The tears break with shuddering breaths and swimming vision. He hurries to wipe his eyes because he can’t do this right now. He has to save her. He has to heal her. He has to look at her face and commit it to his frail, lying, terrified memory so he won’t forget her.
“Don’t say that.” Basuin presses his hand to her chest and pumps red magic into her wound. Stitch it up, mend it, damn it. Damn him. “Don’t say it like that. We’ll rebuild.” His magic feels like it’s pouring into nothing, going nowhere. It’s just being leached away. “Say it then, once we’ve rebuilt our home.”
“I’ve never killed anyone before,” she says. She sounds tired, like she’s beginning to drift away in the quietness of it all. Basuin chokes on a sob and pours everything he can into his hands to heal her, but his magic keeps filtering through her. Ren reaches up and clutches his hand instead, grip feeble. “I hope I did it right.”
He makes a noise, half laughter and half shock. “Everything you do is right. Everything—please, Ren.” He can’t bring himself to do anything more but beg. “Please.”
Basuin covers her with his body, cradling her tight. He cries into her neck. The magic he possesses won’t stitch it back together, won’t close the wound she’s losing life from. He’s losing her. Stitch the wound, stitch it up. Mend her, heal her, save her, anything.
But Ren stills in his embrace, and when Basuin pulls away to look, her eyes have closed. Her chest doesn’t rise again.
And just like that, he’s lost everything. Kensy won.
Chapter 34
The darkness of his mind has never been this dark before. It’s pitch and stuck, limbs moving so mechanical and slow that it’s painful. Burning. Every part of him feels heavy, packed ice and snow atop him, weighing him down on the battlefield. The winds of Valkesta howl. They howl so loudly that the echo could shatter metal and bone alike.
He covers his mouth with his hand. Rust on his tongue. Bile in his throat.
Ren is dead. Ren is dead.
Basuin takes her face in both his hands, gentle. Still gentle. Maybe he can wake her.
“Please,” he whispers, again and again. “Please, Ren,” he begs. With shaky fingers, he fumbles with his mother’s godstone, squeezing it in his hand so hard it aches. “I’ve never—”
He’s never asked for anything like this before. He’s never begged for something so bad.
Basuin begged when his mother died—to go home and bury her. He begged Tehali to kill him when they returned to Ha’riste with fewer bodies than they left with. He tried not to beg when Kensy said they were going on this godsforsaken crusade to claim this uninhabited island. Uninhabited because Ithika and her host protected it—until Kensy slew her, again.
But he hasn’t begged like this.
“Please!” he shouts again, looking up to the sky, looking around the field, looking at the broken statue. “Please,” he cries, watching the way the stream soaks Sa-cha’s shrine in red the shade of Ren’s blood. “Take me. Take mine, my life.”
Barely twenty feet away, Kensy’s body hangs from Ren’s antler. His blood runs thick and dark, his hand still twitching. Basuin should’ve killed him first. He should’ve done what he does best. He’s a murderer. He failed at the one thing he’s good at.
The roar of the waterfall grows into screams in his ears. He can’t move. Ren has chained him here—he’ll stay until he’s washed away with her in tow.
“It was supposed to be me.” He chokes on his own tongue. “It was supposed to be my life.”
Fuck Valkesta. Fuck it all. He shouldn’t have died there. He’s glad he didn’t die there, in those mountains, under that ice. Because he’s here. And this is where he should’ve died. This is where he was meant to.
“Say something,” he begs. Not to Ren. Basuin hits his chest with his fist. “Say something!” he screams at the wolf-man.
Fuck’s sake. Basuin cries. Fat, hot tears. He claws at his face, nails in his eyes, wanting to tear his flesh raw.
“You’ve never been silent before,” he snarls. “You’ve always had something to say. So fucking say something.” He bows his head, dropping his forehead against Ren’s, frantically working to wipe away the tears that fall upon her perfect, cooling skin.
It should’ve been him. Why’d she take the shot? His sobs are the only sound in this place—this sacred place, defiled with blood and dead gods.
Come to the River, someone says. He nearly screams again out of pure rage.
“I’m here!” He turns his face upward. “I came all the way here and there’s nothing.” The River is nothing but a dream. Ren lies in its water and she lies there dead. Eyes closed. Limbs heavy.
The ghost of hands fall to his back and over his shoulders. Come to the River, my son.
Basuin whirls, but no one is behind him. “Ma?” He knocks his fist over his heart again. No wolf-man is home.
But something sparkles in the water, a glint of light. Not a reflection. Something real. It skips down the stream, bounding off the broken idol and toward the waterfall. When it slips inside, the water parts as if making way for a body.
