So Basuin closes his eyes and does as Ren says, imagining the bins and barrels of supplies he know the camp will have. Sabotage won’t stop them, but for once, he isn’t being asked to kill. Ren’s told him before that she doesn’t kill the legion soldiers, though Basuin doesn’t understand it.
“Imagine it all turning to black. Dried up and spoiled.” Ren’s finger traces the lines of his god mark. This time, he can’t stop the shiver as it crawls up the back of his neck.
All the food in their ration boxes they carry on wheeled carts, decaying. Oozing rot. Shriveled up and dried out. His mind burns their bandages into ash, turns their powders to soot and tinctures to dust. Everything he’s ever carried in his packs on his marches through Grimmalia, he imagines destroying.
“Open your eyes, Basuin,” Ren says, and he does.
His god mark is glowing, red light jumping from his hand. It snakes through the trees and toward the camp. Power and magic surges through his forearm, muscles jumping like he’s been shot with electricity.
Ren shoots him this knowing grin he’s never seen before. Something in his belly twists, seeing her eyes hold that glimmer. He can do it again. Make more magic. He doesn’t care about it—but seeing her smile makes him feel much lighter than when she frowns. Less guilty. Less ashamed.
Less like a soldier, and more like Basuin.
“More,” he says, leaning in closer to her. She smells of upturned earth and fresh-cut flowers. “Teach me more.”
She nods. “Their weapons, now. Imagine taking them apart.” Ren slips her hand under his, cradling him. “This should be easy for you. It was disastrous for me.” There’s that quirk in her lips again. Even as she looks down, he sees it.
“Really?” Bass has taken apart many guns and put them back together. Unstrung crossbows and bent metal. The only thing he can’t shatter is steel—Kensy used to laugh at him for using swords long after the legion had rifles, but Bass knows how strong they truly are.
“I’d never seen weapons before,” Ren admits, and everything that’s risen in Basuin at seeing her smile drops, a weight sinking through him to the bottom of his gut. He doesn’t know what to say. Nothing feels like enough to make up for what the legion has done.
Ren doesn’t linger in it the way he does. She never does, and every time, he’s awed by it. How she can turn from such a fierce beast into a gentle creature.
“Imagine it,” she repeats herself. Once again, he closes his eyes. This time, he pictures the red thread of his magic zigzagging through the camp and invading every single weapon the soldiers carry. Taking them apart, breaking them, tossing away every screw and string.
He hears it—as if his mind is part of his magic—every bolt and spring it attacks. The click and snap of it assaults his head. Bass opens his eyes before Ren instructs him to.
“I did it,” he tells her, and he can’t help the grin that crawls over his face. More magic, yet again. Before, the only power he had was in his body as he struck down men and carved into their corpses. The only power he had was in death. It’s a stark reminder that what he’s doing won’t stop the army at all. Whatever Kensy’s plans are, sabotaging a single camp will only slow them. Kensy always gets what he wants.
“You did,” Ren says, and then she draws her hand away from his. Blunt nails dig into his palm in a fist. She gazes off toward the camp, that smile long gone. “I’ll teach you one more thing,” she says. “It’ll be more difficult.”
Eyes stuck to the curve of her cheek, Bass nods.
Ren waves her god-marked hand over the camp, but no magic raises from her palm. “Thread yourself through their minds,” she says. “The way you imagined yourself before, imagine yourself inside their heads.”
Bass’ brows furrow together, and he doesn’t close his eyes. Being inside someone else’s mind—it makes him uneasy. He wouldn’t want someone else in his mind. He hates the wolf-man for it.
Still staring out at the camp, Ren doesn’t even look at him. “You’ll take their minds apart like you took the weapons apart. Creating nightmares isn’t as easy—”
“No.” He spits the word like it’s a sickness. “I won’t.”
There isn’t a world where Basuin will weave a nightmare into someone’s mind. Not even his enemy.
Ren turns, her face unreadable. He looks at the floor instead. It’s crawling all over him—her eyes, or the idea of barreling through someone else’s mind. This was supposed to be easy; helping Ren by using the magic he’s leached from her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
No. He won’t do this. Not to anyone. He’d take their miserable lives before he inflicts something like that. The power to kill is something he’s come to terms with. The power to break someone’s mind is something completely different.
“What?” Ren’s voice is unsteady. Confusion and bite are laced in her words.
Bass brings his hands closer, turning his palms upward. The red glow of magic still lives under his skin, throbbing like blood vessels ready to burst and break. His god mark laughs at him the way the wolf-man does inside of him.
“I won’t curse someone with nightmares,” he says. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It would be better just to kill them.”
For the past eight months—two of them taken to heal—he’s woken in the middle of the night, punished by the blood that soaked his clothes. Forced to watch the macabre play of his career unfold on a stage illuminated by his sins. A theatrical rendition of his worst decisions.
He used to jump from sleep, still in Valkesta. Surrounded by snow and ice and all his misgivings. His body would be heavy with the weight of dead men, unable to do anything but thrash and yell and wait for Tehali to barge into his room and free him from the illusion—the memories. Bloody her nose, by accident, and keep his hands slick and stained with it. The same way he hurt Ko, in Gyeosi, too.
“I don’t kill,” Ren finally says, her voice controlled. “I will not kill.”
