“’Less,” he tries one more time, voice thin.
“I know it’s scary,” Ren tells her. “But we can walk there together.”
“Where?”
“The Winter River.”
“Will they be there?” Aless asks, and Basuin’s fingers clench into a fist. “Did my friends wait for me?”
Ren inhales for a long time, then nods.
Aless’ ghost-grip on her hand tightens. “Thank you,” she says, breathless. “I’m so tired.” She sags as Ren starts to walk them forward. Basuin takes another step, to follow after them. He should chase her down and apologize. Tell Aless that he truly cared for her, that he’s sorry. But he can’t move.
Sudden light blooms bright against the dark background of the forest. Ren walks Aless toward it; it’s blinding. He almost shuts his eyes and flinches away but he doesn’t. And before Ren lets go of Aless’ hand, Aless turns back to look at him. He swears that she looks at him this time. But then, she fades into the nothing, a wisp of white that smokes from Ren’s palm. Gone.
At least she made it to the Winter River.
Now, it’s just him and Ren, ten feet apart from one another. Her eyes feel heavy on him, but not quite as sharp as they usually would. Yaelic’s told him of this before, how Ren walks her dead spirits to the River. Basuin hasn’t seen it until now. His mother used to tell him stories—of gods like this. Ones who shepherded their loyal devotees to the River so they wouldn’t cross worlds alone.
She always said that when she passed, she hoped someone would walk with her. Not because she didn’t know the way, but because it was a sign of love.
Would Ren have walked his mother to the River, like she walked with Aless?
Out of all spirits it could have been, of course it was Aless. She clung to him in life—clawed at him as they trekked up the Valkesi Mountains, begged him to let them go home. Of course it was Aless.
“Who was that?” Ren asks. He cracks under pressure and turns his head away.
“No one,” he lies. Another moment of silence runs through the forest, long enough that he chances a look at her.
Ren’s eyes have hardened into obsidian. “How did you know her?”
“I killed her,” Basuin snaps, as hard as the wolf-man snaps its teeth at his ribcage. “Is that what you want to hear?”
Aless didn’t have any last words. She never even made a sound. Not like Isaniel, who wrenched and spit at Basuin as he choked on the blood that sprouted from his stomach, damning Basuin for bringing them to Valkesta until the very end.
When her head was cut clean off, the only sound she made was when her skull hit the ground—the thud of it on the ice, rolling away.
Basuin did ask, though. He pleaded. Basuin begged on his hands and knees, prayed to every god he knew the name of, kissed his mother’s godstone until his lips were raw as he tried to infuse every last piece of his shattered soul into it as an offering to Sa-cha, for them to go to the Winter River.
If ’Less made it, then the others did too. Or, he hopes so.
And Basuin—Basuin won’t go there, so he’ll never see them ever again. He’ll never see ’Less, or Tomaas. Never see Isaniel ever again. But out of all of them—out of everyone Basuin has killed—he misses his mother the most.
He forgot, somehow. That he deserves whatever is waiting for him in the Blacksalt Sea.
The crunch of underbrush makes him look up, Ren beginning to walk away. Something tugs on the raw edges inside his chest, the cavern where the wolf-man chews him ragged and septic.
“I knew her,” he says, and Ren stops to look back at him. “She was my friend.” He doesn’t have anything else to say. Aless was his friend and he took her to Valkesta where he knew they would die, and she died.
Ren looks to where the light of the Winter River once shimmered. “She was very at peace,” she tells him. “Most spirits who I walk to the River, they aren’t like that. There was nothing lingering. No pain, no anger.”
Something in his chest trembles. “She was lost?”
Ren’s head tilts as she stares into the darkness. “No,” she says, and for once, there’s no barrier built into her voice. “She wasn’t ready to go yet, so she simply followed you here. I think she wanted to say goodbye to you.”
Basuin’s hands feel heavy with grief, but something sinks into him that smooths away the twist in his gut. The god mark on his palm burns, and when he turns over his hand to look at it, the soot-black lines have turned to a scar-like red.
Like him, Ren upturns her palm and looks at her own god mark, the same hand she used to walk Aless’ spirit to the Winter River. Her obsidian eyes trail upward, toward the sky above them, and her fingers curl back into her palm.
