Behind them, all the faces and the spirits of the forest who are left. They’ve answered his call, or perhaps this is all the distance they could cross in time. Maybe they were stopped here by the barrier. He doesn’t care.
There’s no time for words, and even if there were, he’s being eaten by the burning ire that’s healed all the breaks in his bones, suffused through him.
“Qia,” he barks. “Ren is in the river. Tend to her. Call on Hou-tou.” Then, he turns to Yaelic, too boyish and too little and too young to be in a war. “Stay with her and protect her.”
“I want to come with you,” Yaelic starts, but a snarl from Basuin shuts him up.
“You will stay,” he bites. “Haaman!”
The sparrow looks at him warily. Like they don’t know if they should bow or puff out their chest.
“Watch over them.” Basuin waves a hand over at the spirits lining the trees. “Get them somewhere safe.”
“Where are you going?” Haaman asks, but Bass has already turned his back.
Kensy still hangs from the tree Ren grew from her magic, her antler stabbed in his gut. The blood is shiny, still trickling down and feeding its roots. Thick vines, grown from the tree, have begun to coil around him. It’ll feed on his matter, feast on his decay.
Bass braces his foot on the tree trunk and, magic running through him, rips Ren’s antler from the tree. The roots wrapped around Kensy tighten, but those calculating blue eyes have gone dark. Basuin wasn’t sure he’d ever see the day Kensy died.
If only Basuin had killed him. He wishes it. If only he could’ve saved Ren from killing; if only he could’ve saved her.
But, more than that, Basuin was meant to kill Kensy. For as much as Kensy made Basuin, Basuin made Kensy, too.
Kensy trained him like a dog, and every time Basuin rolled over and did as he was told, it grew the cruelty that Kensy was capable of. An obedient dog makes for an arrogant master.
But that arrogance brought him here. How far Commander Kensy has fallen, to die in the forest he lay claim over. Struck out to colonize. Basuin licks his lips—there’s blood on his mouth.
“I’m going to the bastion,” he says. “Back to Shaelstorm.”
He’s going to where everything began. Where he first set foot on this island.
With one last howl, stood up on his two legs, Basuin’s heart thunders and his body bends and breaks and grows until he falls onto his hands and knees—on all fours on the forest floor. He can see above the canopy. He can see the whole forest stretched out before him. Basuin growls, all wolf and no man, and then he lunges and breaks for the trees. He leaps through the forest, large and unending. But he is larger, and he sees everything. The southern coast where Shaelstorm is built.
How will you end it? the deer-girl asks.
The same way it started. With fire, and with blood.
Chapter 35
There are no tears left to be shed. The sting of his eyes is the sting of fire, of heat, of anger, of fury and of rage. It boils through every part of his body. Every limb, every bone, every nail, every hair. Covers him and burns through him like the itch of the poison ivy he got into as a boy, before he knew it could sting as much as it did.
I’m fine, he tried to tell his mother when she came close with a balm that smelled of grass and something astringent.
Even if you are fine, she said, pulling one of his reddened hands toward her, that doesn’t mean you should let your hurt continue to hurt. We make remedies so we can soothe the pain and heal the sick. Doesn’t the itch drive you mad?
Yes, he admitted to her, and then he let her smooth the pasty balm on his rash. The relief of it made him cry, and his mother laughed.
My Basuin, she cooed. A son who feels such emotions, so fully. You are full.
Of what? he asked her.
Everything. Joy, and sorrow, and sometimes anger. But it is better to be full than empty.
Are there people who are like that, Ma?
Yes, she told him, pulling him close and kissing his hair. People like that are the ones who let their pain linger instead of soothing it away. They like the hurt, because it makes them feel less empty.
He understands it now—Kensy, and Isaniel, and him. All the same, hands sunk into different vices. What would his mother think if she saw him now? Would she cry for him, or would she give him that proud smile, the soft one with knowing eyes, now that he’s become a god?
