Chapter 17
The morning breaks sooner than he wished it would.
He can’t bring himself to tell Yaelic the truth of it, so he doesn’t wake the boy.
He’s too young, too loyal. Bound himself to Bass without a second thought.
If Basuin told him, the heartbreak alone would shatter the jade yolk of Yaelic’s eyes, and that’s too much for him to bear.
Ren’s eyes, obsidian and sharp and resentful—almost sad—were heavy enough. Like a chain wrapped around his neck, stealing his last breath.
At the edge of the village, she’s waiting for him, along with two spirits more than Basuin bargained for.
Ko is draped along Haaman’s back, still taller than Bass even with his back hunched.
Haaman sees him first, blowing out a harsh breath through their nostrils and looking away.
Ko turns at this, and Ren follows suit, and Basuin strides along toward them.
“Captain!”
He curses.
Yaelic barrels toward him, nearly losing his balance, eyes panicked. Behind him, Hami chases after his brother, a righteous anger scrunching his face.
“Captain,” Yaelic pants, skidding to a stop before him. “Where—” He gulps down air, hands on his knees. “You’re leaving me behind?”
Basuin frowns, but Hami latches onto Yaelic, tugging him away. “You’re not taking him again. He doesn’t belong to you.”
It strikes him now how much older Hami seems than Yaelic.
Not taller, but stockier somehow. When Yaelic balls his fists up, it looks petulant.
The way Hami stands, one arm hooked around his brother, fingers curled by his side, it radiates a fury that Bass accepts.
The sleeves of his robe stop well above his wrists. He’s outgrown it already.
“Get off me.” Yaelic struggles out from his brother’s grasp. “You don’t own me either, Hami. I’m going with him.”
“You’re my brother.” Hami wilts, and it’s enough that Yaelic finally pushes him off. Hami is bigger than Yaelic, yes, but he’s still just a pup. A child who lost his mother and is scared to lose his brother.
“He’ll be safe,” Basuin says, before he has a chance to consider telling Yaelic to stay. “Yaelic will always have my protection. You have my vow.”
But for how long? the wolf-man inside him huffs, rolling onto its back in laughter. Shame burns just below his skin.
“We’ll be back,” Yaelic tells Hami, shoving his shoulder. “Right?” Now, he looks to Bass, the green of his eyes sparkling with excitement and curiosity. Bass can’t say no to that, so he just nods his head. Yaelic, at least, will be back.
As Yaelic skips off to greet Ren, Hami is left staring at Basuin with glassy eyes. “You’re our enemy,” he seethes. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
“I know,” Bass answers, biting his tongue.
Hami watches them with sharp eyes as they exit Gyeosi, lingering until the trees swallow them and Hami disappears from sight. Maybe he lingers well after, too. Basuin will never know, but he feels an emptiness settle into his body with every step they take.
“Where are we’re going anyway, Captain?” Yaelic asks bright-eyed.
“Away from here,” he says. Away from you, he hears, from a memory long ago that still tastes like the man he laid with. “To the Crying Trees.”
Do you think I have anyone left to go back to?
You think I do? Basuin asked him, kicking at the broken porcelain under his boot that spilled over the tent floor. Where will you go when we’re done?
Anywhere, Isaniel said. Away from you.
Yaelic is an unfortunate addition to their party of four.
Soon, Basuin learns that Ko volunteered to escort them, dragging Haaman along too.
Seeing Ren and Ko together—how she said he was her teacher, and her first friend more than that—creates a strange feeling inside him.
It’s like seeing a new side of Ren completely.
Something not so harsh. Someone who has friends, not only followers. A woman, not just a god.
Basuin isn’t sure if Ko and Haaman know why they journey to the Crying Trees. Part of him hopes they don’t. A different, raging, tired part of him hopes they do. And that they hate him for it.
He hopes Yaelic will hate him for it, too.
They traverse the forest in near-silence, beyond Yaelic’s chattering.
Ko walks beside Ren, towering over her but keeping one step behind her, his robes trailing after him.
They converse with one another, Ko’s head dipping low to Ren’s height, but it’s so quiet Bass can’t make out what they speak of.
But sometimes, and only because he’s staring, he’ll catch the smallest laugh from Ren, the crinkle of her eyes—something Ko has said to make her smile so casually. It twists his gut.
Bass and Haaman, with distance between them, bring up the rear. They don’t look at each other. They don’t talk to each other. Yaelic runs back and forth between Bass and Ko, his growing legs carrying him with all the energy of a young pup.
“How tall is your tree?” Yaelic asks.
“I am one of the tallest,” Ko answers. “My brethren all stand below me, except for the elder tree who connects us all.” Ko smiles down at Yaelic, and Bass feels something crawl under his skin.
It would warm his nonexistent heart if he wasn’t colored by a stroke of envy.
He should’ve been gentler with Yaelic. Now, it’ll be Ko entertaining him like this. Good, then.
Basuin can’t remember if he was ever soft. Once, though, he washed and combed and braided his mother’s hair—he does remember that. When she became too sick to do it herself, too weak to stand for long periods. And then she became too weak to stand at all without Basuin to lean on.
He brings his hand up, studying the lines on his palm and the white scars drawn on the back. His knuckles have seen much violence. Bass remembers using the sharp point of a pocket knife to scrape the blood from beneath his fingernails.
These hands have seen much, and they carry that with him. Not for much longer.
He marches toward death quicker than he planned. At first, he thought it would taste sweet. But it’s bitter, and sour, and acidic every time he thinks of it. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Ren is right—if he doesn’t end up in the Sea.
As the day sloughs on, Bass decides Ko isn’t so bad. He’s quiet, mostly, but polite. Haaman, he likes less so. They keep silent, but it’s different than Ko’s quietness. As if in spite. Like they’re stonewalling the entire party—Ko, included.
Bass is intrigued by their relationship. An oak and a sparrow seem like a strange partnership. One nests in the crook of the other. One drinks from the ground and the other hunts seed.
Haaman though—he can feel their eyes on him as they walk.
As hot as the boiling water the healers scrubbed his wounds in when he returned from Valkesta.
When Yaelic runs back and forth to tell him something, to ask them how much further they have to walk, Haaman’s eyes are always on Bass.
It ignites irritation, like the endless itch of his god mark.
The hottest days always made Bass mad, sun boiling him under its gaze.
The heat from Haaman’s beady eyes doesn’t do them any favors.
“What are your nightmares about?” they ask, breaking the silence. Basuin stops in his tracks.
It’s okay, you’re home, you’re all right, Tehali held him in her arms, on the ground of the healing hut, rocking back and forth.
Kill me. He clawed at her, drawing blood and still she wouldn’t let go. Kill me, please.
When he closes his eyes, he can see them—the black, snowy, bloody scenes from his nightmares. But when he opens his eyes again, he can’t remember them at all. Gone, like they never happened.
“Haaman,” Ko chides. “You lack manners even around gods, now?”
Haaman stutters. “I didn’t mean—”
No one ever means to. But this is the first time someone’s asked him such a question. Even Tehali didn’t ask him. She strayed from the topic, ran wide berths around it. He should’ve been more grateful for that.
When Bass looks up, it’s not Haaman that’s staring anymore. It’s Ren, from across the forest. There’s no emotion on her face, but her stare is burning. Like he’s been set alight, the static of magic running in rivets down his skin. Her eyes are so different than anyone’s eyes he’s ever seen before.
Every time he looks at her, they’re always a different color.
“I lost my squad in battle,” he says, not to Haaman, or to anyone else.
Just to Ren, whom he keeps gaze with. “We were too far lost in the mountains. I was the only survivor.” He would kill to know what Ren thinks of him.
Weak, perhaps. A nuisance. If they weren’t chained to one another—if the gods hadn’t forged this perverse binding between them—she wouldn’t give a damn about him.
He knows this. She’s said it before, washed him in shame from how sharp her hatred was.
But her eyes—her eyes are ever changing. They shift and shine with the light of the sun and the gleam of the moon. Unreadable, unyielding. But soft, right now, golden and warm like a sunset. Elka, grant him something. Anything, because he can’t look away from her.
“I’m sorry,” Haaman says, and Basuin finally breaks their stare to face Haaman. Even now, Ren’s dark eyes don’t leave him. The heat of her gaze is heavy and molten along the back of his neck.
“It’s all right,” Bass answers truthfully. It’s all right, but he doesn’t know why.
Maybe it’s the way Ren is looking at him, because when she turns her back without a word, Bass grits his teeth. Haaman’s face is streaked with shame, but they turn to follow Ren, and everyone moves on.
Fine, then. It’s better this way. He doesn’t want to speak of it. Of the snow he can feel on his back, the blood running rivers through the cracks in his fingers. The wolf-man doesn’t have to laugh at him this time. Bass is already laughing at himself, chained, sunk, and drowned by the memories.
We have to go back, Isaniel screamed over the howling winds. Won’t you fucking listen? We have to go back—we’re going to die.
And, as if intended, the wolf-man inside him howls as loud as Isaniel did.
Magic pulses hot and alert in his hands.
He can feel it, for the first time. He can feel it strain against the rough and scarred skin of his palms, wanting to escape.
Wanting to hurt something, to create something. To be wielded.
He makes his fists so tight his blunt nails dig into his flesh, caging that panicked magic away.
“We’ll be at the Crying Trees before the sun sets,” Ko says, ripping Bass out of his own head. “We’ve kept good pace.”
It hasn’t felt like good pace. It’s felt like a fight at every step. Maybe that’s the wolf-man’s fucking claws in his fucking ribcage, or maybe it’s the leash that keeps him dragging behind Ren.
He needs to focus on bigger things. On getting to this goddamn elder tree and cutting the wolf-man out of his breast. On dragging his dead, broken body back to Shaelstorm and begging Kensy to get out of the forest.
He needs to focus on anyone but Ren who walks, so confidently, through the forest. If he looks at her, she’ll know. Somehow, she always does. But he can’t stop himself from looking at her anyway.
She knows his greatest weakness now. His best failure. It’s only fair for her to tell him why no one else calls her Ren. Why her name doesn’t seem to belong to her. What her greatest failing was, or is, or will be.
But Basuin will never know.
It’s Yaelic, in the end, who rips him away from Ren.
Bouncing to him, tugging on his breeches, complaining that they left Qia in Gyeosi to help the refugees.
It keeps him from the spiral of thoughts Bass gets locked in so easily.
Yaelic’s a child, just a child, really. Not so unlike Bass, before he grew big and tall and had to duck through the door of their little hut—the doorway he built when he was much smaller.
But Basuin wants Yaelic to grow up strong, like he did. Not because he’s alone, but because he has Basuin and Ren and the forest to help him grow stronger. Only, Basuin won’t be in that image much longer.
Funny, how fate works. But the wolf-man growls, chewing on his bones, and it isn’t so funny then.