We’ll go home, he lied. We’re gonna go home, ’Less.
But Aless never made it home, head still frozen stuck to the ground. None of them made it home, but only Basuin made it out of Valkesta. If he sheds his armor, if he tries to be anything but a soldier like Tehali said, what will happen to them? The pieces of them—the memories, the faces, the words—that he carried with him?
He’s a soldier. Not a god.
“Captain,” he tells Yaelic, not meeting his eyes, as green as Aless’ were. “That’s what they called me.”
Yaelic takes a step back from where Basuin struggles for breath, bowing his white-gold head until those eyes of his disappear. “Captain,” Yaelic calls him, voice boyish and flickering between a wolf pup’s whine and Aless’ cry for help before the sword swung down and beheaded her.
From muscle memory alone, Basuin’s head tilts toward the boy. “What?”
But Yaelic just gives him a toothy grin, child cheeks grown round and chubby. “Nothing,” he says, and then he continues to run forward. A pit of ache festers in Basuin’s gut.
The wolf-man rumbles awake. You’re a god now, it tells him. Someone belongs to you.
Basuin wishes he didn’t. He wishes that Yaelic didn’t belong to him, because the people that belong to him always die.
Chapter 7
The first thing he sees when the trees part is a woman standing tall and straight in their path. Familiar, somehow, and not at all. The straight ends of her hair brush by her shoulders, blunt bangs ruffled by the breeze. But it’s her eyes that he remembers.
A dark and oozing amber, a stricken look of horror marring her face. The woman from the forest, who told him, Go back. You’re making a mistake.
Yaelic rushes toward her, dropping to his knees in a show of worship, same as he had to Basuin. His dirt-caked legs collapse into the brush, unbothered by any prickles.
But the woman’s eyes don’t leave Basuin, even as Yaelic bows. She stares straight at him, brows drawn derisively. He can’t look away, locked in her stunned gaze. A line of ash angles over her jawline and down her neck. His godstone burns and buzzes against his chest.
“Am-sa,” Yaelic calls her. “I’ve brought the Wolf God—he saved me and my brother from the fire.”
The woman recoils, and her eyes drop to the boy at her feet. Her teeth grind, and then her lips part, but no words come out. Her swallow moves down the column of her throat and Basuin’s fingers curl into a fist.
“Rise, Yaelic,” she says. The command of it straightens her somehow, as if she’s regained consciousness. Her face smooths out in a snap, everything angular about her becoming even sharper. Shoulders bent into spears, cheekbones set like a knife’s edge. Even the slope of her nose seems dangerous.
As she reaches a hand toward Yaelic, he scrambles to his feet, patting dirt from his tattered robes. “Hami—Is he here? He left and—”
“Your brother is safe,” she says, sweeping his white-gold hair from his eyes. “Go inside, now.”
Basuin expects him to run off at her command, but Yaelic hesitates. He hides his hands behind his back where only Basuin can see, balling them up into fists.
“I’ve brought the Wolf God here,” Yaelic repeats himself. His voice sounds small.
“I am no such thing,” Basuin says. “I’ve seen to getting Yaelic back to his brother, which was all I set out to do.”
Now, he’ll go back to the bastion. Kensy might kill him.
And yet, it’s the wolf-man that unhinges its maw and snaps its teeth around Basuin’s lung, puncturing it with a squelch and a hiss of air. Basuin’s teeth gnash into his lip to stop a groan of pain, choking on the taste of rancid meat.
Yaelic’s look of pure betrayal knocks the rest of the air from Basuin’s body. Those big, childish green eyes of his. Glistening with unshed tears now, mouth in a tremble. He’s just a boy.
And Basuin is just a soldier. Not a god.
The woman returns with a curt nod. “Come, Yaelic.”
His eyes widen even more as he looks between Basuin and the woman. “No,” he protests, looking up at Basuin. Yaelic shuffles backward, toward Basuin, hand fisting in Basuin’s sleeve. “You’ll come too, won’t you?”
Before Basuin can answer, she hisses, “No. He can go back to wherever he came from.”
“Am-sa,” Yaelic pleads. “He’s a god, too. He needs rest.”
