The wolf-man inside him lunges. Its teeth tear into Basuin, shredding his flesh into nothing but dog chow. He covers his mouth with a trembling hand, so he won’t puke up the entrails the wolf-man slices into paper-thin ribbons. There’s so much blood.
Listen to me, it gnaws on one of Basuin’s ribs. You died, as all things do. But I gave you life again. I am the god that possesses your empty body. I’ve given you power so that you can serve your duty, little soldier boy.
Duty, again. A soldier then, a soldier now. A soldier in life, and a soldier in death. Not until he lays in the Blacksalt Sea will he be free.
You are the Wolf God, it snaps again at him. Chosen to protect this forest. Chosen to protect the Forest God.
He looks at her, rage boiling him alive, eyes wide and searing. “I did my duty. I get to go home now.” Home—when he thinks of it, he makes himself think of the Blacksalt Sea.
The Forest God cuts her eyes at him, onyx that could scar a man. “Do you get to go home, Black Wolf? When your people are killing mine?”
Basuin flinches at the name in shame, head swimming and hands hot. “I never wanted to come here.”
“But you did,” she says, and she’s right. “You’re getting in my way. I brought you here out of kindness, for Yaelic, since he’s bound himself to you. How gracious a god you are.”
A roar of protectiveness rises in him for no reason. “Don’t speak of Yaelic,” he spits out.
In a flash, the Forest God clears the space between them and is nearly slick to him—only a sliver of space between his chest and hers. Though she cranes her neck up to look at him, her glare is more fearsome. But Basuin doesn’t cave. He stands straight and still, nostrils flaring as he looks down to meet her dark gaze. She’s a bullet, quick as a gun goes off.
“My duty is to save the forest your army is destroying,” she snarls. A wild animal. “You’d do well to remember that, god or not, you don’t belong here. You’ve killed my people—be lucky that I’ve yet to remove you from the picture, Wolf God.”
Her chest breaks with every heaving breath, eyes glittering with something silver and something deeper. Rage colors her glare into twilight. The dying light of day. He needs to look away—to anywhere but her. Anywhere else, because the way she wields her tongue she might as well hold a knife to his skin and bleed him now.
Fuck off, he wants to tell her. At that, the wolf-man digs its claws straight into him with a kind of pain that scratches at his brain and makes him want to vomit again.
Before he can say anything else meant to harm her, the Forest God falls back to her heels, the rift between them growing until he’s left with nothing but the scent of soil and something floral. Then, she ducks out of his room.
Tomorrow, he’ll go back to Shaelstorm. He’ll do as Kensy says. He’ll beg Tehali to undo her work in saving him and stitching him back up and make her kill him like he should have asked her to in Valkesta.
He’ll ask to go home this time. Plead and beg and scream. Take me back, he’ll ask at their feet and on his knees. Back to Ankor. Even if his mother isn’t there anymore.
Chapter 8
Sleep doesn’t come, and neither does morning. Yaelic snoozes like a child, unaware of any danger that could fell him. His deep, quick breathing keeps Basuin alert, and he rolls around in his sleep so much that he falls from his mat leaving Basuin to roll him back. He never even wakes, just makes sleep-addled, nasal sounds.
So, instead, Basuin stares at the ceiling and replays his life’s worst failure, as he does most nights. Names the people he lost over and over so his war-torn mind won’t forget them. If he forgets them, then they were never real.
1st Sergeant Curk of Ferghit. The only man who ever matched Basuin head on, in height and strength.
2nd Sergeant Aless of Harker. She barely spoke a word to anyone when she first showed up. Basuin never expected her to become such a loyal ally in the end.
3rd Sergeant Isaniel of Medeia. Isaniel. Isaniel.
4th Sergeant Mekal of Altea. Basuin still doesn’t know why Mekal agreed to go. They never should’ve gone—should’ve done their five years and left the legion as soon as they could.
5th Sergeant Tomaas of Olsten. Proof that the gods can be cruel.
Basuin lays awake and repeats them over, and over, and over, and over, until the numbers and names and cities bleed into the pulp of offal he saw strewn across the snowbanks. It’s the one thing he can do for them, now.
Two days ago, he was the disgraced Captain Basuin, leading Ariche’s Fleet to conquer a new land—something he never wanted to do. Yesterday, he was just Basuin. Disgraced, dishonored, and deserving of death.
Now, he’s the Wolf God. A deity lives in his chest and has named him so. A boy belongs to him, has pledged his life to Basuin.
But in every iteration of his life, he’s just a soldier tasked with a duty he didn’t ask for. Basuin is tired. So, so tired.
Not tired enough to sleep. Basuin fixes the sheet over Yaelic’s curled-up form, sighing. Then, he laces his boots on and heads out of their hut, into the village. The lights still glow, but dimmer in the darkness of night. It’s so quiet now, no spirits to be seen. No Forest God, either. He’s thankful for that.
But as he heads down the steps from the treehouse and toward the edge of the village, he catches sight of her. Just a flash—the back of her white, fluttering shirt and a dirt-stained calf as she disappears behind the foliage. Where is she going?
