“I’m not,” Basuin struggles to say, choking on this foreign feeling. “I’m not crying.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, wiping them with the heel of his palm, and when he looks down again Yaelic is crying as well. Yaelic sobs into the sleeve of his robe, wiping at his face that’s gone wet and runny with snot. Basuin shudders a breath.
His hand descends on Yaelic’s hair, brushing through it gently, ruffling it with his fingers. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s all right now.”
But Yaelic cries and cries as a child does, without any shame at all. “My mother,” the little wolf pup sobs, the sound echoing in the forest so empty and yet so full of life. “And Hami, too. Everyone’s left me.”
Without hesitation, Basuin pulls Yaelic to him, wrapping his strong arms around the boy. Yaelic clings to him, hands reaching for someone that no longer exists in this life—his mother is on the other side, at the Winter River, where he hopes Sa-cha received her. He hopes Sa-cha washed the blood from her fur, rinsed it out of her cotton dress when she walked through the river.
In time, the smoke and fog of the fire dissipates, leaving behind the smell of burned remains and decaying birth. He is sure he smells the same—char and ash from a graveyard and something made only to be destroyed. There’s blood on his skin. He can’t see it, but he feels it. Basuin needs to wash it away.
“The village isn’t far,” Yaelic tells him. “That’s where Hami went.”
Basuin doesn’t mention the bastion again. He’s felt the weighty shame of being called a soldier before, but it’s never quite scratched the way Hami’s clawed words did. That boy will never forgive Basuin for taking his brother. Even if it wasn’t Basuin’s choice.
He doesn’t want to go to Yaelic’s village, but damn, he’s tired. He drags his feet as they walk, breathing hard and grunting in pain. His whole body aches, especially where the wolf-man has carved out Basuin’s heart and made his ribcage into a home. A day of rest will be all he needs to get back to the bastion.
Anywhere would be better than here. He’s told himself that before, when Kensy brought him to this continent. Anywhere would be better than home. Now, he’d rather die than stay here with a wolf or a man or a god in his chest.
Yaelic looks back when Basuin falls behind. “Are you all right, Wolf God?”
Gulping down a painful breath, Basuin looks up with a sharpness in his eyes. The poor boy doesn’t cower one bit, too cheery to notice the storm that’s overtaking Basuin’s face. Wolf God. He is no such thing.
Black Wolf, Black Wolf, Black Wolf, the wolf-man snickers.
“Don’t call me that,” Basuin says, tone tempered.
“What should I call you?” Yaelic asks, blinking his jadeite eyes.
“My name is Basuin.”
Yaelic chitters, his shoulders shaking and his gold-white hair swaying in the breeze that dances through the trees. Basuin frowns.
“I can’t call you that,” Yaelic says. “You’re a god. The god I serve.”
“Then I command you not to call me that.”
Basuin pushes off the tree and strides past Yaelic. He’s not a god. He’s not even a man anymore—this thing inside him polluting him. Mocking him with every step. Shut up. Just shut up.
Yaelic trails behind him, trekking forward like a pup whose paws are too big for its body. It’s not the most coordinated. A childish gait, but one with purpose and spirit.
“Weren’t you a soldier?” Yaelic asks, kicking a stone out of his way and running ahead of Basuin. He turns to skip backward as they talk. “What did your soldiers call you?”
“Basuin,” he answers.
“They must’ve called you something.”
Black Wolf, Black Wolf, Black Wolf, the wolf-man jeers.
He stumbles, left boot catching on a thorned vine in dense brush he didn’t see. Tangled, Basuin catches himself on the nearest oak tree, bark scraping his hands as he pants for breath. It feels like he’s losing his mind. Basuin doesn’t know who he is anymore.
There’s movement to his left. He can hear it. But when he looks up, head turned toward the foliage, there’s nothing but a flash of white. A trick of the light.
Something tugs on his sleeve and Basuin lashes out, ripping his arm away in a flash of fear. It broils in his stomach, a fire that the wolf-man breathes life into. The smoke is filling his lungs but when he turns, it’s only Yaelic who looks up at him, eyes lost.
Aless had eyes like Yaelic’s—as green and golden as gems, marbled with loss and a plea for guidance.
Captain, she looked at him with those same damned eyes, I want to go home. I didn’t want this, didn’t think it’d be like this.
