The fear that drenches her skin, the horror in her eyes, doesn’t change. “What are they celebrating?”
My death, he thinks selfishly. But it’s not true. He knows what they celebrate. He’s watched it, city after city, the display of power and arrogance.
“Conquest,” he says.
She whips around in an instant. The fear is replaced by an anger fueled by insolence. In two steps she’s nearly toe to toe with him, head level with his chest, neck craned back to look at him with a glass-edged glare. Not evil. But a threat all the same.
But Basuin doesn’t waver, doesn’t lean back. She’s too small for him to back away, pride licking at his nonexistent wounds. He won’t back down, not to her.
It’s not his fault. He didn’t bring the army here—Kensy did.
“Do you think you’ve already won?” the Forest God seethes, low and steady. “How arrogant are you?”
His nostrils flare in anger. “I have won nothing. I’m not the one celebrating. I’ve lost everything. Again,” he bites back, looking down at her. Another shower of sparks in the night sky, another display of impudence.
There’s the slightest tremble in her mouth, lips silvered in the blue sparkle of another firework.
“I could never imagine someone so cruel,” she says. “Cruel enough to celebrate the death of my people.”
He can. And the cruelest of them all just set foot on this island. It’s barely been two days and he’s already slaughtered innocents—and killed Basuin, too.
His hesitation leaves time for her mouth to set in stone, for her brow to harden and for her eyes to narrow once more. A breeze wanders through her hair, blunt edges of her bangs shadowing her face until the next firework rolls overhead.
“Spare me your woes,” she says, disgust coloring her tone. As if she’s read his face and spun up whatever fortune she thinks. “Your self-pity can’t stand against the destruction your army has brought here. I won’t listen to it.”
Basuin clenches his entire body to stop from leaning down to her and barking back. Even the thought has the wolf-man snarling inside of him, growling, snapping its teeth in warning. He breathes in, deep through his nose, and back out. The anger in him simmers despite it.
“You know nothing of me,” he says quietly. Restrained.
The scream of another firework, like paint splattering across the canvas of night, makes her spin to look. He can’t see her face, but he knows from the way her fingers curl into fists by her side—slowly, controlled, but raging all the same—that anger runs through her veins.
“I’ll teach them,” she says, voice low and tempered. “They won’t celebrate a victory they haven’t earned.”
She raises a hand to the sky, pointed toward the bastion, and a blue glow encases her hand. Bright in her palm, between her fingers, then wrapping around her wrist and trailing down her forearm like growing vines. It pulses, alive.
Magic. Real and true and vivid and so close he feels it in his heart—no, he doesn’t have a heart left. So what is this feeling?
Then, with a breath, the Forest God shoots a beam of blue into the night, the force of it blowing her hair back. But the force of it hits him too, tugs on his heart-bone and staggers him, nearly brings him to his knees. Basuin chokes on his tongue as a new pain grips him. He feels like his organs are being ripped out of his body. It hurts in the same way a flashbang hurts—sudden and bleeding without a drop of blood at all. Burning.
Her magic arcs toward the bastion, but fizzles out immediately. She inhales hard, glowing hand now clutching at her chest as if she feels the same thing Basuin does. The blue lights rain down into the forest below them in a sparkling of glitter, flitting away on the wind. A pitiful version of a firework.
She twists her fingers in her shirt, looking back at him. Her countenance speaks to confusion and surprise, knotted together by that look of horror.
“My magic,” she whispers. “It’s gone.” Slowly, she unfurls her fingers, searching every line and divot as if for answers. There’s a mark upon her palm, a series of white lines like scars. It makes his own palm pulse in tandem. Then, that same thread of blue magic twined around her wrist appears, glowing against her skin, and leads straight back to him.
The wolf-man scratches at the floor of Basuin’s organs, making itself a nest inside him.
The Forest God turns to look at him, her eyes gone wide. “You’re stealing my magic.”
When he looks down, a thread of red is wrapped and knotted around his left wrist. Basuin, wheezing, upturns his hand. There, on his left palm, is a series of lines he’s never seen before. They feel familiar, like they belong to him, but the edges are raised like a healing wound. It’s black, like ink. Engraved into his skin. He stares at it, long enough that it almost flashes red like the color of the wolf-man’s eyes.
“What?” He can barely breathe, barely cough out words.
“You didn’t have magic,” she says, but it sounds like a cry for help. Her chest unhinges with every breath she can’t catch.
Magic existed. His mother spoke of it like a fairytale. Or perhaps a memory, he realizes now. Magic existed, and it ate the world as you know it. Swallowed it up until there was no one left who believed in it.
Then how are we still blessed to be alive? he asked with his teenaged snark.
