Chapter 26 #2
He knows, but it makes blood fill his mouth.
The wolf-man scratches at his ribs. Bass knows.
They need to stop the legion, let Qia and Ko take Ren away from here.
Painfully, he looks away from Ren. Haaman waits for him, still human, but ready to take flight.
Yaelic shakes out his white fur, head down and staring at Bass.
He smells it now. The gunpowder. It makes him gag.
Beneath him, Ren grows paler. Sickly. She’s losing blood and it’s staining his trousers. She’s dying.
Basuin takes her hand in his, clean of her blood, and presses his lips to the back of her knuckles. A blessing? A curse. A knight promising something to his lady. A servant vowing his life to his god.
“Take her,” Basuin whispers. It aches to let go of Ren, but Qia wraps her in green healing magic and Ko labors her on his back. “To Hou-tou.”
Haaman takes off before he does, headed straight into the forest toward the legion.
But Basuin waits. He lingers. When he flexes his hand and red claws burst forth from his fingers, and when the wolf-man stands on its hind legs to take up all the space left in the chambers of Basuin’s chest, he moves.
He runs into the woods, spine hooked and picking up speed.
Basuin runs into the woods until the trees are a blur of angry red passing him by.
Always too late, the wolf-man snarls.
Last to arrive, but first to leave. The only one who leaves.
It isn’t a loaded promise, either. When he finally arrives at the blood-spattered site of marching soldiers and dead animals, Basuin tells them to run. He gives them that chance. And none of them take it.
He doesn’t spoil their supplies nor break their weapons. Basuin burns them to the ground the way that Gyeosi burned. The way that Ulenski burned. Basuin recreates the same scenes over and over again, just like the nightmares do.
Have mercy, the women cried as they fled their homes with their babies bundled in their arms. A little girl clinging to her mother’s skirt as they raced toward the Valkesi Mountains—the only side of Grimmalia that was still left unoccupied by the Xalkhans.
Black Wolf, one of them cried as she bumped into him, hands covered in soot so black he could not tell where the darkness ended and he began. Black Wolf, Black Wolf, please spare us.
And now, in the present, Basuin’s hands pulse with red magic as he brings his sword down upon a Xalkhan soldier and slashes through the flesh and bone of his arm.
Lumped bodies—more humans than heavy slumps of bears—burn with smoke and smell of fresh meat roasting over an open flame.
He swears he hears the dinner bell ring, the one from Ilkana where he trained.
Where he gave up his life to be as cruel as these soldiers are.
Where he pledged to give up his gods, beaten until sick by iron bars, shoulders lashed bloody.
His hands are hot and they are violent. There is black fur sprouting from his tongue and he runs it over his teeth. Grown into sharp points, canines. Basuin growls from somewhere deep inside him.
More, more, more. With every man he fells he can taste their body. He’ll slink on all four paws and rip the throats from these soldiers, show them how cruel this forest can be. Show them how the blood they spill grows claws that draw blood, too.
His fingers twist and click, curving into talons. He breathes, hard, heavy, quick—flexes his hand out to stretch away the claws trying to break free from underneath his nail beds.
Let it, the wolf-man snarls. Let me.
Basuin swallows, shaking out his hand. He hears a man lunging from behind. In a practiced swing, he draws his sword and slashes in an arc until the soldier falls at his feet, cut plainly and dead.
No.
Basuin’s throat is parched. He craves blood. The wolf-man is panting for it, foam dripping from its jaws. He won’t let it. He won’t.
The magic that clings to his hands and winds up his arms in trails of red retract and dissipate.
Then, he plunges his sword into another body.
The smell of blood consumes him, but all it does is make him gag.
He doesn’t remember where he is anymore.
If he’s in the forest or in Grimmalia. If this is home, or if this is Valkesta.
If he’s a boy again, or if he’s still just a god.
For what it’s worth, the blood washes off easily.
He rubs his hands together under the slow-moving stream of Hou-tou’s creek, a little ways from camp.
There’s a stubborn streak left on his cheek, blood threaded and dried in his wiry beard that he struggles with.
It takes a few rubs with the damp hem of his shirt to budge.
He doesn’t want Ren to see any of this. If she sees the blood, she’ll know what he did.
There wasn’t any sabotage on this day. There was only carnage that turned to ash on the ground. Basuin is a bad, bad liar. But he washes the blood away before he checks on Ren despite it.
Of course, he isn’t lucky enough to go unbothered.
Before he can shake the water from his hands and dry off, he feels the watchful gaze of a spirit from upstream.
Her blue-white eyes, sharp and narrowed at him.
Hou-tou pokes her head up from the water in a cloud of bubbles, hands clasped together and cheek perched atop them.
“What a deceitful deity the Wolf God is.” She hums. “Lying to our Forest God.”
“Yes, Hou-tou.” He plunges his arms back into the cold water and doesn’t let her see him twitch. “I know you don’t care for me. You made that clear when you told me to go die, before.”
But Hou-tou doesn’t giggle. “You’re a useless god, are you not?”
“Yes, Hou-tou.” He scrubs the blood off one, two, three more times. His skin is red and raw.
With a loud splash, Hou-tou jumps from the water, shrieking. “You’re going to get her killed.” Rage colors her cloudy eyes.
Basuin looks up at her, exhausted. Yes, Hou-tou. “You’re trying to protect her, I know. But I am, too.”
For a long moment, she stays there, glaring him down. But the fight in her dies eventually, and Hou-tou sinks back down until just her eyes peek out at him, nose blowing bubbles on the river’s surface.
“Do better,” she demands. And then she disappears in a ripple.
Basuin is doing all he can do, but Hou-tou is right. It isn’t good enough. He can do better.
Only the crackle of flames Haaman has started to keep everyone company breaks the quiet of their camp.
As Bass passes by on his roundabout through camp, he stops to shake his hand through Yaelic’s golden hair.
Yaelic bats his hand away playfully, looking very bashful.
Especially since Qia, who sits next to him, giggles.
Ren isn’t in her tent when he ducks his head in, but when he looks up, her leg dangles from one of the branches atop the tall oak tree she sits in. He doesn’t know whether to smile or scold her.
“Why aren’t you resting?” he asks. “There’s a perfectly pitched tent down here for you, Forest God.”
Ren huffs and waves her hand at him. “Does this not look like resting to you? City folk should learn to go outside more often, breathe in the magic of the forest.”
“There isn’t much magic left on the mainland.” Basuin leans his back against the tree’s trunk. “None at all.”
“The fault of your own kind, then.” She doesn’t say it meanly, but he still feels the heat of anger creep up his neck. He knows whose fault it is. He knows who burns down this forest. “It’s peaceful here. Even the sunlight can heal you if you let it.”
He tips his head and looks up at her. She stares off into the sky. “Is it healing you?”
Ren presses a hand against her stomach. “Little can anymore.”
But Basuin can. He looks down at his hand, bloodied before but now clean of sin. He’s a god; this hand of his can mend. He’s done it before. The god mark swirling across his palm feels tight and leathery as he stretches his fingers out.
“Come down,” he calls to Ren. “It’s warmer in your tent.”
Instead, Ren says, “I remembered something, from before. You made me think of it.”
Though she says it lightly, it sits heavy on his shoulders. “What is it?”
Ren labors a breath. “When I was a child, we were celebrating something. I was given this sweet thing, in a bowl shaped like a flower. It was red, and I liked it.” Her eyes are faraway. “I can remember how it tasted. Like cherries. But what was the name of it?”
“Do you remember anything else?” he asks. Basuin cannot give her much, so he needs to give her this. She’d been waiting for him, all this time. While he was off slaughtering men and planned how best to lie to her, Ren was waiting to share this memory with him.
She hums. “It bounced, when my spoon hit it.”
Basuin could cry. “Gwapyeon.”
Ren’s eyes go wide, bright and beautiful as she looks down at him in shock.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Gwapyeon. It was my favorite.” Once again, her eyes become distant, but a fond smile curls her lips.
“I begged for my mother to make it for me every year. We picked the fruits fresh. How could I forget that? Gwapyeon.”
She looks at ease now, leaned against the tree smiling, eyes cast toward the sky. Radiant, she’s radiant. He reaches for her again, out of want. Then, he remembers where they are again. Who they are.
A woman posed in godhood. A soldier dressed in the fur of a deity.
“Won’t you come down now?” he asks. Ren nods.
Bass moves to climb up the tree, to carry her down somehow.
But then the tree’s branches begin to unfurl, moving like a sway in the breeze.
The spirit bends, bark and spines cracking as it lowers Ren to the ground, letting her slide off the branch she was sitting on and into Bass’ grasp.
He winds an arm beneath her, around the backs of her thighs, almost seating her on his bicep for a moment before helping her feet touch the ground.
She’s still pale, and he suffers a breath at the sight of blood smeared on her skin.
Ren’s fingers curl in the material of his shirt. “Would you take me to the lake? It’s not far from here.”
Bass, of course, nods. He turns his back to her, crouching low to the ground and gesturing for her.
“C’mon.” He looks over his shoulder at her, grinning. “Hop on.”
The press of Ren’s thighs around his hips is almost as damning as her thin arms wrapped around his neck. Perhaps worse is the silk of her bare skin where he holds her legs, carrying her through the woods and toward the lake. Gods damn him, really.
The wolf-man aches for Ren’s touch, where her fingers brush over his throat every now and again.
On purpose or by accident, he’s not sure.
But what he’s more sure of is that it isn’t just the wolf-man preening at the feeling of Ren, smooth and plush on his back.
It’s him who aches for it, too. Aches more than death.
Bass squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them wide. He doesn’t need to think about this. He doesn’t need to consider it. She’s wounded, for fuck’s sake. She’s vulnerable and hurt.
“You drove them away?” Ren asks him. “They hurt something, I know.”
That kills the flare of light that was rising in him. He swallows. “Yes. They shot a pack of bears. Only two.”
“Neither made it.”
“No.”
His hands feel tacky with blood. No matter how furiously he washed his skin, it sticks to him. Red the color of cherries—of Ren’s gwapyeon. Bass adjusts her in his grip, careful not to jostle her too much. It makes her tighten her arms looped around his neck.
Then, a soft puff of her breath ghosts over his cheek as she lays her head against his. Softly, she says, “But you drove them off.”
Drove them, scared them, killed them. Destroyed them in a war he promised not to bring.
It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the softness of her skin against his right now.
He likes Ren like this—pliant and tender, as if all the weight has sloughed off her shoulders.
When her fingers feel petal-soft as they glance over the muscles of his arms.
He likes her when she’s sharp too. When she tries too hard to stay composed, poised. Limbs stiff and stubborn, but not her face. Not her eyes, graced with the futility of hiding the emotions she always tries to bite back.
Basuin likes Ren in every facet of the light. The feeling is so light he could laugh. Instead, he hangs his head and swallows hard as he trudges through the forest, onward to the lake.