Chapter 32 #2
“I’m not leaving you,” he tries to stress. “If I leave right now, I can make it to the River before Kensy.” He swallows. “I spoke with Haaman—they said they would take Qia and Yaelic westward.”
“And where would I go?” she hisses. Ren’s eyes, beautiful and glassy with the wash of the moonlight, are poisonous. “You were going to leave me behind.”
“Ren—”
“Liar.” The way she wraps her arms around herself, protecting herself, makes him wither. “You said I’d never be alone again. You lied. Liar.”
There’s always been something lurking behind that cool expression she likes to wear. Soft, and a little afraid. A woman wearing the clothes of a god.
But here, with him, she’s a feral animal. Wild and scared. A deer caught in the scope of its hunter, gun aimed to kill.
And here, with her glaring at him like that, he’s still just a wolf who bites at hands that come too close.
“I do fear it,” he snaps at her, all teeth. “You, dying.” He marches toward her now, and she doesn’t cower away. Not even when he snatches her arm away from her chest and clasps her fist between his own, swallowing her small hand in a cage made from his fingers. “Do you even know who I am?”
Does she even know what he did?
Ren’s eyes search his, and it breaks something deep inside him.
“I’ve trained since I was seventeen,” he tells her. “Went to war under an oath and command. Let them beat the gods out of me, lash me until my faith bled from my skin. They didn’t promote me because I was smart. They made me a captain because I fight good. Because I know war.”
Ren reaches for him, trying to pull him closer. But he won’t move. He locks his knees and grits his teeth.
“And what did I do?” Basuin huffs a laugh and looks away. “I marched all those people who were forced to follow my command into a trap that I knew was a trap. Valkesta was a mistake. I killed everyone in that squad. I let them die.”
The anger burns out of him. Snuffed out. He intertwines their fingers, slotting their palms together—a perfect fit. God mark against god mark.
“It should’ve killed me,” he says. “I couldn’t protect them. Don’t you understand that?”
Basuin’s grasp tightens, but his hand is still entwined with Ren’s. He studies it, how their fingers connect, how fragile each bone braces under her skin. Someone’s hand is shaking, but he can’t tell whose. Maybe it’s both of them.
“I couldn’t protect them,” he bites like a snake, afraid of contact. “So yes, Ren. I’m leaving you.”
Just like he should’ve left them behind. Like he should’ve left Tomaas behind, because he knew that Tomaas was dead the minute he was dragged off. Prisoners of war aren’t prisoners. They’re dead.
“I wanted to die,” he rasps. How pathetic. “I deserved to—in Valkesta. A captain goes down with his squad and I should’ve, too.”
Ren reaches up and brushes her hand along his cheek, fingers finding the line of his jaw under the thick hair of his beard.
“Please.” And it sounds so pretty from her lips. “Don’t ever say that again.”
Basuin bites back a sob he didn’t taste before. “But I can’t protect you.” Teeth in tongue, Basuin forces back a sound only a wolf could make. “It’s what I was made to do,” he stresses. “I’m a god. The wolf-man changed me to protect you—but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to protect you, Ren.”
Here, he isn’t a soldier. Because a soldier would know what to do. A soldier follows orders. Here, he’s a god. His hands aren’t sure what to do with the power between them. He doesn’t know how to carry out the duty he’s been given.
If he was a bad soldier, then he is a worse god. But Basuin was a good soldier—so he was never meant to be a god at all.
Before the tears come, before he breaks in half, Ren gathers him into her arms and pulls him into an embrace that smells of fresh soil and something so Ren he can’t even name it.
Her hand paints patterns across his back as she holds him against her, so much smaller and still somehow enveloping him in all that she is.
If the world was to end, if the forest was to die right now, he wouldn’t be able to stop it.
Not here, right now, in this glass bubble he’s afraid might shatter.
“Basuin.” She says his name so softly, so gracefully—it reminds him of his mother, the way it’s said with love. “You must let go if you are to ever find peace.”
“There is no peace for me,” he says, canine teeth and all. “I always bring war.”
“Do you bring war,” Ren asks him, “or do you chase after it because you fear peace?”
He cries. Basuin has cried in this forest, cried before Ren, more than he has since his ma died. Soldiers don’t cry. He knows that; he’s known that since he was seventeen—and now, moons away from thirty, he cries not as a soldier, but as a god.
“I’ve become it.” Basuin bows his head to her shoulder. His tears mar her skin and it’s akin to the way his mistakes have marred her in the form of burns and bruises. It’s not enough. He’ll never be enough.
“And I’ll wage war again,” he hisses into her skin. “I’ll bring war to them the way they brought war here—but I’ll finish it. I will.”
“You’re scared.”
“And I’m angry.” His body trembles. “I’m an angry man, Ren. I am.”
“They both exist inside you because they are both the same.” Ren’s hand presses to his chest, harder this time. Less gentle. Heavy in a way that makes him feel like she’s real. “And like anger and fear, war and peace both exist inside you, too.”
He knows what she asks of him, and he refuses to answer.
“Let me make up for what I’ve done,” he pleads. “Let me learn from my mistakes.”
Let him change who he is.
But Ren moves closer in his refusal to do so. “You promised we would always be together,” she says, voice tight. “So we’re going together.” Then, with the heel of her palm gentle against him, she wipes his tears from his cheeks.
Off in the distance, weaving through the trees, Bass can see it—the bruise-purple trail of magic leading them toward the Winter River. The same color tied around their hands, a shade made from both their colors.
Ren starts to move, but Basuin doesn’t let go of his grip on her. He doesn’t want her to go. Doesn’t want to risk her life. But how can he deny her?
Basuin can’t break another promise. Not to Ren. And even if he could, Ren won’t let him leave without her. She’s too stubborn, too spiteful. She’d follow after him just to prove her point. And gods damn him, it would make him laugh.
So Basuin steels himself. Swallows back all that fear and anger.
“I will protect you,” he swears. He has to. “No matter what.”
This won’t be a failure. This won’t result in death and decay, not again. This is his last chance to get it right, before he loses everything.
“I’ve never protected anything,” Ren says. “I don’t know how to.”
It forces a smile from him, a warmth in his chest that feels like he’s held his hands too close to the fire and he’s singed the top layers of his skin. Something inside him feels broken, pieces rattling like glass shards in his chest.
“We’ll be okay,” he tells her. “Together.” But Basuin isn’t sure that’s true at all. Because he’s said it before, and the last time he said it, he was a liar.
We’ll be okay, he told Isaniel that last night, whose breath stunk of ale and venomous words. Together.
They never should’ve called you a hero, Isaniel said. Killing people just because you can doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you selfish. Makes you a monster.
And he laughed, because it was honest, and because it was true. Because it didn’t hurt him.
I would burn the world to save you, he said. To save anyone I love.
Well don’t save me, Isaniel said. I don’t want to be saved by you.
They race through the forest together. It’s dense and dark until they exit to the river’s bank and the moon above illuminates them. The water, slow laps of it against one another, sparkles like a collection of heavy gems.
Ren stares up at the sky, lips parted, her thin slant of eyes open wide, all silver and worshipping.
She’s beautiful, pale in the light that shows all the small sun-made moles and freckles dotting her skin like stars.
All goddess. And not as the Forest God—not like that.
Not the god he’s meant to protect. She’s something to worship.
Something so bewitching you want to capture it, but she can’t be possessed.
Deadly and illusive. An enchantress, a witch.
Ren’s cursed him. Of that, he’s sure.
She takes the few steps to the river’s bank, crouching on one knee to place her hand in the water. “Hou-tou,” she calls, and her voice carries over the river.
A rush of water and a burst of bubbles finds them, swifter than the current. Dripping in silk and webbed in moonlight, Hou-tou rises from her domain with half a body. Her legs are still part of the stream.
“Am-sa,” Hou-tou sings like a siren would. “You’ve called on me?” She smiles, and Bass knows of the teeth that hide behind those deceptive lips. “Even after all that happened to Gyeosi, you would ask something of me?”
It’s subtle, but there’s a jump in Ren’s cheek that mimics something dark. Her fingers curl, scooping silt from the river’s bank to crumble away.
“I would,” Ren says coolly. “A favor.”
Hou-tou tilts her head with a toothless grin. “Oh?”
Standing, Ren rises to her full height, shoulders rolled back and chin held high. Every move she makes is so dedicated. Purposeful. Each flick of her hand and toss of her hair is decided and full of a grace and balance Bass has never seen.
“Take us northward,” Ren says, no waver in her voice.
“And why should I?” Hou-tou asks, words all melodic, a hum in her throat.
“Because I am too weak.” Her voice is strong, even as she admits her faults. “The army will come if we don’t stop them.”
“You didn’t stop them before they destroyed our village.” Now, Hou-tou bares her teeth, slides her eyes over to Basuin. A mouth full of calcium weapons, all serrated edges and sharp points to rip into something.
“When this forest falls,” Ren says, eyes narrowing, “you’ll lose your home, same as we will. You won’t remain unscathed. They will burn everything, like they burned Gyeosi—and they won’t spare you.”
Basuin feels like he’s choking on thick, cloying air. This isn’t a conversation. It’s a negotiation, and Ren is winning.
Hou-tou’s grin falls and her blue-clouded eyes turn sharp and cold. Like a lake iced over, brittle and deadly. She’s lost, and she knows it. In an instant, she sinks back into the water, backing down.
“Yes, Am-sa,” she cedes. The river bubbles and babbles and Hou-tou drops like dead weight into the water.
Then, she races back up to the surface, body made of luster current and quick-moving streams. Her shape is outlined only by the moon, eyes clouded and blue, glowing pinpricks of light stemming from her body of water.
Hou-tou holds out a hand, but water pours from it. “Come, then,” she says, voice all river babble. “I hope you can swim, Wolf God.” Her eyes flicker to Ren.
Bass takes one step into the water, current flowing around his boot, hand outstretched toward Ren.
But Ren hesitates, body rigid for a moment too long, before she places her hand in his.
Her grip is shackling. Terrified. She takes two steps, wading into the cold stream with nothing but bare legs.
As she moves to take her third, her fingers close over the jade godstone linked around her neck. It sends something in his chest wild.
Especially when she turns and looks at him, gaze holding a childlike fear. Ren has always been afraid of water, and this seems no different. Though her eyes are dusted silver with the moon’s light, there’s an innocence in them that reminds him of snow. Fresh, powdered, and something he, too, fears.
It makes him squeeze her hand and steady his arm and say, “I’ve got you.” Ren’s eyes widen, and he repeats it like a promise. “I’ve got you.”
And she moves toward him, each step dragging through the river and cutting through the current as they approach Hou-tou.
As they get closer, hand in hand, foamy water builds around their legs until they can no longer move.
Beneath them, a surface that looks like ice constructs itself around them, a glowing platform the water anchors them to.
“Go with grace, my gods,” Hou-tou says, and then she blows a kiss made of bubbles and they rush forward as if the river has burst through a dam, the trees blending and bleeding into nothing but blackness around them, wind blowing their hair back as they ride toward the north.
Basuin doesn’t know what’s more magical—the speed at which the river carries them with, or the way Ren clings to him in an embrace as they brave the gale that crows, Go back, go back, go back.