“He’s a soldier,” she bites back, but all heat is directed toward Basuin. She raises her chin at him. “He belongs with his own kind—the dangerous kind.”
“He saved us.” Yaelic clings to him, even as Basuin tries to shake the wolf pup off. “He isn’t dangerous, not like the others. He saved me and Hami.”
“Yaelic,” he interrupts, voice nicked into a thing with teeth. “I’m not staying.”
“You’re not welcome,” the woman amends for him, and it takes strength for Basuin not to rise to her heckling. She’s right—whoever she is. She’s right that he’s a soldier, and he’s dangerous, and he’s not welcome here. Wherever here is.
“Then neither am I,” Yaelic says, a puff of his chest and a thrill of confidence in his voice. Determination and decision. “I won’t go. Not without him.” Yaelic’s hand falls and the boy steadies himself alone. “I bound myself to him, Am-sa.”
The cool, controlled look she wears vanishes, a flash of shock and horror flitting across her visage. “You what?” Incredulity floods her voice.
“He’s my god now,” Yaelic says. “If he isn’t allowed in the village, then neither am I.”
Children; how stubborn they are. Basuin’s mouth moves around words, but none of them come out to tell Yaelic he’ll do no such thing. This is where Yaelic belongs—his brother is here. The woman called Am-sa seems to care. Basuin doesn’t need this kid stuck to his leg. He doesn’t need another life to carry on his back.
But he’s confused, too. He doesn’t know where he is, who he is. Why Yaelic calls him a god, and why he bound himself to Basuin. Responsibility is red and hot in his chest. Kensy left Yaelic motherless, but Basuin was the one to pull him and his brother from the fire. Yaelic’s life is a weight on his back.
This is for the best. To leave him here with this woman and his brother and march back to the bastion. Basuin can’t be dead. If he were dead, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. He can figure this out on his own.
Inside him, the wolf-man chuffs a laugh.
As he mulls on his words, something he isn’t keen to do, the woman’s shoulders droop enough to catch his eye. She takes a breath, chest rising and falling with a melodic sigh, and reaches to brush a hand through her hair.
“We’ll talk more about this later,” she finally says, voice hammered into a monotonous thing. “You can both stay—just for the night.” Her eyes target his. “But you must leave in the morning.”
It sends a measure of chill straight through him. If he wasn’t trained into such a mean thing, he might have shuddered. But he stands strong and proud, despite wanting to shrink under her gaze. She sees him as an enemy; her dark eyes say as much. But Basuin’s been an enemy for most of his life, so it doesn’t matter.
Yaelic bows deeply. “Thank you, Am-sa!” But she’s already turning her back to them and walking away.
Basuin lurches forward, unable to stop himself. “Who are you?” he asks after her. Desperation leaks between his teeth and spills onto his tongue.
The wolf-man howls in laughter.
“The Forest God,” she answers, looking at him from over her shoulder. Then, a thread of blue light appears in a tangle around her wrist, and in one bright flash, the Forest God thrusts her hand forward. The air shimmers—like magic.
It’s as if the wolf-man thunders in place of his heart, something deep within him thrumming from behind his ribcage. Beating at him, drumming in a march. Her, it says.
A dome appears out of the glowing lights that glitter from the Forest God’s fingers, encasing the forest ahead of them. Then, her hand pierces the bubble and her arm sinks into the magic, creating a tear in the protective seal.
You’ll protect her, the wolf-man barks.
It’s feral. Wild and alive. His nonexistent heart hammers like it did on the battlefield—in Valkesta.
Fall back! someone called. Push forward! he shouted. The winds howled, Kill, kill, kill! Protect, protect, protect!
A command, he realizes. It’s a command, one that’s grown inside the house of his body from the once-god that now resides between his bones. The Wolf God, chosen to protect the forest. But not only the forest.
Protect, protect, protect.
The Forest God looks back at him again, face hardened and eyes cold. “Welcome to Gyeosi, Wolf God.”
It feels like rain, the first time he takes a step through the magic barrier and into Gyeosi. Torrential rain beating down on him, sleeting across his shoulders and cutting through his skin, rolling down his back in chilling lines. It’s heavy. He might drown in the downpour of the storm, thunder rumbling above the clouds he cannot see. The night is dark.
But then the Forest God walks through the trees and Gyeosi transforms entirely. It’s as if the sun comes out—the shadowed trees of the forest blossom into a village that feels like home. Along the branches, strung up with twine, lanterns and glass balls housing fire and magic glow to life as if the Forest God commands them to, without even a word or a flick of her wrist.
The rain stops falling, the storm clouds race to clear the sky, and it’s warm. Where his heart should be, the wolf-man laughs at him.
There is magic here, on this island. Running through the ground. What he felt before, when he first stepped upon the land, is nothing compared to the currents of energy sparking in the air of Gyeosi. Even breathing is easier.
