Chapter 21
As Ren commanded, they move north. Rain comes to wash away the horrors of Gyeosi, but when it falters, all it leaves behind is smoke coloring the skies in the same dreary gray.
They’ve spent these last days gaining distance, but they need time to plan their next steps.
Ren needs time to rest—her wounds from Gyeosi’s attack still haven’t healed.
“There is a village not much further we can rest at,” Ko tells them as they travel. “I have an old friend there.”
Basuin tries to keep count of the days. How many days has it been since he’s been a god? More than he can count on all his calloused fingers, smeared with dirt and soot. He’s been a man for ten thousand days, and now—now Basuin will be a god for much longer than that. Bound by duty, not fate.
It’s been two days since Gyeosi burned, and when Basuin crawls into his bedroll on the eve of the third day, Yaelic is already asleep, breathing slow through his mouth.
That gold-white hair of his reminds Bass so much of the slender soldier he first saw dressed in a forest-green tunic, laughing over a mug of ale with his buddies in the tavern, right before Isaniel was assigned to his fleet.
Those clay-colored eyes, baked into hardened brick, challenging Bass to come over and join them for drinks.
He didn’t, not that night. Regret grows in his gut as the image of Isaniel’s rage-stained eyes flashes in his mind. The smash of the porcelain carafe as Isaniel threw him into the table it sat upon, falling to the ground.
If you won’t listen to me as a soldier, Isaniel shouted, then listen to me as a man.
Basuin shuts his eyes and tries to sleep.
But you won’t listen to anyone, Isaniel hissed. You didn’t even listen to your own mother.
Go to sleep, go to sleep, for the morning will come and the monsters will be gone. Go to sleep, my son.
And the morning of the third day does come, but unlike his ma told him, the monsters aren’t gone. The rains slowed them, yes, but it will not stop them from marching forward. If the storms that the gods bring won’t stop the legion, then it will have to be them—the Forest God and the Wolf God.
It’s the spirits who have gone. They’ve outrun the monster. The village they traveled toward is empty, left behind in a hurry. Straw huts and tents are disheveled. Blankets and clothes and children’s toys forgotten. No one roams here. Ko’s friend can’t be found. Everyone is gone.
“They left,” Haaman says, even as they all stare at the same wreckage.
Qia picks up a colorful ball, dented and losing leaking air. Yaelic looks over the smudges of soot and dirt, frowning.
“It’s for the best,” Ko says. He looks to Ren, as if waiting for her approval.
But Ren says nothing. She squeezes the flesh of her bicep and turns away. Unable to look at the evidence of the danger that trails behind them. The army will come here, too. It really is for the best that they left.
“We’ll make camp here, then,” Bass decides for her. No one speaks, not at all.
“Of course, Am-ga.” Ko bows his head before turning and motioning the children forward.
Bass frowns at the name, confusion making his brow twitch. Ren is Am-sa, a title he’s come to know well.
As if she can read his mind, Ren comes to rest beside him and says, “Am-ga is what they have begun to call you. Though, Ko is old-fashioned, so he took to it first.”
“And what is that?” he asks.
Ren glances at him. “A protector.” Then, she follows behind their party into the abandoned village.
Ko graciously takes the children to walk around the woods, searching for any friendly spirits who may have stayed behind.
Haaman volunteers to fly southward and scout out how close the legion is.
With how damp the storm kept the island, no fire will survive for the next few days. But the flames will return.
Ren sits on an overgrown stump, legs crossed underneath her, as Bass paces a circle around what used to be a cook-pit. She’s looking better today, skin less pallid and eyes more golden. The mottling has long been fading, few marks left behind.
“How did they find Gyeosi?” he asks out loud, though it’s a question that doesn’t have much of an answer. To it, Ren shrugs a little. “I thought only magic could bring down the barrier and open the gates.”
She frowns. He doesn’t like the look of it.
“That’s not quite how it works. I used god magic to create the barrier, but it only redirects people from the path—like an illusion.
” Her fingers tap on her knee. “In all fairness, I never expected people to come to the forest. When the soldiers arrived, I threw the barrier up as quick as I could. It wasn’t…
” She chews her lip. “It wasn’t built to keep an army out. ”
Basuin blanches, the air stolen straight from his lungs. The barrier was made of magic. He knew that, of course he knew that. But Ren’s magic weakened when he was deified. He stole it from her; their connection leached it from her.
“It was me,” he says, not daring to look at her.
“I took your magic—weakened the barrier. I left Gyeosi vulnerable.” It was his fault that Gyeosi burned, that Ren was hurt.
It’s his fault Hami died. He took her away from the village, made her journey to the Crying Trees so he could pawn off his duty. It’s his fault.
Ren shifts just outside his vision, but he turns enough to see her right hand tighten into a fist. He hears her next words: You’re right, it was your fault. You are as selfish as I thought.
“It could’ve been anything, Basuin.” Ren’s gentle voice brings him back into focus. “We don’t know what magic they have.”
“None,” he snaps at her, and in turn, the wolf-man breaks one of his ribs off.
He grunts and begins to pace again, not wanting to look at the way her face twists into something foul.
“Xalkhir—the legion—has shunned the gods. The legion doesn’t carry them, and no gods carry the legion. They have no magic.”
“They truly don’t care.” It sounds like sorrow bottled up in Ren's glass throat. “They don’t care if we live or die.”
Hami’s broken body, a white fur sack of bones loosened of blood, the wavering spirit of that little boy flashes across the blank plane of Basuin’s mind. No, they don’t. The legion doesn’t believe in their existence, doesn’t believe in the Winter River. If only Bass could have walked Hami there.
He stops in his tracks, a pause in his pacing.
“Basuin?” Ren’s gaze lingers on him, but he’s afraid to face her. She’ll see the puzzle unfolding on his face as he slots pieces together as best he can with his big, fumbling hands. She’ll see the guilt.
“Where do you walk dead spirits?” he asks.
“To the Winter River,” she says, matter-of-factly. “But—” Her teeth pull at her bottom lip. “I haven’t been able to take them all there. The army’s distracted me. Gyeosi—there were too many.” She turns her palms up, fingers trembling as if the spirits are slipping through her grasp.
Basuin wants to reach and pocket her hands in his, make them stop shaking. “Where is it? Can you go there?”
Ren bites her lip. “I don’t actually walk them to the River itself. It’s a vision, like a portal. My god magic links me to it.”
Kensy is searching for a powerful artifact that only gods know of. Basuin thought it would be at the elder tree. But Ko told him the elder tree doesn’t answer anyone but gods. No magic, no power, for mortals.
Help me, he almost asks the wolf-man, but he refuses to. He has the pieces in front of him, he just can’t see how they fit together.
Basuin turns, eyes finding the jade stone Ren now wears around her thin neck. It catches the light shining through the cracks in the canopy, almost mocking him. He can see Kensy’s clever smile so clearly in his mind, a snake flicking its tongue at Basuin, its prey.
Godstones are conduits, favors that gods bestow their speakers with. A blessing as much as it is a tool. If Kensy knew a god speaker, then he killed them—he could’ve taken their godstone for himself.
No. It’s impossible. Godstones channel god magic through them, but only the blessed can use it. That’s why Basuin could never speak to the gods—he wasn’t blessed the way his mother was, with lavender light pouring from her eyes and mouth. And Kensy isn’t blessed, either.
How do you know for certain? the wolf-man prods him.
Because he needed Bass. There’s a reason Kensy asked him to come back to the bastion. He just doesn’t know what. Bass shuts his eyes, tight as the fist he makes. He needs help.
“Kensy was looking for something,” he says. He puts his hands behind his back and wrings them away from Ren’s eyes. “A powerful artifact that belonged to the gods.”
Ren’s twilight eyes narrow in confusion.
Then, they widen in realization. Fear colors her countenance and her hand darts up to touch the godstone resting upon her collarbone.
And then, as quick as it came, that fear is replaced by a burning anger he’s become so familiar with.
Ren leaps to her feet to stand against him.
“How do you know that?” she asks, voice simmering. Quiet underneath the rustle of the forest. Accusing.
He swallows, hard. “Because that’s why Kensy brought me to the island. He wanted me to help him speak to the gods.”
Betrayal flares in her eyes. “You knew this whole time.”
“I didn’t.” He holds up his hands, but it’s futile. “I’ve never known what Kensy is after. All I did was follow orders.”
Kensy’s always been so eel-like. Slippery and in need of a kill. He feeds on his prey, uses their life to sustain him. Kensy isn’t a liar, but he doesn’t speak in truths. He’s good at that, and Basuin learned that lesson hard.
“I should’ve told you,” he admits. “I didn’t think—” He cuts himself off, snapping his jaw shut. He did think, and to say anything less would be a lie. He did think, and he concluded that ignorance best served Ren’s survival. Stupid and selfish of him.
It’s the first time he’s ever seen her pace. “I could have been tracking him rather than focusing on the bastion.” She walks in circles, and a mean frustration bubbles up in him.
“Track him to do what?” His nostrils flare. “It’s not like you would have killed him.”
She whips around to face him. “Then why didn’t you?” Ren leaps across the gap she’s put between them. He looks anywhere but her eyes. “You’ve always said what I’m doing isn’t enough—so why didn’t you kill him instead?”
It shatters over his head like glass, his eyes wide, staring down at her. She’s right. Why didn’t he kill Kensy when he had the chance?
Ren’s hand locks around the fabric of his collar, pulling him down to her height. He lets her. Until her nose is nearly touching his. Until her breath burns against his mouth. The smell of ash still lingers on her skin.
“I was wrong about you,” she hisses. “You are everything I thought you were. I can’t trust you.”
But there’s a moment, a breath—three breaths, even—of hesitance. She lingers, their eyes locked, and searches for something within him. He wishes he could help her find it. Every breath they share in tandem, a rhythm.
Then, she lets him go. Basuin flounders backward as Ren storms away.
“I am,” he says. “I’m everything you thought I was—but it’s different now.” He catches up in three long strides, pulling ahead to block her way. Ren winds around him. “I didn’t know, I swear it to you.”
“How could you not?”
“I’m not very smart,” he barks back. “I don’t understand any of this. I’ve admitted that to you before. I’ve been honest.”
Ren whirls on him. “Have you? Is hiding this not dishonest? You’re a traitor. You are a danger to my people and I trusted you not to be.”
“Must you always be a god?” It fizzles out, less angry and more desperate. “Are you not human, too?”
“No,” Ren snaps. “I’m not. And neither are you anymore.”
“But I was.” He thumps a fist to his chest. “I was human, before I was a god. Weren’t you?”
A shiver of rage runs up Ren’s spine, her fists tightening at her sides. The nape of her neck peeks out at him when the breeze pushes her hair like a child’s swing, revealing something of her to still be soft. She is soft, he knows. He’s felt it before.
“No,” she answers again, voice low and dark. “All I know is how to be a god, just like all you know is how to be a soldier. We’re even, then.”
His mouth feels dry and tastes rotten. “Help me understand.”
The glare of her eyes is icy and mean when she looks at him over her shoulder. “Do you know what this island really is?” Ren asks, a tremble of something not quite anger and not quite fear threaded in her voice.
“No.” They were sent to colonize it, told it was an uninhabited island that needed to be claimed for the queen. But then Kensy pulled Basuin’s rank and set him loose in the forest, commanding him to find something instead.
Basuin didn’t have to follow that command—but he would’ve been sent home if he didn’t. He doesn’t know which one would be worse.
Ren turns, and the golden light of her eyes has cooled into the sharp obsidian he can no longer read. Her palms open, her god mark lighting up blue. In turn, Basuin’s mark glows red and hot.
“This forest guards Sa-cha’s shrine,” Ren tells him. “The entrance to the Winter River.”