Chapter 18 #2
But when he says it now, to Ren, it feels different.
They stand, on equal footing, together against the same tide threatening to roll in.
With no one else has duty felt so much like a burden, and yet a relief all the same.
He’s drowning—but he’s ducking down under the waves to grab her hand and drown with her.
Ren can’t stop Kensy alone.
This is the closest they’ve been, he and Ren. She doesn’t smell of the dirt coating her legs or the blood which once stained her shirt. It’s sweat and it’s white lilies and it’s something else he can’t name. Ren’s face, once blank, shapes into something new. Confusion, laced with anger.
“I took you all the way here, and now you won’t see the elder tree.” Her voice is steady, but the cadence of it leaves him uneasy.
As if Ren did it out of the kindness of her own heart. He almost says it to her. Baits her response. But he locks a fist around it and hides it away.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he says.
“And why is that?” Ren says, voice coated in venom.
Bass doesn’t even know the answer. It’s all jumbled up inside him, and if he could reach into his chest and force his hands into the wolf-man’s cavity, maybe he could unravel it all and answer her.
He hangs his head, unable to hold Ren’s intense gaze any longer. “I won’t be the cause of someone else’s death,” he says. Not again.
It’s so quiet, this moment between them, despite all the life that lives in the forest. Things that live are loud. Things that are dead speak in whispers, and he and Ren both speak low.
“You won’t come back to life,” she tells him.
“I know,” he says.
“You will still be the Wolf God.”
“I know.”
“And you would accept such a sentence?” she asks, as though it were heavier than death. But Basuin is already dead, and he should’ve died many moons ago, and he still dreams of dying. But his death means Yaelic’s. His death is the death of Ren.
“I’m a soldier,” Bass answers. When his gaze finds Ren, her visage has fallen into something that makes him ache. Raw confusion, unmasked.
Softly, Ren says, “You’re a god.”
Bass’ lip curls in a smile. “That, too.”
Once again, Ren rears back, but this time it’s completely different than before. Her twilight eyes hold something new—the smallest hint of fear. She shifts from foot to foot as if something has uprooted her.
Before she can say anything, or dance away as she so often does, Bass speaks. “I’ll help you.”
Ren bristles, her shoulders rising like the hackles of a caged dog.
He takes another step forward. “You told me that you can’t fight an army. But I can—and I have. The sabotage—it won’t keep them at bay forever, Ren.”
The taste of her name is biting but sweet, almost as much as the shock that strikes her face. It’s the first time he’s thought to use it. To call her that. But by now it feels familiar, and it feels right.
She takes a long breath, staring down at the dirt beneath their feet.
A long moment stretches out between them and Bass can almost see the link of their magic.
Blue is tangled around her hand, wrist twined by her magic.
And from his fingers, twisted and biting into his skin, red magic drips from his arm.
They meet in the middle, running taut and purpling as they reach one another. The color of bruises, he first thinks. Then, the color just before dawn.
Finally, Ren sighs. “I’m not too proud to admit that I can’t do this alone. I may not like it, but you’re right. The forest needs you.”
Bass pretends not to hear her say the forest rather than herself.
“But,” she says, “I do not want war.”
He nearly bashes his head in. They had been making progress, finally, until that. They can’t win without war. He can’t protect the forest—the people he’s grown soft for—without war. Ren doesn’t understand that her pacifist tactics won’t work.
Instead, he says, “We’ll figure it out.” Bass was never good with strategy, but he’s always been good at killing. “I’ll help you. I’ll help protect the forest.”
Ren looks at him, eyes wary. But she does take a step toward him, and if he wasn’t so dutifully trained, his lips might’ve turned up into a smile. It’s as if he’s trying to befriend a skittish woodland animal. A doe. If he makes any sudden movements, she’ll retreat as quickly as she came.
“I promise,” he tells her, holding out his hand to her.
After a long pause, Ren reaches out and places her hand in his—not in a shake, but as a princess might give her hand to a knight. As if in a fairytale, he almost moves to kiss the smooth skin she’s bared to him.
She has such a small hand. And yet she commands this entire forest, him included.
The wolf-man whines, nudging Basuin with its nose as if to press him closer to Ren.
It makes Bass smile, and he bows his head slightly to Ren. This is new to him, but everything in his body is screaming at him that this is right. No longer is he a soldier following orders, taking commands. He’s a god, and so is Ren, and this is a partnership.
They’ll protect the forest—together.
As he looks up, his eyes fall on her lips. Ren opens her mouth to speak, and then her eyes go wide and she spits blood. It dribbles down her chin as she chokes.
“Ren,” he gasps.
Then, she collapses, and Bass goes down with her, cradling her body to his.
From the trees and in a flourish of green light, Qia bursts into the clearing. Tears are smeared across her cheeks, crystals in her eyes. She pants, her whole body shaking.
“Gyeosi is burning,” she says. Qia falls to her knees, looking at Basuin like he’s the last savior of the forest.