“They’ll kill you,” she hisses, “just like they’ll kill my Forest God.”
He tenses, stopping the shiver trying to race up his back. Just like they’ll kill Ren. His cold fingers stretch out, and then he wipes his hands on his breeches and stands, knees creaking.
“You’re keen for me to leave,” he says, an acknowledgment.
Hou-tou rises from the river until her chin rests on the surface, teeth split into grinning splinters. “What shall it be—godhood, or death?”
Basuin tips his chin downward in a shallow bow that Hou-tou doesn’t return. Instead, she watches him with her sharp, cloudy blue eyes as he backs away from the riverbank and climbs back up the hill toward Gyeosi.
Godhood or death. Is the artifact that Kensy searches for the elder tree? The ability to sever godhood from someone like him?
Or someone like Ren.
Chapter 13
Basuin isn’t ready to return to Gyeosi yet. Instead, he wanders the forest, lingering in the thought of Hou-tou’s words. He asks himself the same thing she did: if it’ll be godhood, or death. Does Ren know of the elder tree? If she did, she would’ve told him. All she wants is her magic back—the threads of it he’s stolen.
But he isn’t willing to face Ren, not after their last exchange of words. He winces at the thought. While it wasn’t his finest of moments, it isn’t regret weighing him down. No, he meant his words. He doesn’t know what the heaviness is, but it isn’t guilt.
There are bigger things to focus on. The elder tree, Kensy’s artifact—the wolf-man and how to peel it out of his chest and where to find the remnants of his heart again. With the elder tree, Basuin has the chance to be a man again. It’s a bright spot among the wreckage inside him.
He’ll take that chance, to be human, again. Even if it means being a soldier once more.
The crunch of fallen leaves and other foliage beneath his boot is rhythmic as he marches through the forest. Side to side, his eyes scan through the trees. All of them, they must have names. That’s what Ren said. Everything in this forest is a spirit, and she is connected to all of them.
He is, too. Everything—everyone—in this forest will be cut loose from him when the elder tree cuts him loose of the forest. It’s a good thing. A blessing.
The best way Basuin knows to protect something is to remove it far, far from his reach.
Bass comes to rest before an old, gnarled oak tree, craning his neck back to look up at where it stretches tall into the sky. His left hand pulses, warmth heating the scarred mark on his palm. When he opens his fingers, the lines are red and puffy where he tried to scrub it away. He uses his thumb now to soothe over the god mark, but all it does is itch.
Above him, the sky is beginning to darken. The sun hangs low and ripe, waiting to fall beneath the horizon until tomorrow. The shadows in the forest begin to grow and lengthen, taking fuller shape. Turning back before nightfall would be smartest.
But Bass has magic, too. He made that light, the one Ren pulled from his palm. He flexes his hand again, watching the god mark pull and stretch. He could do it again and light his way through the forest. All the way to the elder tree, if he marches long enough.
The wolf-man snarls a laugh, and Bass thinks of anything but telling it to shut up.
“All right,” he murmurs to no one—only the spirits that surely watch him from where they live. Bass takes a deep breath, materializing the image of Ren sitting with him, her small hand cradling his, to try to rouse the magic out of him from memory. She told him to feel it.
So Basuin burrows down, deep inside himself, past the wolf-man even. He burrows down and he pinpoints that place beyond his eaten heart, beyond the god-thing holed up in his chest and looks for the feeling of something warm. Something mirroring Ren’s touch.
Another breath, and Bass opens his eyes. His god mark glows red, and it cracks a smile from his lips.
Then, a gunshot rings out—and the forest cowers beneath it.
Magic explodes from his hand in a shock of red. Light beams toward the sky, fire stretching toward the sun, its maker. His knees shake. He lands on the ground, somewhere, somehow. The only sense he has is to close his right hand over his god mark, smother out the flame. Quiet the red, angry, scared thing that’s pouring out of him.
The light cuts off and Basuin falls, hands planted upon the ground as he pants.
And underneath him, the leaves turn to snow. White and so cold it burns. His vision blurs, wet with tears, and when he blinks them away the snow is splattered with blood. The same color as his magic.
Valkesta is howling: Run.
Basuin looks up. Above his head, a white crane flies over, darting through the sea of trees toward him. A crane shouldn’t be here.
It opens its beak and caws at him. Run, Wolf God! Run!
He scrambles to his feet in an instant. The white crane sails over him, flapping its large wings, and then disappears into the woods. His eyes track its trail backward, into the distance from where it came, and he finds a body striding out from the trees.
