Chapter 26
Decisive. Basuin has always been decisive. One foot in front of the other, one goal to tackle at a time, one day of battle before the next. It lent him power, his simplicity a strength.
With a path in front of him, clearly marked by god magic the color of blood, Basuin wastes no time. He changes their course, closing the distance between them and Sa-cha. That’s his only focus right now.
Getting to the Winter River before Kensy can.
Because if the legion catches up to them, Kensy won’t let Basuin escape a second time. That act of kindness was a miracle. Ren won’t make it out of that alive, because Kensy will kill Basuin. And Ren goes with him.
That’s the sacrifice he made. The sacrifice he keeps.
They travel along the forest together in silence, but a comfortable one.
The growing familiarity of it makes a warm feeling sway his stomach.
In front of them, Qia clods through the forest with Yaelic chasing after her.
Qia’s ears are too big for her head in her spirit form, her little puff of a tail wagging as Yaelic bounces in a clumsy circle around her, showing off how fast he moves.
He’s growing into his paws, but his barks are still just little yaps.
It’s endearing, watching the two of them play. Ko is somewhere behind them, the slowest of their party, while Haaman flies over the forest scouting. They’ll join Ko once they tire out and bring up the rear.
Ren leans close to him, a small smile on her lips. “How nice it must be, to have a friend your age.”
He grunts in reply. “I wouldn’t know.”
“You didn’t have friends?”
“Not until I joined the legion.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
The smile she wears fades into a deep frown. “That’s so young, to go to war.”
But he sweeps right past it. “Did you have friends? As a child.”
Ren’s eyes fall, her brows narrowing. It takes her a moment before she speaks. “I don’t remember.”
It’s sad—the kind of sad that he recalls tasting when she first told Basuin her name. How it didn’t seem as if she knew it herself.
“Not at all?” he asks, ducking down closer to her height to see her face. But Ren blinks all emotion away, shrugging it off in the same manner he had.
“It doesn’t matter.” Ren looks back to where Qia and Yaelic play. “I am here to take care of this forest.” She gestures with an open hand to the children, as if it can absolve the sorrow weighing down her voice and replace it with duty.
His lips part, ready to challenge her, but the light catches in her eyes and they sparkle golden.
Yaelic’s yapping, and Qia’s bleating, and his blood rushing in his ears.
Ren is happy. She’s happy when her family is happy.
Even as scrapes and burns bleed across her skin, marbling her like meat cut for roasting.
Even as the forest hurts her—as the legion destroys her home.
“My mother,” he blurts out. “She was all I had growing up.”
Ren turns to him, and the admission is worth it when she smiles that kindly at him.
“Tell me about her.”
Something blooms in Basuin’s chest where his heart used to lie. “She was wonderful. Everyone was her friend, she was so kind. Until the fire, at least.” He tries not to dwell on it—how their neighbors wouldn’t even eat the fresh bread she would bake after god speakers were deemed witches.
“I was young, but when soldiers would come home—or when their shields would—my mother would wrap flowers from her garden into bouquets for graves. And she’d make big pots of stew, for the wives who were left behind.”
Ren’s eyes have gone all soft, a molten amber color he always gets lost in. Like sticky-sweet syrup. “She sounds very kind.”
“She was,” he says. “She would’ve liked you.”
Ren tries to turn before he can see the warmth in her cheeks. It draws a grin to his face.
“You said Ko was your first friend,” he recalls, prodding at her.
“Yes,” she says, a smile growing now. “The first friend I remember, anyway. But that was once I was…”
Ren stops for a moment, the world around them closing in. Becoming small, and safeguarded by this closeness between them. He gives her a moment as her dark eyes glaze with the cool burn of something unsaid.
“Once you were what?” he asks.
She hums, pressing her lips together for a moment. “Once I was on this island. Ko was my first friend once I came to this island.”
So Ren wasn’t always here. She came to the island somehow.
Ko told him Ren wasn’t always a god—once, she had been human.
Curiosity squeezes him. He wants to know more, more, more.
It burns at his bones, he wants to know more about her.
About what has hardened her, about what she can’t remember.
He wants to know everything that she’s made of.
He gathers the strength to ask, then Ren speaks first.
“The fire,” she says, and it grinds everything to a halt. “What happened?”
Everything slows. Basuin stares, but the colors blur into one entity. The smell of smoke lingers in his nostrils, better than blood—but then the tang is on his tongue, all rust and red. He keeps marching forward, like he was taught, but all he wants is to fall to his knees right now.
Fall at Ren’s feet. Just for a moment.
“They burned the church,” he answers. “When they outlawed the gods in Xalkhir.”
Ren’s voice is murky, on the edge of his mind like the shack on the edge of the forest. “I’m sorry.”
Basuin tries to shrug, but his body doesn’t listen. “She was a god speaker, Ma was. So, without the church, they told us we couldn’t stay. We weren’t welcome.”
When his eyes regain focus, Ren’s gaze is heavy on him. Her fingers are touching the godstone at her neck, all delicate as if it might shatter. “They made you leave?”
“They were afraid of her,” he says. “Of what she could do.” His hands feel tight. “Of what I would do.”
“Afraid you would hurt them?”
There, in the middle of the woods, the march ends. Ren’s eyes are heavy on his prickling skin. The whole world feels like it isn’t real. Like this isn’t his body. Like he wasn’t the one who let his mother die.
“I could have,” he says. “I could hurt you, too.”
His throat is dry, lips wicked of moisture. He could if he wanted to. His whole hand could close around her neck and wring her dead. His boot could stomp her head into the ground like a stake. Basuin doesn’t need a weapon. The sword strapped to his back has always been insurance.
His hands are enough.
All the pretty facets of Ren’s face change in mere seconds.
Her lips twitch, jaw tensing and slackening as she rolls something around between her teeth.
She spends so much time thinking about what she says.
Bass doesn’t know what that’s like. To think about what you’ll say before you speak it aloud.
To build a gate around your words, to only let dignitaries through.
He’s crashed gates before. He’s crushed locks and broken into homes. He wouldn’t know how to swallow back any rotten words.
Ren takes a deep breath, lips finally parting to say something.
Then, her teeth gnash down on her lip in a clash of blood and her legs buckle beneath her.
A sound ekes out of her as her eyes flash wide.
Ren goes down, but Bass lunges to scoop her up in his arms, knees swept up in the crook of his arm.
Blood drips down her arm, trickling off her fingers gone limp.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers. He bars the panic from entering his voice as he kneels to the forest floor. “Hold on, Ren.”
As soon as he lays her down, her head rolls to the side—she’s fainted. A strike of fear pierces his heart, his palm holding her cheek. Her skin feels colder. His imagination. No, his worst nightmare. He doesn’t know if he’s awake or asleep.
But the spirits all convene, and now, it’s real. Qia drops to Ren’s other side. Her hands are already covered in the glow of green forest magic, ready to heal Ren’s new wounds.
Then, a shot goes off, barreling through the woods from miles off. Birds crow and scatter. Basuin flinches, eyes shut tight. His body is so tense it aches, waiting for the smell of smoke and gunpowder and blood.
Blood. Tangy and rich. His eyes fly open. Ren is beneath the shelter of his body. Caged between his arms as she sleeps on, unconscious. Blood colors the foliage beneath her.
He’s going to throw up. His stomach rolls. Fuck, he’s going to heave. The green is turning white. The warmth is freezing around him. Ren is bleeding out on the ice; the winds are howling. Bowling through the plateau. Valley of death, they should have named it. Val-something. Val—
“Bass!” someone calls above the screams of Valkesta, and he turns his head. “Did you hear that?”
He stares up at Haaman, whose feathers stand sharp and at attention on the back of their arms. Ren isn’t dead, he realizes. Her heart flutters beneath his hand. She’s just asleep.
“Did you hear that?” Haaman repeats, and then another shot goes off. Bass flinches all the same.
Qia cries, “Am-sa! We have to—”
Bass looks down again. His palm is coated in blood.
The wolf-man roars in his chest, a howl for war, and it reverberates through every single part of Bass.
His sinew and his bone and his flesh and his blood.
The crack of his spine sounds just like the gunshot as his body morphs into something not all human.
There’s rotting meat between his teeth when he licks his lips. His eyes are wide, vision fielded by red.
“We need to move,” Ko hisses, reaching for Ren. “I’ll carry her on my back.”
A growl leaves him before he can register it, body shielding Ren from Ko. He’ll carry Ren on his back. That’s his duty. He’ll protect her. He’ll keep her safe. He’s her guardian. Her protector.
“Am-ga, please,” Ko says, face twisting with grief. “The army is close.”