He doesn’t even want to go back to Gyeosi. Basuin could walk away, right now, and they’d both be happy. But spite narrows his brows and keeps his hands hot. She doesn’t get to win—not when Basuin is forced to lose everything again.
The wolf-man stands up on his hind legs and howls. You are weak! it berates him. It sinks its canines straight into his flesh, tears chunks of it out until it can ravage his sternum, his heart-bone. How far you have fallen from grace. I thought you to be a war hero.
Once, maybe. But now he is nothing.
What a useless thing, the wolf-man growls, and then it breaks Basuin’s heart-bone in one bite. He gasps for air, sagging against the magic wall the Forest God has barred him from moving past. What a useless little soldier boy you turned out to be.
It’s better this way. For him to stay here at the bastion, to be rid of Yaelic, to offload the rest of his responsibilities so he can die—for good, this time. Basuin’s tried to die twice already, and each time he’s failed. Maybe this time, when Kensy kills him, it’ll stick.
When Basuin finally takes a step back, away from the barrier, the Forest God turns her back on him. Then, the ground shakes. A chest-aching boom, loud enough to bleed ears, goes off with no warning. She recoils, shifting into a guarded stance as she looks to the sky. The barrier between them drops as the quietus of the forest is disturbed. The trees quiver violently.
“What—” she tries to speak.
And then another explosion goes off, louder and sharper, whistling into the air until it hits the ceiling of night and shatters into one thousand lights colored red like blood. The Forest God’s face is awash in it, her eyes wide and fearful.
The place where Basuin’s heart used to lie beats quick as a bird’s fluttering wings. They’re celebrating. It cinches something in his guts, twists his organs around each other. They’re celebrating.
Another streak of fire arcs across the sky until it bursts into blue sparks, fizzling out with a whine.
Kensy, and all of Shaelstorm, are celebrating Basuin’s death.
Chapter 9
Without a second to digest it, another cannon is fired and shakes the grass beneath Basuin’s feet. She falls into a crouch, hands clasped over her ears. In a bloom of green lights, shrieking like something dying, he can see fear painted on her visage in a way he’s never witnessed before.
Inside him, the wolf-man makes some half-growl, half-snarl sound and punctures Basuin’s stomach with its claws.
He reaches, but she’s quicker. She darts back into the forest and something yanks him forward. He chases after her—the wolf-man lunges at his organs and he’s forced to move. She finds the nearest tree and begins to climb, fast, faster, and he lags behind. By the time his foot is braced against bark, she’s already in the branches above his head. Basuin scrambles up the oak in pursuit. She’s too quick for him.
Another firework explodes in the air. Red, again. And then another right after, bright white. The colors of the Xalkhan kingdom.
He wheezes as he pulls himself up over branch after branch, scaling the tree. His chest aches, muscles weak and weary. But finally, he reaches her. The Forest God stands rigid and upright on the topmost branch, extended out toward the south where the lights come from. Her head tipped up, mouth agape as she watches the fireworks gleam across the sky.
When Basuin catches his breath, he doesn’t watch the show. He watches the Forest God, face alight with all different colors, and the horror spilling over her countenance.
“What fire is this?” she asks, her voice barely heard over the whistle of explosions and the boom of cannons. “I’ve never seen violence so colorful.”
“They’re fireworks,” he says, throat dry as he swallows. “Haven’t you seen any?”
In Ha’riste, they were popular. Common, even. Kingdom celebrations always held elaborate shows, new colors and new designs that would light up the dull skies of the city. Queen Ye’suite was a fan, someone once told him. But even street rats could buy tiny sparklers to light for a couple coins, kids running around trying to set fire to one another’s hair or mark their skin with a burn.
But she answers, “No.” Her voice choked and twisted. “No, I’ve never. What have you brought to my forest?”
Basuin cringes. He didn’t bring them. But the legion did.
He remembers the vivid displays that sprang from their victories, the smell of blood at camp mingling with the sharp scent of gunpowder packed into paper hand cannons. The laughter of his men who lit the tail-end of the fuses and tossed them into the air.
Their greatest victory, in Ulenski, Grimmalia’s last unoccupied trade city. When he couldn’t wash the ash from his skin, blackened by death and sin and triumph. Kensy ordered a couple of soldiers to load the cannons, to shake whoever was left in Grimmalia and remind them of who held power—Xalkhir. Always Xalkhir.
Why the long face? Kensy had asked him, a burn in his sharp blue eyes. You should be proud.
But Basuin had flinched away from the cannons and held his head in his hands. Kensy clapped a firm hand on his shoulder.
You’ve freed them, Kensy said. Unshackled them from gods who didn’t bother to save them.
And lights, the color of blood and fire, burst forth from their camps long into the night, punctuated by cannons that shook the earth and the oceans and Basuin’s body as he lay on his cot, wracked with violent shivers. And Isaniel, who laid a blanket over him and left him to his demons.
“It’s a celebration,” Basuin says, voice as quiet as hers under the thundering of explosions. “The fireworks are harmless, mostly. They fizzle out, won’t burn anything.”
