Chapter 25
Pacifism is shit-all for protecting Ren.
Basuin is reminded of this—of how bad he is at the one duty he’s been given—once the scorching starts again.
The army doesn’t just fill the sky with a glaze of smoke, a threat that smells of fire and brimstone and danger trailing behind them.
Not just spirits who run from their homes and curse Ren’s name as they look for safety.
It isn’t just Kensy, who knows Ren’s face now, hunting them for the thrill of it.
It’s Ren’s skin, purpled with bruises and reddened with new burns.
It hurts Basuin more than it seems to hurt Ren, her head held high all the while. But when they stop to make camp in the forest for the night after hours of traveling north—trying to put as much space between them and Kensy as possible—Ren meets him alone, in the dark, and slumps against him.
Basuin folds her into a half-embrace and heals her wounds. It’s all he can do. But he needs to be doing so much more. If only she would let him.
Once again, he lies awake under the night sky, staring up at the moon glittering above the forest canopy. The fire has died to a low spittle of embers, darkening their camp. Basuin, fist to his chest, breathes heavily.
He needs help. And he’s never asked for the wolf-man’s help, but he needs it. Ren, Ko, and Hou-tou—they don’t have answers for him. They don’t know how to get to the Winter River, and much less, how to stop Kensy from getting there first.
Inside him, the wolf-man is curled up and ignoring him, chuffing a breath.
He beats his fist on his chest, the empty chamber the wolf-man lives in now, where his heart was eaten out of him.
Help. Gods, help him. If they want him to save the forest, why don’t they fucking help him.
Basuin beats his fist against his chest so hard he can’t breathe. And then, out of thin air, Basuin is yanked from his body and dropped into darkness.
He reaches, hands searching the black nothingness he’s trapped in.
Where is he? Where is Ren? His nonexistent heart hammers in his chest, panic building in his body and pumping through his veins.
But he falls to his hands and knees, eyes open wide, the scar on the left side of his face twitching with pain.
When Basuin looks up, the wolf-man is standing before him. The body of a man and the head of a wolf, all black except for glowing red eyes and red lines drawn up and down its skin, tattooed like veins.
“Stand, Basuin of Ankor,” the wolf-man commands, slamming its ruby-tipped staff upon the ground. Basuin scrambles to his feet, fisting his shirt right where his heart used to be. “You would ask me for help?”
Basuin swallows. “Yes.”
“You are unworthy.” The words are cutting as the wolf-man peers down at him. It tries to cow him into submission, but Basuin won’t be rocked.
“Unworthy or not, I need help. If you want me to prove my worthiness, then help me do so,” he spits back. “If you want me to save Ren, then help me.” He labors a breath, chest rising and falling in quick succession.
“What is it you ask for?” The wolf-man’s voice echoes in the endless darkness.
“To find the Winter River,” he answers. “I need to find it before Kensy does.”
He isn’t smart, but he understands now. Kensy wants to find the Winter River.
And Basuin knows him well enough—Kensy isn’t here to worship.
He’s here to destroy it. The same way Kensy marched into Grimmalia to liberate its faithful from their godly fetters, Kensy marched to this forest to destroy what’s left of the gods.
Queen Ye’suite wants to rule the whole world, but Kensy wants to eat it. If there’s no way to get to the Winter River, then there will be no more prayer. No more worship.
But it’s more than that. If Sa-cha’s shrine is what guards the Winter River, then Kensy will destroy Sa-cha, too. Kensy destroys anything that’s in his way. Ko said gods can’t walk freely without bodies—without magic. If not a body, then a shrine. A host.
Kensy doesn’t plan on outlawing gods. He plans to get rid of them.
The wolf-man looms over Basuin, golden eyes staring down at him. “What will you do, little soldier boy?”
Basuin closes his eyes. If Kensy kills Sa-cha, destroys the Winter River, his ma will go nowhere.
The rest of the spirits, like Hami and Aless—they’ll go nowhere, too.
He is a god now. He has people who belong to him, who have sworn their lives to him in exchange for protection.
The grief that’s made holes and homes inside his bones is only a reminder that when people belong to him, they die.
The forest will die. Ren will die.
And Kensy wins.
“I’ll stop him,” Basuin answers, looking up at the wolf-man. He straightens out his back, leveling them head to head. Dead on. “I won’t let Kensy get to the Winter River.”
The wolf-man’s maw opens, its long tongue licking its sharp canines while it laughs.
“How do I get there?” he asks, voice thick in his throat.
In a split second, the wolf-man swoops down, snout nearly pressed to Basuin’s nose. Its fierce, angry eyes search his, looking for signs of fear, or hesitation maybe. But there is no hesitation inside of him. There is fear, yes. But it is fear for the forest, and fear for Ren.
When it’s satisfied, the wolf-man pulls back only slightly. “I will lead you there, Basuin of Ankor. But it requires sacrifice, as all things do.”
Hasn’t he sacrificed enough already? Others, and his own. He’s skipped death twice already and a third is on its way. And despite it, he’s swallowed his protest and regrets and shouldered his duty, become the Wolf God. What else must he do?
The wolf-man reaches into Basuin’s chest, painless this time, and pulls on the red string tied around his soul. It unravels, thread pulled from a spool, and the wolf-man wraps it around its wrist.
“What are you willing to give up?” the wolf-man asks him.
Basuin looks down at his hands. Ren’s blood stains his skin, filling in all the lines and scars marking his palm. He squeezes his fingers into a fist.
“Everything,” he says, and he means it. He would give up everything for Ren. That was his promise—to protect her. Even his mother’s godstone he hung around her neck.
“Everything,” he repeats.
And the wolf-man takes. It yanks on Basuin’s thread so hard it sends Basuin sprawling on the floor of the darkness.
He loses all senses except the feeling of a burning, searing pain in his heart.
Razor-thin wires sink into his organ from where the wolf-man pulls him, trying to end Basuin’s life again.
In the midst of the darkness, two black hands tie Basuin’s red thread to a blue one, knotting them together. It’s different than before somehow. When Ren showed him their connection, their magic, it was different.
This feels like death.
“You wish it was,” the wolf-man says with a mean chuckle. “If you are so willing to die, then it means nothing that you are willing to die for her.”
It aches. Oh, it hurts. Agonizing and bleeding. Basuin tries to catch his breath.
“It’s different,” he croaks out. “With her, it’s different.”
“You’ve wanted for death before, but hear me, boy,” the wolf-man growls. “Your life belongs to her. It always has. But now, her life belongs to you, too.”
“What?” Basuin gasps, looking for the wolf-man. He whips his head around in the darkness, but it’s nowhere to be found.
In a blink, it appears before him, crouching to his level. “If you die again, little soldier boy, then she will die with you.”
Basuin’s eyes are wild, an ache overtaking his body. No, no, no—that can’t happen.
“No longer will death solve your problems, Basuin of Ankor,” it tells him, a laugh crushed between its canines. “You cannot squirm out of your duty any longer, even if you wanted to. Now, you have no choice.”
He chokes on nothing but the taste of blood. No, this can’t be true. Basuin doesn’t want to die anymore—he doesn’t. But what happens if he does?
You’ll go nowhere, Ren told him once. Not even to the Blacksalt Sea. He’ll go nowhere.
“And she’ll go with you,” the wolf-man says. “This is the sacrifice you’ve made. This is the sacrifice you’ll keep.”
It stands, leaving Basuin writhing on the ground. “But I’ll lead you there,” it says.
“Where?” he asks, gasping for the air that’s been stolen from him. He can’t die here; he needs to breathe. If he dies, she’ll die too. He can’t die.
“To Sa-cha,” the wolf-man says, a harsh laugh filling the darkness. “From the Winter River, there arose a god, and that god was Sa-cha, and he was good,” it recites in prayer. “Isn’t that what you asked for, little soldier boy?”
He coughs, choking, and the wolf-man dissolves into nothingness.
Basuin, someone calls as he lies on the floor. Basuin, wake up.
He doesn’t want to. Go away, go away, go away.
Basuin, wake up, they plead, voice so far from here. The darkness is sweeping him away, down the river, into the Blacksalt Sea.
Wake up, they say, hand on his face. And Basuin opens his eyes again.
Above him, Ren holds his jaw in her small hand, onyx eyes filled with concern. Her other hand is pressed to his chest, a blue glow tickling his skin. Bass captures it in his own, fingers swallowing hers, and she spooks.
Everything is murky, but this isn’t the darkness and the wolf-man is happily inside of the cavity it carved out for itself. Bass surges upward, Ren sitting back on her heels beside him.
“Are you all right?” she asks, voice rife with anxiety. “Was it a nightmare? You—”
He doesn’t listen. Bass takes the godstone where it hangs around Ren’s neck, his hand coated in red magic. He squeezes; magic bleeds into the jade. Ren watches him, jaw slackened as the words she wanted to say tumble out of her mouth.
Ma, he prays, eyes open and hands desperate. Ma, please, help us to the Winter River. Help me to find Sa-cha, before it’s too late.
Help him to save Ren. Because unlike Valkesta, where he ignored the prophetic visions laid before him, he’s listening. He’s seeing. Ren’s fate is right in front of him, killed and cut and dressed and pickled and plated. He sees it—he won’t let it happen.
Basuin is a god. It has to be different this time. Please, let it be different this time.
The wolf-man inside him stretches up and unhinges its maw, then howls so loud and so aching that Bass can taste blood in his mouth.
He looks up, his eyes finding Ren’s. Gorgeous, her eyes, all obsidian and sharp. Right now, she looks at him like he’s falling apart in her hands, and he’s tortured by how easily he could slip his fingers through the spaces between hers.
A bright ruby-red trail appears right over Ren’s shoulder, winding through the trees behind them. It stretches out until it’s a wisp, disappearing into the forest, and he knows this is what his sacrifice paid for.
Go, the wolf-man pushes him. Time will not be kind to you.
Much of the world hasn’t been kind to him. But his mother was, and Tehali was, and Isaniel had kind hands that made up for the unkind words he carried with every mug of ale.
Ren is kind, even when Bass hasn’t been so kind to her. And she is kinder now, even after his transgressions allowed her village to burn. He killed her people, and still, she is kind.
“We’re going,” he says, squeezing Ren’s hand delicately. “I know how to get there.”
“Where?” she asks.
“To Sa-cha.” Ren squeezes his hand back. “To the Winter River.”
They’ll move forward. He’ll race Kensy to the end—of time, of life, of the River itself. Basuin has always been one of Kensy’s pawns, strong and made for sacrifice. But Kensy can’t sacrifice him if Basuin has already sacrificed himself.