists.
"Declan Vieira," she spat. "How could he?"
"He's a predator," she warned. "He's using women."
I poured her a cup of tea and she drank like a drowning woman. She didn't see the truth yet.
10
"Stop defending him," she hissed, standing. "I've seen how he behaves."
"Do you believe her?" Declan asked softly from the doorway.
"I do," I said, because I couldn't lose him. He smiled as if I had given him a gift.
The purple lady drew her sword.
"Tell me where you hid the book!" she shouted, and the others closed in.
Declan pressed me behind him. "Hide," he ordered.
11
I ducked behind a cabinet and drew a small charm of my own. His hands were not skilled; the fight looked balanced. Then the purple woman faltered, her face slack.
I had slipped the mesmeric into the tea earlier — I admit it. Declan's mouth curved. He didn't strike. He wrapped his arm around me, breathed my name in a way that made my bones melt, and then we vanished into smoke.
He ran like a thief, not like a hero. We slid across rooftops and dropped into the forest clearing. I had never flown with a human so close.
When we landed, he blinked and asked, "How did I bring you here?"
I laughed breathlessly. He flashed a frustrated look and set a talisman on fire.
"This is awkward," he said. "We met like this, and now—"
I bit my lip. He noticed.
"Did you always expect to find someone?" he asked.
12
"Do you remember snow?" I lied. "The night you saved me was snowy."
"I've never seen snow," he said.
We were close enough that his breath fogged. He leaned in.
"Maybe you picked the wrong man," he teased, almost kissed me, then said, "I used to be called "Mateo" sometimes. But names—"
He said, "I have done bad things. People say I'm a curse, they avoid me. If you call me a good man, I will be your good man."
13
We kept watching each other by the little fire. I dared to touch his hand. He smelled of rain and river.
"I can't sleep," I confessed.
"Neither can I sometimes," he said, and his voice lowered.
I climbed into his lap, as foolish as that sounds. My arms trembled. He smiled like a boy.
"You can't be so sure," he murmured. "If you are sure, stay."
I tried to kiss him. I missed his lips. He laughed softly and said, "You can't do that?"
I clung anyway. He did not pull away.
14
A few days later, more threats arrived: people calling him treacherous for leaking sect scrolls. Rumors said he had stolen the Green Cliff school's secrets and sold them; others said he'd made men mad. The name "Declan Vieira" became a brand of danger.
I should have fled. I didn't.
I said, "I'll give him to them if they cut him."
I stole him away from a crowd with rain in its teeth. He bled, but he only had time to look at me.
"You have nine tails, little fox," he said, counting my tails one by one through his blood-smeared fingers.
"How many tails do you think a bad man has?" I asked.
"I have two names," he said simply. "One for the road, one for the place they called me home. Call me Mateo when you want the fox."
15
After the storm and the fierce wound, he pretended to die on a temple stair and made it look like the world had decided: he would be punished.
A mob gathered, yelling. They called him friend and then traitor. They wanted blood.
I carried him into an abandoned shrine. His breath was hot on my neck. "I did it on purpose," he admitted later. "I wanted you to come."
"You're a madman," I said.
He smiled. "Not a madman. A man who wanted you to stay."
16
I left and returned to my clan. I failed at seduction and my mother scolded me for falling for a human.
"He's a curse," my mother said. "He will wreck your life."
"I like him," I said, with more spite than truth.
"Since when?"
"Since the first moonlight."
My mother scowled. She ordered me to the Trial of Foxes: a test where pairs were chosen and the foxes had to fight, and I drew the name of the clan lord's youngest, Mateo Andersson.
I met him under a tree. He was dangerous, a rumor and a charm with a grin that stole sun. He said, to my surprise, "I like you."
I told him I had a human in mind.
"You can't beat a daoist," he laughed.
17
Mateo—who I later learned was the same as Declan—took my challenge too seriously. He both teased and helped me, and under a foolish moon he kissed me first. He was two people who moved like one.
"You said you liked a daoist," he whispered later, fingers busy at my waist. "I will be a daoist for you, if you want."
"I never said I liked him," I protested.
"Then be clear," he said.
18
The contest ended. We didn't speak for a little while, and then word came like thunder: Declan had been ambushed at a temple outside town — the Green Cliff school accused him of betrayal. Clergy and fighters gathered like vultures. I ran with Iris and Valentina into the standing crowd and saw him on a platform, robes soaked with rain and blood, accused.
"Declan Vieira, you have spread forbidden scrolls," a man at the head called.
"No," Declan said softly. He looked at me over the people. "I didn't."
A sword flashed. Someone stabbed him in the shoulder and then again.
I lunged forward, scooped him up, and dragged him into a derelict shrine like a thief carrying the moon.
19
He bled slowly, and I stared at him. He reached out and took my hand.
"I wanted them to come," he breathed. "So you'd follow."
"You liar," I hissed. "You knew they'd hunt you."
"I wanted you to see me there, in truth," he said. "So you couldn't be a fox who only liked a safe man."
"You are a deer that walks among wolves," I said, half laughing, half crying. "You wreck things deliberately."
"I did it so you could not run."
20
Later, he woke. We sat by a small fire. The rain whispered against the thresholds. I asked him bluntly, "Why leak the Green Cliff secret?"
He smiled like someone telling a simple joke: "If a secret stays hidden, people die trying to take it. If everyone knows, it ceases to be a prize."
"You're proud of wrecking lives?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I pick which lives to save. I picked them wrong sometimes."
21
We married in secret under a rain that liked to stay. My mother calmed, or pretended to. Declan and I had kits: a whole litter of small, pure-fox pups who wagged their fluffy tails like fans.
And then the truth cracked like pottery. I found claw-marks along his ribs; I found him laughing in any corner of my home like a fox who had been born in the wild. The small tell: he'd play with my tails, tug them like a dog trembles at a string. My jaw dropped.
"You're a fox," I said.
He grinned. "Mateo."
"Four names now?" I snapped.
22
The world is unreliable, and worse: people hate unreliable. News travelled: "Declan the traitor was a fox. He lived among us." The Green Cliff people called him "poison," and the old purple-robed woman who had stormed into my room earlier played the lead in the chorus that called for his exposure. They wanted him punished publicly.
I should have fled again. I didn't.
23
The public punishment was held in the town square, under a stretch of sky that leaked rain but preferred witnesses.
"It will be short," Declan told me. "Watch."
They led him up on a wooden stage, the same steps used for traders and town criers. The paneled crowd swelled: clergy in white, townsfolk, fighters who had their own grudges. I stood on the edge, holding my kits behind a curtain.
"Declan Vieira, you are accused," the high monk boomed. "You spread forbidden scrolls and consorted with demons."
He stood with my husband's face unflinching. No flinch, no mask when the crowd shouted. His palms were not empty.
I pulled my fox-mind steady. This was the moment the book told me would happen: either he fell, or we forced them to eat their own words.
The purple-robed woman, Annika Hansen, stepped forward. Her sword glittered like an accusation.
"You let demons into our order," she cried. "You killed Lu Jiu-ba with your lies!"
"Lu Jiu-ba?" Declan repeated quietly. "He died before my influence. What you call my leak was my shield."
"Silence," she hissed.
The crowd swung between boos and hunger for a spectacle.
"I have witnesses," Annika shouted. "He met with foxes. I raised the alarm."
From the side, a man with a crooked smile — one of her followers — shouted proof. One by one they pushed forward details that they thought could shatter him: "He was at the shrine!", "He taught a boy the Green Cliff moves!", "He is a demon in human robes!"
24
I could feel the hunger in the crowd. This was a theatre I had helped create and a theatre I could ruin.
"Enough," I said.
Half a dozen heads snapped to me. The monks squinted. Declan's eyes met mine from the platform; he raised one eyebrow as if to say: now.
"I speak," I said, and my voice was small but clear. "I have lived with Declan. I am a fox. I kept my tail hidden, I lied to you all. But I will not watch you punish the wrong men."
Someone laughed.
"You lie to us!" Annika spat. "How can we trust a demon?"
"Listen," I said. "You all hate Declan because he leaked a scroll. But who gains from that? Who had motive to make him look guilty? He did not act alone in your schemes; someone used your hatred to grow theirs."
25
I stepped down from my hiding and took Declan's hand. He climbed down like a man who had decided a duel was more honorable than a trap.
"Ask them to tell one story that fits," I said, addressing the crowd. "Ask them to show proof."
The purple woman glared. She was the loudest, the cruelest. She raised her hand to point at me.
"She is a creature of trickery!"
I stopped her.
"Annika," I said, "you came to my room uninvited. You called him a predator. Today we will show how the predators hunt."
I had been watching them since I came back to town. Their small operations were obvious to a fox that could hear beetles under stones. They had a ledger: gifts, payments to fighters, a list of towns where they intended to set the scroll's expiry. I had it tucked into a ribbon under my sash; a fox learns to hide.
"Reveal it," I said.
26
I unrolled the ledger into the light. Men around me gasped. The townsfolk leaned in. It was a list of paymasters, of bribes, of names whom Annika had paid to cry treason. There were receipts with the Green Cliff seal — forged.
"What is this?" someone shouted. "This proves nothing!"
"It proves they have motive," I said. "They stood to gain from Declan's fall. He wasn't hiding the scroll to gain gold. He taught it cheaply so men couldn't kill each other for it."
The monk tried to seize the ledger. Annika lunged. Declan stepped forward and did something I did not expect: he laughed, low and cold.
"You all wanted a show," he said. "You will have one."
27
He called for witnesses — artisans, shopkeepers, and a solitary monk who had been quiet until then. The monk stepped up. He was from Green Cliff originally. He opened his palm and showed a paper: a copy of the scroll that had been taught in public months before the "leak" was supposed to occur.
"I taught it," he said. "We taught it publicly because we feared what secret hoarding would do. Declan spread it so the sect could not be used as a weapon."
Annika's face blanched. She had counted on secrecy, after all.
Then I read passages from the forged receipts. The names were not just fighters: they were town leaders paid to scream "traitor" at the right moment. The crowd muttered.
"She hired men to start a frenzy," I said slowly. "She wanted Declan removed to make room for herself."
Annika's composure cracked. She made to raise her sword. The crowd hissed.
"Take her," someone shouted.
"No!" Declan said. "Listen to me."
28
Annika's expression changed: from anger to terror, and then to denial. She shook her head as if shaking off wet cloth.
"This is a lie," she cried. "You cannot prove this!"
"Look," Declan said, and his voice cut the square like an edge. "You took gold to stir up grief. These receipts are authentic. These witnesses will swear to the meetings. Your accomplices will not back you. They fear now that their names will be known."
People began to murmur: who among them had ridden with Annika? Who had a ledger that matched?
29
One by one, Annika's supporters stepped back. A fighter who had shouted the loudest stumbled over his words. A town official clutched his collar and paled. The monk at the head tried to regain control.
"This is a set-up," he barked. "You cannot return justice to chaos because one woman has a grudge."
"Then judge by truth," I said, louder. "Let them speak."
They did. Men confessed small parts of the scheme. The ledger matched dates of town rallies, the payments for barley and banners to drum the crowd. A man who had come to yell "traitor" wept when he admitted he'd been paid two coins to shout.
The square, which had been a hungry beast, turned into a mirror. The mob that had wanted to tear a man for a story found itself staring at its own hand.
30
Annika's face collapsed all the way from pride to raw panic. She crumpled to her knees in the center of the square. The people who had once called for Declan's death now stared at her like she had shown them a rotten fruit.
Her voice changed: from loud to pleading to small. "I was protecting the order," she said. "They told me to do it. They promised me the scroll would keep us safe."
"Who told you?" someone demanded.
"No one. I did it for power. For fear. For greed."
The crowd did not roar. They watched. A hush fell. Around us, people sighed — some with relief, some with shame. Someone took out a cloth and began to record the confessions. The monk did not know whether to bind her or to help her.
31
Annika begged at my feet. Her plea went through stages: first anger at being called out, then denial, then bargaining.
"You'll be the one to fall," she snapped at me. "What do you want? Power?"
"I want truth," I said. "I want the man you dragged to be seen honestly. I want you to answer to a town for the mischief you sowed."
The people around us were no longer bloodthirsty. They were tired. They wanted to fix things. Declan did not call for her death. He ordered something different.
"He must pay," an old woman shouted. "She must be stripped of her rank and pay back everyone she deceived."
32
The punishment was public and specific.
Annika was ordered to stand on the platform and read aloud every name she had bribed. She would confess the lies she had told. She would go from house to house, repay what she could with sacrifices of her possessions, and be banned from the orders of the higher monks for five years.
She went through the motions like a woman losing the last of her breath. She tried to rise and sway; people spat; a few slapped a shoe against her head. The crowd that had been ready to break Declan had turned its ire on her, urging for a methodical, visible humiliation — not blood, but exposure. Cameras do not exist here, but the town recorded everything in its memory.
Her reactions were a map: pride, then denial, then bargaining, then pleading, then cracked silence. The onlookers shifted from shock to whispering, to nodding, to taking out writing slates to copy receipts. Children pointed. A few women laughed. A young monk cried openly.
When she finally finished reading the ledger and admitting each lie, the air was heavy but cleaner. "You've been judged in public," a town elder said. "Now live with this."
Annika collapsed, and the crowd dispersed like rain leaving rooftops — relieved but changed.
33
Afterwards, Declan and I walked back through the square together. People stared, shook heads, or gave tiny bows of apology. Some refused to meet our eyes.
"You used my fire," he said softly, fingers threading mine. "You turned their anger into the light we needed."
"I lied for you before I loved you," I said. "Now I won't."
He pressed the back of my hand to his lips. "You are my certainty."
We married later among a few fox relations and the small handful of honest friends. My mother came, because mothers come to keep their children halfway steady. We had kits — a whole litter of fox pups that rolled like autumn leaves.
34
Years passed. The townspeople learned a new story about Declan — that he had been a restless man who sometimes broke rules to keep others alive. Annika lost her standing and learned to be smaller. She was not destroyed; she learned the heavy lesson of public shame.
"Did you punish them enough?" my mother finally asked me one night, watching a pup chase his tail.
"People will remember," I said.
"We liked to remember before," my mother replied, "but you made them face what lies they tell."
I smiled. Declan tugged my chin. He still loved to count my tails when he was happy. He would catch a pup and tuck it under his arm like a farmer with a new harvest.
35
I had plenty of chances to be bitter. I could have hung onto the moment he had hidden his true name. I could have kept my teeth bared.
Instead I learned how he loved: messy and full of risk. He had been both a daoist and a fox because the world required different skins. He had risked himself publicly so that the people who wanted to make secrets into weapons couldn't do it.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked him once, when the pups were small and my temper was still sharp.
"I wanted you to choose me," he answered, quiet. "Not the idea of me."
I remembered the night he counted my tails and smiled.
"You're mine," he said, not like a claim but a promise.
I leaned my head on his shoulder and watched our little family make mischief in the yard — a foxfamily, a daoist, a woman who had once planned to use a man and had instead fallen in love.
The pups chased each other, batting at Declan's sleeves. One tumbled and landed on my lap, warm and heavy.
"Keep count," I said. "Nine tails means you love well."
He laughed and kissed the top of a pup's head. "You did good, little fox."
The moon came up thin, silver as a thread. One pup, smaller than the others, waggled his tail like he'd learned to wag a flag.
I cupped the pup's nose and whispered, "You're the story I've got."
The End
— Thank you for reading —