Chapter 6
“Don’t! Don’t touch him,” a young voice snarls. Just a boy, from the sound of it, as Basuin’s eyes struggle to open.
“I’m not,” another voice whispers—younger. “I think he’s hurt.”
The forest still looks unfamiliar when he blinks away the blur in his vision.
The sky is blocked out by a canopy of leaves swaying overhead, the tall oaks’ branches intertwining as if holding hands.
They shelter him from the sun rising high in the sky.
Basuin can’t tell if it’s risen or soon to set.
“It doesn’t matter!” Angry and hissing. “He’s one of them.”
That stings worse than the smoke in his eyes.
Basuin sits up—tries to, at least—with a groan of pain and a curse slipped from between his lips.
His fingers clutch at his chest where the ache burns something fierce.
Where his heart used to be. It feels empty now, and yet overflowing. Heavy, but with nothing.
Basuin rubs his eyes, gentle on his left where the scar is still fragile, aches radiating all throughout his body.
He hunches over his lap, body curled inwardly, an arm braced against his stomach.
There is soot, black as the earth, marring his palm, ash smeared on his skin. The fire was real, wasn’t it?
His eyes search over his forearms. There are no blisters or burns, no scratches from claws, no bruises or blood.
Just stretches of dark bronze skin fitted over twitching muscles marked by sunspots and dark moles from standing beneath the Xalkhan sun.
Basuin’s eyes trace over the white scars drawn on his body, flexing his fingers to encourage the blood back.
When the needling fades and he regains feeling in his limbs, someone gasps.
Two young boys stand a few feet away from him—one with wheat-brown hair, holding tight to the elbow of another with gold-white hair messy and hanging in front of his eyes. Children.
“Shit!” the brown-haired one curses, yanking the other toward him. “Get back! Get away from us!”
The blond boy stares Basuin down, eyes big and childlike and filled with sincerity. “Hami,” he cuts at the other boy, pulling his arm free. “He won’t hurt us.”
Hami’s face shatters into betrayal, mouth trembling until he sets it in a line of anger. Then, he glares straight through the forest at Basuin, eyes the same dark shade as the leaves shaken from the trees above them.
“Who are you?” Basuin asks. Children, out in the forest. On an island, abandoned, and they’re alone. No, this cannot be. With a grunt of pain, he pushes himself off the forest floor, struggling for air as he clutches his chest.
“Don’t,” Hami cries, but the other boy is faster. He advances quicker than Basuin can take a step back, until his sandal catches on a root running through the ground and he pitches forward. Reflexively, Basuin catches him by the shoulder.
“Yaelic!” the boy shouts, breathing hard. “My name is Yaelic and I—I’m going to serve you!” He pulls away from Basuin’s grasp. Yaelic stands tall, forcing his shoulders back and his chin up, but still barely reaches Basuin’s torso.
Basuin’s jaw hangs. “What?”
“You saved us,” the child Yaelic says. “My brother and I, you saved us from the fire.” He glances over his shoulder at Hami, who stares on in fear.
“No,” Hami seethes, but it’s iced in dread.
Basuin’s eyes flick between the brothers, slow realization wriggling like worms in his head. The fire, the wolf pups. These aren’t children. They’re spirits.
Confusion, and a cold concoction of something else, sends a bitter wave rolling through his stomach. He doesn’t know where he is anymore. Who—or what—he is. But it hurts. His hand sneaks its way to his collar, squeezing his mother’s stone in his palm.
“I’ve done nothing of the sort,” he answers the boy and hopes it’s true. “Tell me which way to the bastion and I’ll leave you alone.”
It’s like a cry for war, the way that Hami recoils and yells with rage. “I knew it! He’s one of them, he’s a soldier.” Hami lunges forward, shackling a hand around his brother’s. “C’mon, Yaelic!”
And yet again, Yaelic rips away from Hami. “No! I’m not going. He saved us. He’s not a soldier—he’s a god. And I’m going to serve him.”
Basuin takes two steps back. No, he misheard.
The brothers stare one another down. One seething, breathing hard. The other calm, only glancing back once at Basuin. It’s enough to make his hand twitch over where his heart used to be.
A god?
Basuin pulls at his hair, tangling the strands into a black mess tumbling over his shoulders. He’s got to get out of here. Back to the bastion—yes. Kensy’s waiting for him to return, Basuin has a job to do.
No, not anymore. Basuin defied direct orders.
He can’t go back to the bastion. Kensy will send him home.
He doesn’t know where he’ll go, doesn’t care.
As long as it’s not back to that fucking shack on the edge of the woods.
But even in death, the heavy chains of guilt seem to follow him no matter where he goes.
He takes another step backward, away from the brothers, only for the ache in his chest to hit him like a bullet. Basuin seizes.
Where do you think you’re going? something asks from inside of him. You belong to me now, little soldier boy.
Staggered, Basuin’s world spins and he lands on his hands and knees, gasping for air over the forest floor.
He’s going to throw up. Gods, he’s going to hurl.
And those kids—those fucking kids—are watching him.
Basuin reaches for his chest with blackened fingers, but there is no wound.
Just the remnants of the wolf-man, the empty chamber where his heart should reside.
Once, before he died, he had one, he swears.
Is he dead? It hurts too bad for him to be dead. He’s been dead like this before, in Valkesta, where it hurt too goddamn much to be dead but he wished for it anyway.
That’s right, the wolf-man says, curled up in the hole in Basuin’s chest. You’ve met me before. Your mother warned you about me.
Basuin sits back on his haunches, hands covering his eyes. In the darkness, the wolf-man emerges. From the black fur of his wolf head and sinking into the black skin of his man chest, there is blood. It leaks, sticky and red, from his ruby eyes.
He flexes his fingers, covered in black soot. “What am I?” he asks, to the thing inside him.
Yaelic’s eyes meet his, shining emerald in the light filtering through the canopy. “The Wolf God,” the boy answers, and the forest lurches. His ears ring with the reverberations of bullets and war cries.
Your men have come and ravaged the forest, the wolf-man says.
He didn’t ask to come here.
And yet, like a good soldier, you followed. So like a good soldier, you will pay your army’s price.
A hand made of claws strikes something inside Basuin and he cries out as his flesh tears like tender, succulent meat roasted over an open flame. His blood, the same color as the wolf-man’s, drips down his body, but when he opens his eyes and looks down at his chest, there’s no wound.
With blood.
There’s something desperate grasping at his limbs, climbing up his nerves.
He was a son, once. And then a soldier. A war hero.
A failure and a disgrace. But who is he now?
What is this thing inside of him, not wolf and not man and not tangible?
Basuin wants to stick his fingers into the nonexistent wound and peel that wolf-man out of him.
You were chosen. The wolf-man curls up inside of him now, black fur ruffled.
Chosen to what? His teeth bite into his tongue.
You are the Wolf God, it snaps its teeth. Chosen to protect the forest, it growls.
Basuin doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream or run away. “I have to get out of here,” he says to no one. No one who will listen, at least. “I won’t be shackled to you.”
The wolf-man huffs a laugh.
I own you, the wolf-man says from inside him. What is a soldier without his duty? You wouldn’t know, little soldier boy.
“I’m leaving,” Hami says among the echoing sounds flooding Basuin’s mind, and then he’s snapped back into the real world. “He’s dangerous.”
“He’s our god,” Yaelic pleads.
“He’s our enemy!” Hami snaps back. “If you want to serve a soldier, you’re stupider than I thought. Last chance, Yaelic.”
“Please,” Yaelic begs. His voice is scratchy and raw and aching. “Don’t leave me.”
“Last chance,” Hami repeats.
Basuin’s head swims. It happens too fast for him to catch ahold of.
He’s chasing something he doesn’t know the shape of.
Then, in a flash of bright green that blinds the forest, Hami morphs and changes.
When the glow dies, in his place stands a small wolf pup, shoulders hunched and hackles raised.
A pup he’d held—a pup he’d saved from Kensy’s fire.
A spirit; a boy who lived in these woods until Kensy stormed them.
“No,” Yaelic whispers, a shake in his voice. He outstretches a small hand. “Don’t leave, Hami.”
But his words are lost under the shuffle of paws on bark as Hami turns heel and leaps into the distant trees, leaving his brother behind. Something inside Basuin aches like rotting flesh, oozing acrid pitch and swallowing his insides with it.
All is quiet until Basuin calls his name. “Yaelic,” he repeats, and the boy with golden hair nods. When he turns to look at Basuin, there are tears dampening his cheeks.
“You should go,” Basuin says. “Before he leaves you behind.”
Sharp and quick and unexpected, Yaelic’s whole countenance shifts into something firmer. He mops up his tears with his sleeves, sniffling.
“I won’t,” Yaelic says. Instead, he bows his head. “I owe you my life.” When he straightens, there’s a fire in his green eyes. It smothers the pain of his brother abandoning him. “Please. I won’t take no for an answer.”