Her bare feet barely kick up dirt as she bounds across one field to the next. The mulch is wet with poison when he runs through it, and Basuin nearly can’t catch himself as he slips to chase after her. The next plot of crops goes as quick as the last, god magic turning vegetal sprout into nothing more than rot.
The Forest God slips into a growing maze of corn, looking over her shoulder at him. Her eyes are near-black, even in the light of the torches lining the bastion walls. She disappears into the sea of green, her hand trailing over the ears of corn as she goes. Her touch leaves behind a blue trail, the smell of mold and ferment hitting his nose as he dives in after her.
“What are you doing?” he shouts, slowed by the stalks. She’s small enough to slip through them with little resistance. He should’ve brought his sword, but it sleeps next to Yaelic in Gyeosi. How foolish of him, yet again.
“Not killing them,” her voice, bell-toned and poised, finds him. “Not like your people are.”
Basuin grits his teeth and speeds up. He hears her exit the field before he sees her leap away. She’s fast, but his legs are much longer—and Basuin’s had plenty of chase in his life. Not as kind then as he will be now. But the Forest God runs toward the food stores and this is his last chance to stop her.
When his hand closes around her arm, for the first time since he’s seen her, she looks back with a flash of fear on her face. Eyes stricken and wide. Lips parted and gasping.
Basuin lets go.
And then he stumbles, shoulder hitting the ground with a wicked thud and a cough of dirt. Shit. Kensy was right. Disgraced Captain Basuin isn’t much of a captain at all anymore. He’s lost his fight. Basuin rolls onto his back, out of breath, staring up at the sky. There are no stars here, not with all the light and smoke from the bastion.
Where his heart should lie, the wolf-man snuffs a cruel laugh.
The Forest God’s face appears before him and his breath hitches. He sits up on his elbows, tipping his head back to meet her gaze as she stands over him. Peering at him. Her eyes aren’t angry so much as they are wary, but even still, he feels the ire radiating from her.
“Your world is so small and selfish,” she hisses. “One woman against a militant base content to destroy a whole island, and yet you chase after her instead.”
“You’re killing a few soldiers who are following orders—”
“I’m not killing them,” she snarls, and then she backs away from him. Basuin moves with her as if magnetic, pushing himself off the ground. “I would never kill them.”
“And starving them is better?”
“Yes,” she bites. “Your people won’t starve as long as they leave this island.”
“It’s not their choice.”
“Everything is a choice, Black Wolf.” It’s meant to cut, and it does. Basuin bleeds something awful. “You chose to come here, you chose to die, and your punishment fits your crime.”
There is a war inside of him—there is always a war somewhere. The weight of it has bludgeoned him into nothing, shaped him into who he is now. She’s as right as she is wrong. What choice did Basuin have when everything has been beaten out of him, until he’s been made into the perfect soldier he was always meant to be?
“You know nothing of me,” he says, voice quiet. “I wanted to die, not—”
“Perfect,” she interrupts him coolly. “You’re already dead.”
“Good,” he snarls back. “Great. I died, only for the gods to bring me back and command me to protect you.”
“To protect this forest,” she says.
“To protect you,” he snaps again. He doesn’t want godhood. Doesn’t need another duty. Can’t be a protector the way the wolf-man commands him to. Basuin couldn’t protect his mother. Nor his soldiers, and certainly not Isaniel. So how, gods tell him, is he supposed to protect this woman and her forest?
He doesn’t want to. He won’t.
“I’ll make them regret coming to this forest,” she says. “And you’ll regret it too, if you get in my way.”
Then, as she always has, the Forest God turns and walks away from him. Back toward the forest, leaving Shaelstorm cropless. So Basuin starts walking, too. Following after her. But she flicks her hand out at her side and an arc of blue magic leaves her fingertips, and then Basuin runs straight into something solid—something midair that he can’t see. A barrier.
She’s leaving him. This time, for good. Rage and fury seeps into his skin until he’s drenched in heat, anger dripping from his fingers until he has to make fists of them.
“Didn’t you hear me before?” she asks, cutting a glare at him. “I said you weren’t welcome.”
It takes everything in him not to bang his fist upon the barrier, to try and break through. His nostrils flare. “You said I could stay until morning.”
For the first time, the Forest God’s lips curl into a smile as she looks to the horizon. “And you left to follow me. It’s nearly dawn now. Let your people know that their fields won’t grow anything.”
