Chapter 28
For the first time in his life, it wasn’t a decision—kissing Ren was a compulsion, something he was meant to do. But his next decisions are easy. Familiar and what he’s best at.
After watching Ren bleed again at the hands of the army, Basuin takes no risks.
His anger is unbridled. The wolf-man hungers for death and Basuin hunts for it.
At the next legion camp he and Haaman find in the night, men die.
And at the camp they track after that, more men die.
He trails their blood from one end of the forest to the other in hopes it will be an omen.
This forest isn’t for taking—they’ll all die before he lets them take it. He’ll kill anyone who tries.
More men fall, but Ren carries less wounds.
And that’s all Bass cares about. He promised Ren he wouldn’t bring a war, that he wouldn’t kill, but this war is already on their doorstep.
This isn’t the Xalkhan military marching into Grimmalia, bringing heavy guns and new technology and trained soldiers—trained Basuins.
This is the forest, standing tall under the Xalkhan Legion’s boot.
He’s doing what Grimmalia did. Fighting back.
It isn’t even war. They don’t have much to fight with. But every soldier he kills under the cover of night, a rank tied around their bicep the way he used to knot his, means one less bruise marring Ren’s arm. He’ll do anything if it means leaving her skin unblemished.
When he faces forward, he sees the red magic thread pulling him through the forest and toward the Winter River.
But when he looks back, he sees the legion camps he’s destroyed—and the ones he hasn’t gotten to, yet.
He needs to beat Kensy, to secure a future for this forest. But he needs to protect Ren, too. And killing is so much easier.
Killing comes naturally to him. Those soldiers, they’re easy prey, and he’s a predator with a violent magic he can’t rid himself of.
Bass buckles his harness across his back and around his waist, tightening the straps in the dark of the night.
The moon hides behind the clouds, blending into the velvet of the black sky that owns it.
He moves by memory alone. Yaelic is at the small creek a few paces over, filling their waterskins as they ready for battle.
Bass turns to follow after him when he hears hushed whispers bleeding from Haaman’s tent.
“I wish you wouldn’t.” Ko, he recognizes. Then, a long pause.
“This is my home, too.” Haaman—voice less cutting now. Soft in a way Bass has never heard.
“I am scared for you. They’ll kill you.”
“But my life, or yours?” A rustle of clothing. “They’ll destroy us. I’d rather go down fighting than let them win.”
“I cannot fault you for that.” Ko sighs, loud enough for him to hear outside. “Then, be safe, little bird.”
Bass leaves them to their silence, trailing after Yaelic.
When the boy runs to him, arms full of water bladders, Bass ruffles a hand through his golden hair.
Where once Yaelic would have laughed aloud, tonight the boy is eerily silent.
He doesn’t meet Bass’ eyes, and a pang of hurt rattles through him.
Guilt. Yaelic’s bound himself to a god who doesn’t know how to be a god. Basuin is still just a soldier.
Yaelic’s caught in a war that never belonged to him, that he has no blame for. An inherited fault.
The pup doesn’t speak even as Bass belts his waterskin to his hip, and it makes Bass linger. Then, Yaelic finally asks, “Can I come, too?”
His answer is swift and immediate. “No.” His voice cuts through the night. “You’ll stay here and protect the camp.”
It pains him that Yaelic would even ask that. He’s a child. Children do not fight in wars. Basuin will not allow that. He walks away, content to not think of this anymore, but Yaelic runs after him.
“The army is far! Our camp isn’t in danger. I want to come with you.”
“I said no.”
Yaelic runs around him, trying to cut him off, and Basuin stops.
“Why not? I can fight—I want to.” His eyes are steeled with determination, small fists curled up at his sides.
But Yaelic is so small still. A child, not reaching past Basuin’s hip.
And so skinny; collarbones severe where they peek out of his robe and chicken legs all thin out the hem of it.
Basuin bends, crouching to Yaelic’s height, eyes narrowed in a glare. “What do you know of fighting?”
It doesn’t shake him at all. “I’ll learn. You can teach me.”
“Absolutely not.” Basuin reaches out and shoves Yaelic’s shoulder—not hard, but enough to make the boy go reeling back. “You’d get hurt. Worse, dead.”
A flash of Hami’s broken body slams into him, knocks the air out of him. The image of Yaelic’s hair—white-golden and soaked with blood—crawls across his mind and he can’t force it out.
Yaelic wears a look of hurt. Upset and betrayed. “I want to fight.” He looks away, emerald eyes beginning to well up with tears.
“Why?” Basuin asks, though he’s never been able to answer that himself.
Never once did he wish for someone to save him from the devastation and death when he signed his name away to the legion.
He always wanted to fight. He wanted to keep his mother alive, and if fighting promised that, then Basuin would fight.
“I want to protect them,” Yaelic whispers, a hitch in his voice. “All the people I love.”
And now, Basuin fights to keep Ren alive, too. What a cycle life is.
Basuin’s knees creak as he rises again. “No,” he answers still. “You won’t be made a soldier.” Not like he was forced to.
When he looks back—and he shouldn’t have looked back—Yaelic is crying into the sleeve of his robe. Grief is so hard. Children shouldn’t have to bear it.
In the woods, dagger in hand, Haaman sheathes the blade to loop their skein over their hip. Traces of sorrow crease folds at the corner of their eyes, and Bass pretends not to notice. Haaman looks to where Yaelic sits, still crying, and then glances back at Bass. But Bass refuses an answer.
“Ready?” he asks, giving Haaman a chance to back out. A door to leave through.
But Haaman gives him a curt nod. “Let’s go, before day breaks.”
And before day breaks, Bass runs his blade through the last soldier, blood from the wound trickling down his hand and dripping from his wrist as his boot shoves the body to the ground.
He gulps down air. He feels like he’s back in the past. Years ago, older than Yaelic is, when his hair was shorn on the sides and he wore his locks pulled back in a wolf’s tail.
When he loved his sergeant, a man with bony hands and a slender form—a man he shouldn’t have loved, but he did anyway.
Gods, Bass always loves people he shouldn’t.
Haaman brings a dirty rag they found amidst the legion’s supplies to the river near camp, wiping the blood from their arms before it begins to dry. They offer it to Bass, who does the same. He’ll need a good wash in the river still, to rinse the smoke and blood from his hair, before—
“You have to stop.” Yaelic finds them at the bank, eyes glazed over as he looks at all the blood Bass and Haaman wear. Bass wants to cover his emerald eyes with his bloodied hands. “Before Am-sa finds out.”
—Ren finds out. Basuin needs to wash up in the river before Ren finds the blood trickling from his brow.
He runs the ratty cloth over his blade carefully before sheathing it on his back. Then, he crouches down, looking up to Yaelic.
“If you won’t stop,” Yaelic says, “then you have to bring me with you.”
“This will be the last,” he promises. And he means it.
The blood has stained all the scars and creases of his hands.
“We’ve bought ourselves some time.” What an excuse for his bloodshed.
Basuin acts as if he’s done this to keep the army off their trail, rather than in return for how they’ve hurt Ren.
“And Am-sa will heal?” Yaelic asks, his eyes full of sadness. More than anything, there’s trust in him when he looks at Bass. That much trust could kill him. That much trust could make Bass forget who he is. A god, this time. But a soldier, once.
But Bass nods. “She will,” he answers, though he doesn’t know if it’s true.
Yaelic’s sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. “What about the army?”
Something in him feels like death. Bass swallows, apple of his throat jumping, because no fucking boy should wonder that.
Not even him, when he was a boy too, wondering if his father would come home.
Wondering how he would take care of his mother after his father’s shield was returned, body left on a battlefield.
No boy should ask to fight. To want to be a soldier.
“I’ll take care of the army,” he tells Yaelic, placing a hand on his small shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
Yaelic’s eyes close, and then he nods. “Yes, Captain.”
In the daylight, when his skin is clear of blood and no smoke lingers in his clothes, Basuin finds Ren sitting with Qia, young girl giggles mixing with the faint hum of a song under Ren’s breath.
Qia’s weaving a mix of fronds and flowers together into a crown, which she places atop Ren’s head as she bows for Qia to reach.
“Perfect!” Qia claps her hands. “A crown for the Forest God.”
Ren touches it with gentle fingers. “It’s beautiful, Qia. Thank you.”
“Not as beautiful as you!” Qia chirps back, and Ren’s smile widens into something blinding. And she is. So beautiful, flowers in yellow and white circling her head like a halo, eyes golden and radiant in the light filtering through the canopy. But he doesn’t have the strength to tell her so.
Qia sees him first, bowing her head to him and to Ren, then running off. Ren turns to look at him, still wearing that smile on her perfect lips. She looks so easy right now—no pain, no responsibility. Just a woman.
Before she has a chance to greet him, he says, “I brought you something.”
Her head falls to the side in question. “What is it?”