Chapter 28 #2
Basuin sits across from her, hands cupped together to hide the trinket from view. Then, he opens his palms to her. A maroon-painted ocarina, clay shaped by someone’s careful hands. Ren’s lips part, fingers gently running over the holes.
“A hun,” she gasps. “Where did you find it?”
“We call it an ocarina in Xalkhir.” He glances past her other question, not willing to lie to her right now. “You called it a hun?”
Her brows draw together. “It’s the first word that came to mind. They would play these at…” Ren trails off, biting her lip. “I can’t remember.”
Instead of pressing, Basuin pushes the instrument toward her. “Did you know how to play?”
She shakes her head. “Do you?”
“No.”
Ren laughs first—bright and clear and beautiful. And he barks a laugh in response, unable to help himself.
“Thank you,” Ren says, taking the ocarina in her hands and turning it over and over, like she’s searching for the memory in the rounded surface of it.
“Maybe I could learn to play it, one day.” There’s a hesitance in her voice.
The unease of it all. That there might not be another day for her to learn.
Guilt hits him in waves. He feels torn from side to side. Drawn and quartered. If Ren knew how he’d pulled this trinket off a legion soldier laid face down and slain, she would hate him.
But if he doesn’t stop the army—if he doesn’t win this war in any way he can—then Ren will die.
Basuin crosses his legs beneath him. “What else do you remember?” he asks instead of letting his mind linger on that. He can’t.
Ren’s head tilts again. She chews her lip in thought.
“I don’t know. But I remember that they played the huns.
There were these… colorful things in the sky.
” Ren puts the little wooden instrument in her lap to free up both hands.
She paints her palms along their own sky now.
“It rode on the wind. I remember running, but I can’t remember what it was.
It was all different colors—red and yellow and black and blue. ”
“A kite?” he asks.
Ren lights up yet again. “A kite. Yes.”
Bass’ lips curl into a smile. “So, you flew kites as a child, and they played the huns, and you ate gwapyeon.”
Ren’s eyes get faraway again, lashes dark and blinking away the wet sheen that makes her irises sparkle golden. “Yes, I did.”
He leans forward. “Was it fun?”
Now, she meets his gaze, and her smile turns into a grin with a hint of her teeth. “Yes, it was.”
If Basuin could, he’d capture this moment forever.
Lock it in a bubble of red magic, create a barrier around them that no one could enter.
He reaches for her, fingertips brushing by the delicate skin of her cheeks to tuck fallen strands of her hair behind her ear.
She turns pink beneath his touch and his lips curl at the sight of her.
He wants this forever, this kind of Ren. He’s terrified to lose it.
Basuin draws his hand back and clenches a fist he hides from view.
He shouldn’t touch her. The fear is heavy in his gut, a lead bullet leaking all his happiness he’s found.
He’s trying to hang on too tightly. Everything he’s ever tried to hold on to has crumbled beneath the crush of his grip. Ren might, too.
But he swallows that back, because she’s sitting here in front of him, the most beautiful thing he’ll ever see.
“I’ll bring you one,” he says instead. “When I go to the mainland again, I’ll bring you back a kite. One in each color.”
And Ren, gods damn him, laughs. So preciously, she laughs, her crown of flowers slipping off her head until he catches it for her and readjusts it among the nest of her hair, laughing along with her.
“Captain!” someone shouts over the blizzard.
“I’m here!” he calls back. His hand is set to his brow, trying to keep the snow out of his eyes.
Hail pelts his shoulders, plinking off his armor, the sound rhythmic and fading into the whipping winds that scrape by his ears.
His boot catches on a rock hidden beneath the blinding white and he plummets toward the ice.
“Captain!” Someone’s hands scramble to catch him. When he rolls onto his back, Qia is atop him, eyes alight with fear and the red of her robes drifting like a raised flag in the wind.
The flurry thickens and she’s gone. Basuin heaves to his feet.
“If we keep going, we’ll die.” Ko’s voice echoes behind him. “I am scared for you.”
He whips around, but there’s only an oak sprouted in the middle of the mountain. Valkesta screams.
“I won’t leave him behind!” he screams back.
He loses his grip on the rocks and slides down the face of the mountain, hands splitting apart. There’s nothing beneath him, no one to catch him. He doesn’t make a sound as he falls, just shuts his eyes and hopes he doesn’t feel it.
And when he opens them, the sky is gray above him. The battlefield is rife with gunshots. He flinches as one blooms close, shattering through glacier.
“Get up!” Haaman screams at him. Their hair whips across their eyes. “You marched us here—get the fuck up!” Then, a shot ruptures their gut. Haaman falls to their knees, choking, bleeding into the snow.
But he can hear it. In the dingy cells beneath the outpost, he can hear the screams of the captured. Tomaas is down there. He can still make it.
“Captain!” another voice wails. Bass turns, looking for the source. Who’s out there?
“Captain,” a pup cries. Bass whips around. Yaelic’s gone. He shoves his arms into the snow, digging for it. Yaelic’s underground. The tree above him is dead, all rotten wood. He can’t find the den. He can’t reach.
“Help me,” Yaelic sobs.
“I’m trying.” Bass gasps for air. His hands turn black with frostbite as he digs and digs and digs until his nails have peeled from his fingers and the snow has turned red. “Where are you?”
“They trapped me,” Yaelic answers. “I’m in a cage—I can’t get out!”
“I’m coming!” Bass stumbles to his feet, the winds of Valkesta pushing and shoving him back and forth as he teeters on the edge of the cliff. “Where—”
He looks to his left and there Ren stands. Blood leaks from her chest, saturating her shirt. Where her eyes should be, there are stitches closing the sockets.
“It’s your fault,” she tells him.
I know, I know, I know.
Her head tilts to the side. “He’s already dead.”
He knows. He knows that.
Ren’s body breaks, collapsing into the snow. He dives over the ice for her. Her skin is already so cold. So cold. He cups her face in both his hands, blood-stained and aching.
“I’m already dead, too,” she says, mouth unmoving.
Bass shoots to his feet, blankets tangling around his ankles until he falls to his knees with a curse. Forest ground is beneath him—not snow. Not ice. Not Valkesta. It’s cold here, but not freezing. The fire has burned out but the smoke still permeates their camp. It makes him gag.
He beats his fist on the ground. Wake up.
Captain! Yaelic’s shout reverberates in his mind. Wake up. Come back to the present. Get out of Valkesta, there’s nothing left for him there.
But Yaelic’s voice is so loud in his mind, so real, so vivid.
It thickens in his throat, their connection.
It burns in his gut. Basuin tears out of his tent, chest heaving.
His stomach is twisted, his lungs empty.
Wake up. He ducks into the tent nearest to him, rubbing remnant tears from his eyes. Wake up!
It’s empty. Yaelic is missing. He’s not dreaming anymore.
“Yaelic!” he shouts into the woods. A shake rattles through his bones as he pulls back the flap of Ren’s tent. She’s there, Qia wrapped in her frail arms, sleeping on. Basuin pauses, waiting to see if she breathes. And she does—chest rising and falling slowly.
“Yaelic!” he calls out, standing in the middle of their camp. Then, he rushes to the edge of the forest. “Yaelic,” he warbles into the darkness.
A shadow moves through the trees and Basuin prays it’s his little wolf. But the figure is too tall, and when the light from the waxing moon hits his face, it’s only Ko.
“Am-ga?” he asks, nose wrinkled from being woken. “What is wrong?”
Bass’ eyes are wide and wild. “Have you seen Yaelic?”
Ko shakes his head and Bass paces. He has to find Yaelic.
That dream—I’m in a cage, I can’t get out.
It thrums through his head and he clutches his hair in his hands.
He hears it, the same soft echoes he’s heard before.
Before, when Yaelic bound himself as Basuin’s charge.
How clearly he spoke to Bass without words at all.
Yaelic, he thinks. Yaelic! he shouts into the blackness of his mind, trying to reach the little wolf pup. Yaelic, where are you?
I’m here! Yaelic’s voice stretches across the blank space of Bass’ head. Captain, they have me—please, help me!
Where? Bass rushes to his tent, fumbling with his shirt and leather armor.
I don’t know. I snuck out and—and they found me and—I’m sorry, I’m sorry. His voice is a whine of fear. He can’t stand the sound of it. Yaelic whimpers again and it brings red magic to gather in Bass’ hands. Into the hole of his chest.
And in that hole, the wolf-man howls until there’s nothing but red left in Bass’ world. Nothing but red. There’s a thread of it, through the forest. The wolf-man paws at the ground and snarls against his ribcage.
Don’t worry, he tells Yaelic. I’ll find you.
Yaelic cries, I’m caged. Please, Captain.
Wait for me. I’m on my way.
He’s knotting his boots when Ko pushes his tent flap out of the way, revealing a half-woken Haaman still rubbing sleep from their eyes.
“What’s happened?” Ko asks, dark eyes weary and brows drawn in worry.
“Yaelic’s been captured.”
Haaman’s beady, gold-ringed eyes widen into pucks. “Where?”
Bass jerks his chin in the direction that the wolf-man pulls him toward.
There’s no time for words. Then, he slings his harness on and buckles his sword to his back.
There’s no time to waste. There’s no time when someone’s been captured, made a prisoner of war.
Tomaas didn’t last. This could be a trap, just like Valkesta was.
But it didn’t matter then; it doesn’t matter now. Not for Yaelic’s life.
It will be different this time. Basuin is a god. He was deified to protect. It will be different.
Haaman shoves their feet into a pair of boots and ties their hair back, dagger already strapped to their ankle. As they head for the woods, Ko catches Haaman by the arm to pull them into his embrace. As quick as he can, Ko presses his lips to Haaman’s temple, then lets them go.
No words are shared. There is only silence. Bass walks, spine straight and marching the way he was taught to, trained to, toward Yaelic.
He flexes his hand. His nails have curved into claws.