“And you believed them to be enemies?” he asks Ren, eyes falling to the ground below them.
From the corner of his right eye, Ren shrugs. “In a way. Day and night are so different. They are the protectors of their own realm. I guess they don’t have to be enemies, but…” She hums in thought, low and only for a moment. “But I never saw them close enough to be lovers.”
“What about dawn?” Basuin’s eyes are drawn to her yet again. “And dusk? What of twilight, if day and night are separate worlds?”
Ren turns her head now to look at him, still wearing that smile. She looks a little rueful, a little chagrined. But it makes him draw in a long breath.
“Well,” she says quietly, “I guess you got me there.”
It makes him crack his own smile, but he quickly wipes a hand over his jaw to hide it. Has Ren ever admitted to being wrong before? Never to him, at the very least.
He should correct her—say it’s his mother, not him. But it feels too hard, like too much to say all at once. Wiping the smile off his lips, Bass wraps his hand around his godstone instead. But Ren moves, and her elbow brushes against his arm.
“I need your help with something,” she says. Her gaze is stuck back to the sky. “With magic.”
Basuin hesitates, only for a second. “All right,” he agrees, but he doesn’t know why. It’s not like he’s sticking around much longer. And Ren doesn’t even like him—and he isn’t very fond of her, either.
But she asked, earnestly, and Basuin is hemorrhaging her magic.
Once more, Ren leads him out of Gyeosi and into the trees, until they reach a familiar gnarled tree. “Chiro,” Bass remembers, and Ren looks surprised.
The oak creaks awake, unbothered by them. “Am-sa, you leave again tonight?”
“We do,” she says. “Would you be so kind as to help us?” She always seems to ask. Something he’s come to learn about her, the very few days he’s known her now. Ren cares most about these spirits. He knows how it feels—to care most about your comrades. To throw yourself on the cliff of a mountain trying to save them.
How Ren throws herself at the bastion over and over trying to save her people.
“Always,” Chiro groans in response, and Ren lays her palm against its bark and the portal glows to life beneath her touch. She looks back at Basuin, face awash in blue magic. This time, Ren doesn’t offer her hand. This time, she jumps into the portal without waiting, and Basuin leaps in after her.
The journey is the same, but where they land is different. It’s dark here, and hard to see the ground at all. There’s no light but the moon and even the moon can’t illuminate their path. This isn’t the bastion, he knows already. It smells of wet earth here, not of smoke. The smell of white lilies invades him next, and when Bass turns, Ren is waiting on him.
Without saying a word, Ren takes his hand and leads him through the darkened forest. Something stirs in him, half luminous and half pathetic at the way she always holds his hand with no hesitance. Guiding him the way she guides the other spirits in this forest. Ren isn’t afraid to touch him.
There’s no time to dwell on it. He follows behind her, sticking to her trail, trusting her. Ren moves with grace, but he moves with a reluctance. Her hand is the only thing that feels steady in the darkness of the forest. It isn’t long before he hears it—the sound of soldiers on watch, their lightweight mail clinking against itself with every shift and move and march. It’s a legion camp, far out from the bastion.
He jerks to a stop, clinging to her hand. Ren halts, looking back at him. Bass nods his head in the direction he hears the camp. From this distance, in the fog of night, they can’t even see the glow of a lamp. Ren gives him a nod, a reassuring squeeze to his hand, and then she continues forward.
If he were a better man, he would pull ahead. Have her traveling behind his hulking form instead. Bass has always been on the front lines. But with her, in the here and now, Basuin doesn’t feel much like a captain—not even a soldier. He’s just Bass, and she’s just Ren.
But as they close in on the encampment, the forest lightens with the familiar yellowing glow of oil lamps. “What is this camp?” he whispers.
“A hunt,” she answers him. “They catch and kill the animals that keep your men fed.”
He winces. Catch and kill spirits like Yaelic, like Qia. A horrible guilt settles in the very bottom of his gut.
Ren pulls him behind a large, thick oak. “This is what I need your help with. Can you do this?” She takes his arm and draws a finger down the line of his veins to his god mark like she did the first time she taught him magic. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth to suppress a shiver at her touch. “Paint a picture in your mind. Imagine their supplies.”
Sabotage, again. Like she ruined the farms. It won’t be enough to send these soldiers back to Shaelstorm, and it won’t be enough to scare the legion off the island either. They’ll just work on half rations until the next supply comes in. He’s done it before—and he’s asked his men to do it, too.
Basuin hesitates, torn between two worlds. Where do his loyalties lie? He is an enemy to both. That won’t change.
But the wolf-man snaps its teeth at him, a warning. Enemy or ally, you have a duty.
He knows.
And what is a soldier without duty?
Nothing.
