Kensy stares down at him, glare hot. “You’ve gone soft. The Basuin I knew first cared for nothing but blood.”
“The Basuin you knew was angry,” he says. “The Black Wolf was angry. The disgraced Captain Basuin was angry.”
He’s always been filled to the brim with it—an anger and a rage that can’t be pacified. Can’t be soothed. His mother used to try, but what exists in him can’t be killed. There are parts of him that have stayed the same since he was a boy—his anger is but one of them.
“I’m still angry,” he admits, breathing hard. “But all anger stems from fear.” Ren told him that. He was angry when he met her first. When he thought her to be the one who kept him trapped here, in this forest, the forest that she loves so much.
But in truth, he was afraid of himself; afraid of the war his hands know, the blood he’s picked from beneath his nails. And he was afraid to know Ren because of it, and afraid that she might know him, too.
So now, he asks, “What are you so afraid of, Kensy?”
Kensy’s ice-blue eyes go wide and stricken for a split second. Then, he narrows his gaze into something cutting, sharp, as he stares Bass down.
“Gods fear nothing,” Kensy says. “No one.”
“That isn’t true,” Bass shoots back. “I fear much, Commander. So, I’ll ask you again. What are you afraid of?”
Another memory from long ago colors Basuin’s mind. Something that raises the hackles on the back of his neck now. From before Basuin was promoted to Captain, when they culled the rebellion in a Grimmalian village that was led by teenaged boys. Kensy’s hand gripped Basuin’s shoulder, hard.
If you don’t fight, Kensy said, then everything will be taken from you. That’s why we fight, Bass. We fight so we don’t lose anything.
Fire roars behind him, a reminder that Ren is still here. A reminder that his race toward the River, toward Kensy, means his life is tied to Ren’s. If Kensy kills him here, Ren dies too. He swore he wouldn’t let that happen.
“What will you lose?” Basuin asks him. “If you don’t become a god and you go back to Ha’riste, what will they take from you?” A lick of sympathy coats the back of his mouth. They were friends, once. Weren’t they?
Everything is quiet. In this pocket of peace, protected from the outside world, the forest is so silent. He can almost hear himself breathe, it’s so quiet out here. Breathe in, breathe out, chest panting to keep his lungs filled.
Then, Kensy pulls out a cocked pistol and shoots him.
There is no pain—he flinches but there is no pain—and then a body falls into him, and when he opens his eyes, it’s Ren, and Ren is collapsing in his arms, and he smells blood, and Ren is bleeding, and her shirt is bloodied, and his knees hit the ground and Ren is so heavy in his arms and—
“Well, that’s one.” Kensy cocks his pistol again. “Now, two.”
In an instant, the field explodes in a shattering of blue magic too bright to comprehend and Ren lunges out of Basuin’s arms on all fours, a wild animal. Her limbs stretch into long legs and her spine crooks and then breaks, hunching and shifting. Her body grows into something imposing, larger than any animal he’s seen before, glowing with the blue of her magic as antlers sprout from her temples.
In her place stands a deer, fur white and glowing cyan, tall enough that her antlers scrape the trees. Inside of its trunk, Ren’s human body sits on her knees, palms pressed to the belly of the deer. Basuin reaches a hand out for her.
Before Kensy can shoot again, Ren charges him, impaling him on the end of an antler. Blood drips down the bone from Kensy’s disemboweled stomach.
The monstrous, beautiful deer that is Ren’s spirit turns and looks at him, viscera decorating her crown like jewels. Back arched, hooves dug into the earth, head dipping low with the weight of Kensy’s body. Her eyes are blank, white, wide, glowing. Her human body is outlined in the blue that belongs to her, sitting on her haunches, staring at him.
Inside, she presses herself up from its belly and stands, a vision, a bright flash of light filling the clearing. When it fades, Ren’s hair whips against her cheeks, human again, but still coronated with blue-boned antlers. Kensy hangs from her laurels.
Then, she slams her hands upon the ground. Ren sprouts a tree made of blue magic out of nothing at all. This time, without his help. Basuin watches every cycle—seedling to sprout to root to tree as it grows and thickens and branches unfurl and leaves plume from it. Ren rams her antler into the tree, slamming Kensy into the trunk and pinning him there. And as her body slowly shrinks, magic waning away, her human hand reaches and snaps the antler from her hair. Blood stains her god mark.
“The gods did not choose wrong,” she speaks, her voice echoing with tones that don’t sound like her at all, overlapping voices carried from her mouth. “They abandoned you.”
And then, light bleeding from her body, Ren sinks. Basuin dives to catch her, skidding into the creek as he holds her in his arms. Red blooms from the shot in her chest, leaking blood from an exit wound in her back that he presses a hand against to staunch the flow.
The fear is so suffocating that when he opens his mouth, no words come out at all.
“Not so unfamiliar, is it?” Ren says, but it’s breathy and strained.
“Stop,” he whispers. “No.”
Ren reaches up, hand on his cheek. It’s sticky with blood—Kensy’s, or hers? He’s going to vomit. He’s going to lose it. Bass’ hand covers hers in desperation. The water beneath Ren turns red as it streams through the field.
“I’ve loved many things,” Ren says, “but why do you feel like the first?” She smiles, but it’s weak and trembling. “I love you, Basuin. Of Ankor, of the Wolf God—all of it. I love you, Basuin.”
