It’s like a cry for war, the way that Hami recoils and yells with rage. “I knew it! He’s one of them, he’s a soldier.” Hami lunges forward, shackling a hand around his brother’s. “C’mon, Yaelic!”
And yet again, Yaelic rips away from Hami. “No! I’m not going. He saved us. He’s not a soldier—he’s a god. And I’m going to serve him.”
Basuin takes two steps back. No, he misheard.
The brothers stare one another down. One seething, breathing hard. The other calm, only glancing back once at Basuin. It’s enough to make his hand twitch over where his heart used to be.
A god?
Basuin pulls at his hair, tangling the strands into a black mess tumbling over his shoulders. He’s got to get out of here. Back to the bastion—yes. Kensy’s waiting for him to return, Basuin has a job to do.
No, not anymore. Basuin defied direct orders. He can’t go back to the bastion. Kensy will send him home. He doesn’t know where he’ll go, doesn’t care. As long as it’s not back to that fucking shack on the edge of the woods. But even in death, the heavy chains of guilt seem to follow him no matter where he goes. He takes another step backward, away from the brothers, only for the ache in his chest to hit him like a bullet. Basuin seizes.
Where do you think you’re going? something asks from inside of him. You belong to me now, little soldier boy.
Staggered, Basuin’s world spins and he lands on his hands and knees, gasping for air over the forest floor. He’s going to throw up. Gods, he’s going to hurl. And those kids—those fucking kids—are watching him. Basuin reaches for his chest with blackened fingers, but there is no wound. Just the remnants of the wolf-man, the empty chamber where his heart should reside.
Once, before he died, he had one, he swears.
Is he dead? It hurts too bad for him to be dead. He’s been dead like this before, in Valkesta, where it hurt too goddamn much to be dead but he wished for it anyway.
That’s right, the wolf-man says, curled up in the hole in Basuin’s chest. You’ve met me before. Your mother warned you about me.
Basuin sits back on his haunches, hands covering his eyes. In the darkness, the wolf-man emerges. From the black fur of his wolf head and sinking into the black skin of his man chest, there is blood. It leaks, sticky and red, from his ruby eyes.
He flexes his fingers, covered in black soot. “What am I?” he asks, to the thing inside him.
Yaelic’s eyes meet his, shining emerald in the light filtering through the canopy. “The Wolf God,” the boy answers, and the forest lurches. His ears ring with the reverberations of bullets and war cries.
Your men have come and ravaged the forest, the wolf-man says.
He didn’t ask to come here.
And yet, like a good soldier, you followed. So like a good soldier, you will pay your army’s price.
A hand made of claws strikes something inside Basuin and he cries out as his flesh tears like tender, succulent meat roasted over an open flame. His blood, the same color as the wolf-man’s, drips down his body, but when he opens his eyes and looks down at his chest, there’s no wound.
With blood.
There’s something desperate grasping at his limbs, climbing up his nerves. He was a son, once. And then a soldier. A war hero. A failure and a disgrace. But who is he now? What is this thing inside of him, not wolf and not man and not tangible? Basuin wants to stick his fingers into the nonexistent wound and peel that wolf-man out of him.
You were chosen. The wolf-man curls up inside of him now, black fur ruffled.
Chosen to what? His teeth bite into his tongue.
You are the Wolf God, it snaps its teeth. Chosen to protect the forest, it growls.
Basuin doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream or run away. “I have to get out of here,” he says to no one. No one who will listen, at least. “I won’t be shackled to you.”
The wolf-man huffs a laugh.
I own you, the wolf-man says from inside him. What is a soldier without his duty? You wouldn’t know, little soldier boy.
“I’m leaving,” Hami says among the echoing sounds flooding Basuin’s mind, and then he’s snapped back into the real world. “He’s dangerous.”
“He’s our god,” Yaelic pleads.
“He’s our enemy!” Hami snaps back. “If you want to serve a soldier, you’re stupider than I thought. Last chance, Yaelic.”
