Chapter 7
The first thing he sees when the trees part is a woman standing tall and straight in their path. Familiar, somehow, and not at all. The straight ends of her hair brush by her shoulders, blunt bangs ruffled by the breeze. But it’s her eyes that he remembers.
A dark and oozing amber, a stricken look of horror marring her face. The woman from the forest, who told him, Go back. You’re making a mistake.
Yaelic rushes toward her, dropping to his knees in a show of worship, same as he had to Basuin. His dirt-caked legs collapse into the brush, unbothered by any prickles.
But the woman’s eyes don’t leave Basuin, even as Yaelic bows. She stares straight at him, brows drawn derisively. He can’t look away, locked in her stunned gaze. A line of ash angles over her jawline and down her neck. His godstone burns and buzzes against his chest.
“Am-sa,” Yaelic calls her. “I’ve brought the Wolf God—he saved me and my brother from the fire.”
The woman recoils, and her eyes drop to the boy at her feet. Her teeth grind, and then her lips part, but no words come out. Her swallow moves down the column of her throat and Basuin’s fingers curl into a fist.
“Rise, Yaelic,” she says. The command of it straightens her somehow, as if she’s regained consciousness. Her face smooths out in a snap, everything angular about her becoming even sharper. Shoulders bent into spears, cheekbones set like a knife’s edge. Even the slope of her nose seems dangerous.
As she reaches a hand toward Yaelic, he scrambles to his feet, patting dirt from his tattered robes. “Hami—Is he here? He left and—”
“Your brother is safe,” she says, sweeping his white-gold hair from his eyes. “Go inside, now.”
Basuin expects him to run off at her command, but Yaelic hesitates. He hides his hands behind his back where only Basuin can see, balling them up into fists.
“I’ve brought the Wolf God here,” Yaelic repeats himself. His voice sounds small.
“I am no such thing,” Basuin says. “I’ve seen to getting Yaelic back to his brother, which was all I set out to do.”
Now, he’ll go back to the bastion. Kensy might kill him.
And yet, it’s the wolf-man that unhinges its maw and snaps its teeth around Basuin’s lung, puncturing it with a squelch and a hiss of air. Basuin’s teeth gnash into his lip to stop a groan of pain, choking on the taste of rancid meat.
Yaelic’s look of pure betrayal knocks the rest of the air from Basuin’s body. Those big, childish green eyes of his. Glistening with unshed tears now, mouth in a tremble. He’s just a boy.
And Basuin is just a soldier. Not a god.
The woman returns with a curt nod. “Come, Yaelic.”
His eyes widen even more as he looks between Basuin and the woman. “No,” he protests, looking up at Basuin. Yaelic shuffles backward, toward Basuin, hand fisting in Basuin’s sleeve. “You’ll come too, won’t you?”
Before Basuin can answer, she hisses, “No. He can go back to wherever he came from.”
“Am-sa,” Yaelic pleads. “He’s a god, too. He needs rest.”
“He’s a soldier,” she bites back, but all heat is directed toward Basuin. She raises her chin at him. “He belongs with his own kind—the dangerous kind.”
“He saved us.” Yaelic clings to him, even as Basuin tries to shake the wolf pup off. “He isn’t dangerous, not like the others. He saved me and Hami.”
“Yaelic,” he interrupts, voice nicked into a thing with teeth. “I’m not staying.”
“You’re not welcome,” the woman amends for him, and it takes strength for Basuin not to rise to her heckling. She’s right—whoever she is. She’s right that he’s a soldier, and he’s dangerous, and he’s not welcome here. Wherever here is.
“Then neither am I,” Yaelic says, a puff of his chest and a thrill of confidence in his voice. Determination and decision. “I won’t go. Not without him.” Yaelic’s hand falls and the boy steadies himself alone. “I bound myself to him, Am-sa.”
The cool, controlled look she wears vanishes, a flash of shock and horror flitting across her visage. “You what?” Incredulity floods her voice.
“He’s my god now,” Yaelic says. “If he isn’t allowed in the village, then neither am I.”
Children; how stubborn they are. Basuin’s mouth moves around words, but none of them come out to tell Yaelic he’ll do no such thing.
This is where Yaelic belongs—his brother is here.
The woman called Am-sa seems to care. Basuin doesn’t need this kid stuck to his leg.
He doesn’t need another life to carry on his back.
But he’s confused, too. He doesn’t know where he is, who he is.
Why Yaelic calls him a god, and why he bound himself to Basuin.
Responsibility is red and hot in his chest. Kensy left Yaelic motherless, but Basuin was the one to pull him and his brother from the fire. Yaelic’s life is a weight on his back.
This is for the best. To leave him here with this woman and his brother and march back to the bastion. Basuin can’t be dead. If he were dead, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. He can figure this out on his own.
Inside him, the wolf-man chuffs a laugh.
As he mulls on his words, something he isn’t keen to do, the woman’s shoulders droop enough to catch his eye. She takes a breath, chest rising and falling with a melodic sigh, and reaches to brush a hand through her hair.
“We’ll talk more about this later,” she finally says, voice hammered into a monotonous thing. “You can both stay—just for the night.” Her eyes target his. “But you must leave in the morning.”
It sends a measure of chill straight through him.
If he wasn’t trained into such a mean thing, he might have shuddered.
But he stands strong and proud, despite wanting to shrink under her gaze.
She sees him as an enemy; her dark eyes say as much.
But Basuin’s been an enemy for most of his life, so it doesn’t matter.
Yaelic bows deeply. “Thank you, Am-sa!” But she’s already turning her back to them and walking away.
Basuin lurches forward, unable to stop himself. “Who are you?” he asks after her. Desperation leaks between his teeth and spills onto his tongue.
The wolf-man howls in laughter.
“The Forest God,” she answers, looking at him from over her shoulder. Then, a thread of blue light appears in a tangle around her wrist, and in one bright flash, the Forest God thrusts her hand forward. The air shimmers—like magic.
It’s as if the wolf-man thunders in place of his heart, something deep within him thrumming from behind his ribcage. Beating at him, drumming in a march. Her, it says.
A dome appears out of the glowing lights that glitter from the Forest God’s fingers, encasing the forest ahead of them. Then, her hand pierces the bubble and her arm sinks into the magic, creating a tear in the protective seal.
You’ll protect her, the wolf-man barks.
It’s feral. Wild and alive. His nonexistent heart hammers like it did on the battlefield—in Valkesta.
Fall back! someone called. Push forward! he shouted. The winds howled, Kill, kill, kill! Protect, protect, protect!
A command, he realizes. It’s a command, one that’s grown inside the house of his body from the once-god that now resides between his bones. The Wolf God, chosen to protect the forest. But not only the forest.
Protect, protect, protect.
The Forest God looks back at him again, face hardened and eyes cold. “Welcome to Gyeosi, Wolf God.”
It feels like rain, the first time he takes a step through the magic barrier and into Gyeosi.
Torrential rain beating down on him, sleeting across his shoulders and cutting through his skin, rolling down his back in chilling lines.
It’s heavy. He might drown in the downpour of the storm, thunder rumbling above the clouds he cannot see. The night is dark.
But then the Forest God walks through the trees and Gyeosi transforms entirely.
It’s as if the sun comes out—the shadowed trees of the forest blossom into a village that feels like home.
Along the branches, strung up with twine, lanterns and glass balls housing fire and magic glow to life as if the Forest God commands them to, without even a word or a flick of her wrist.
The rain stops falling, the storm clouds race to clear the sky, and it’s warm. Where his heart should be, the wolf-man laughs at him.
There is magic here, on this island. Running through the ground. What he felt before, when he first stepped upon the land, is nothing compared to the currents of energy sparking in the air of Gyeosi. Even breathing is easier.
“Isn’t it great?” Yaelic, trotting along beside him, asks with a smile. “Hami’s probably waiting for us.”
For Yaelic, maybe. Not for him, an enemy. But Yaelic’s grin glows in the village lights and Basuin can’t bring himself to dim it. Not now, anyway.
As if summoned, there’s a rustle in the brush to his right.
His head turns, his eyes unfocused as his hearing takes precedence.
Something takes shape and form as it moves through the foliage.
Hami, maybe. Even the Forest God comes to a halt, steps ahead of them.
As her footfalls pause, everything in their vicinity quiets as if bowing to her presence.
But it’s not Hami at all. From the underbrush peeks out the snout of a small deer, its head following as it stretches out from the foliage and shakes leaves from its back. There are sticker burrs caught in its glossy chestnut fur.
A fawn, the puff of its tail twitching happily with a step toward them. Just a baby. It looks at him curiously, glassy black eyes staring at him. Basuin leans back, ready to put space between them.
“Qia,” the Forest God calls out from behind him. “Come out, don’t startle him.”
With a snuff, the baby deer shakes out its fur again, and then a swarm of green light surrounds it, motes of dust like stars scattered across the sky.
Before his eyes, like Hami had morphed into the wolf pup, the deer shifts and materializes into a human body.
He tries not to blink—not this time—but the light is harsh and he flinches from it.