Ren doesn’t look at him anymore. “Then do so,” she says, wicked of emotion. She waves him off with a flick of her wrist. “You know how to get back to your army.” This time, staring straight ahead and refusing to meet his eyes, she walks right past him. The skin of her bare shoulder brushes by the sleeve of his cotton undershirt. That kindness, from before. Her patience. It’s gone, and in its stead, walls of steel and ice and weaponry. How quickly she can change, like a chameleon adopting new colors. His fault, this time.
With no more preamble, and no more stopping, Ren walks toward Gyeosi.
I own you, it tells him, but she owns us all.
Something panicked and sharp drops in his stomach. She’s leaving, and he doesn’t know why he moves to stop her. As Ren presses forward, Basuin gives chase right behind her. With his long legs, Basuin catches up to her, and he rounds in front of her to halt her path. Ren’s dark eyes flick up to meet his and there’s an indescribable look painting her face.
“It’s not that I want to escape you,” he tries to stress. “I don’t want godhood. I can’t be a god.” He doesn’t know how. Basuin can’t protect anyone; he’s tried and he’s failed and he’s lost.
There’s a long moment that stretches between them, Basuin breathing hard. He feels like he’s outside his body, like he’s still in those healing huts back in Ha’riste where all he could do was dream of a different life so that he did not dream of Valkesta.
And after a moment, Ren smiles, but it’s unkind. Just like Kensy. But smaller, quieter. Softer.
“How lonely it must be,” she says, “to be you, Basuin of Ankor. The only person in the entire world to suffer so greatly.”
Ren storms past him. Basuin can’t breathe, and it isn’t the wolf-man pressing down on his lungs. It’s something else.
Basuin tears through the forest alone now, content to get the fuck away from this place. Away from Ren, most of all. He hears water before he sees it, corrects his course, and then plunges into the river. The water is cold, soaking into his breeches and filling his boots. The only sound is the splash he makes as he thrusts his hands into the water, hissing. It’s like he’s shoving all his limbs in the snow again, freezing, burning, aching, awake, alive.
Violent and mad, Basuin scrubs his hands. The old dirt and blood covering his skin fizzles out in the water, but he continues to scrub until the river has washed away everything he is. Everything he’s become.
Basuin yanks his hands from the river, water dripping down his forearms, and turns his palms over to look. But it’s still there—his god mark, edges raised like a scar. This can’t be permanent. This can’t be real. He dunks his hands back into the cold water.
Someone laughs and Basuin freezes, head whipping up. This river cuts through the woods, surface glittering bright under the orange setting sun. It rushes over the rock bed beneath it with a babble that sounds like pure laughter. There’s no one here. It’s just him and the water.
Basuin pulls his arms from the river, but before he can stand, something darts out and grabs his wrist. A hand made of water, fingers like ice around his bones, tugs him forward. Panic floods him and he struggles, trying to wrench free, to no avail.
The laughter steadily becomes louder and louder, more realized. Out of the river, a stream of water rises into the air until it takes the shape of a woman, her curves deep and soft and highlighted by the burning sun behind her. Her hand, dainty and sharp with bones, releases him and he stumbles back.
“You wish to break your tie to Am-sa, don’t you?” the woman asks. Her dark hair, wet and wavy, waterfalls down her back and into the river she stands in. Water droplets roll down her pale skin. But her eyes—they’re a cloudy blue, the color of ice—but full of mirth when paired with the sly grin she wears.
“Who are you?” he asks, unable to look away from her.
“My sincere apologies, Wolf God,” she says, and Basuin recoils at the name. The lilt in her voice and smile on her face makes him think she isn’t so sincere at all. “I am the Hou-tou River.”
Hou-tou doesn’t bow her head, but another stream of water jets up so she can rest her elbows upon it, chin in hands as she stares at him.
“My name is Basuin,” he replies, wary.
Before he can say anything else, Hou-tou laughs again. “I know of you, Wolf God. Tell me, have you come to save our Forest God?”
It sparks new fury in him, flint and steel catching paper fire. “I am not a god, and I cannot save anyone,” he answers.
Hou-tou smiles. “Your mark says otherwise.”
Basuin’s teeth snap together, like a wolf about to growl. He closes his fingers into fists and jerks his head away, hides his god mark from this creature’s sight.
“But you,” she continues, “don’t want that. You wish to rid yourself of this godhood that’s been forced upon you. Isn’t that right?”
He stops. Then, he turns back to look at Hou-tou, who grins with all her teeth. Even from here, he can see how sharp they are. Rows of tiny, shard-like teeth.
“I can help you.” Hou-tou walks closer, her hips swaying. The wet fabric of her white dress clings to her skin. “I know something you don’t know. Something even Am-sa doesn’t know,” she sings to him.
Hou-tou looks like a siren—he’s seen the illustrations of them in books. She sounds like one, too. The sailors always said that a siren will get you before a man will, before a shark will, before the ocean will. Ithika willing.
“And what is that?” he asks her, drawing closer to the river again. If she wanted to, she could kill him like this. Take him and drown him. He’s lured toward the water at the simple thought of leaving this world—this duty—behind.
“Have you heard of the elder tree?”
