Ma’s dead, he spoke to the gods who he had never spoken to before. My ma’s dead.
Bass squeezes his mother’s stone so tightly in his hand that he could crush it; to see if it’ll cut into his hardened, calloused palm. The one not scarred with a god mark already. He tugs at it hard enough the leather tie will snap. But it never does, not through all his battles and not now.
“He’s the one that will burn this forest to the ground,” he says, without mention of Kensy’s search. A choice, to protect her.
Ren stares off at the creek, glittering under the moon. When he blinks, he sees her covered in blood, and he blinks and blinks and blinks until she is clean of it. Until her skin is the same as it was before and the vision is gone.
“I don’t know how to stop him,” she says.
Bass laughs, shaking his head. “Me either.”
“But we’ll do it together?” Ren asks, looking at him with those twilight, silver, golden, everything eyes. He could look at her eyes until the end of time, in every color they wear.
“Together,” he says. “I promised you.”
Ren smiles, and it’s shy but it’s real. Her cheeks are round when she smiles, not so severe anymore. Not so godly. When she smiles like that, she looks like a woman. A woman not covered in blood and burns and god marks. It makes his chest fill with something incomparable to anything he’s felt before.
The wolf-man’s tail thumps quick inside of him, like the beat of his heart long gone.
It’s what makes Basuin grab the jade around his neck and pull it over his head—the first time he’s taken his mother’s godstone off since he received it. The leather string is worn, by time and oil and blood and gunpowder. Worried until it’s been frayed, and then worried more until soft.
That stone feels like it’s a part of him, like it belongs to him now more than it does the ghost of his ma. She’s in the River now, and this stone has never been a connection to the gods, but a reminder that his mother was real. She was real.
Basuin kneels before Ren, crowning her with his mother’s godstone and slipping it over her head until it rests along her neck. It hangs lower on her, marking her collarbone, but it fits in the groove there perfectly. The hollow of Basuin’s throat feels empty; weightless.
Ren’s eyes are big, wide and as silver as the dishware served in the palace he’s only been invited to as a hero. His fingers itch to feel the plane of Ren’s cheek, to learn if it’s soft like fresh snow or if it’s as hard as tungsten. Would this war forge Ren into a weapon?
No, he won’t allow it. And so his fingers ghost over her cheek. She closes her eyes at the touch, but doesn’t flinch.
He was right—it’s all silk.
“Your mother’s,” Ren remembers, and Basuin nods. “You can’t give this to me.” Her voice holds an ache in it, unfamiliar and unripe.
He almost laughs at how concerned Ren grows, but he smiles instead. “Hold onto it for me, then.”
“Why?” she asks. Basuin lets his fingers find the jade stone where it hangs from her neck, running his thumb on a facet that feels new, unexplored.
“Because I promised to protect you,” he says, and he bows his head to her. Basuin brings the godstone to his lips, wishing he could imbue it with all the magic his mother could when she kissed it in prayer.
Basuin looks up at Ren, at her glassy eyes and her parted lips, and she meets his gaze with awe.
“It’s only fair you protect something of mine, too,” he tells her, and his lips curl into a grin. It almost falls when he realizes he hasn’t worn such a smile in a long, forgotten time. “And now you’ll know I won’t be far.”
If Ren calls for him, he’ll be there. They’ll go together—they’ll figure this out together.
When Basuin pulls away, Ren’s face wears a bruise the size of a fist and a smattering of freckles in the form of blood. He blinks, and he blinks, and he blinks until it’s gone again. He won’t let it happen again. Won’t let her blood stain his hands again.
She’s too good for that, too good to hurt for the sins of men who leave no fruit for gods. Too good to hurt for someone like him, who always brings war. Death rides on the hem of his shirt, on the heels of his boots.
Ren stays quiet, and that’s all right. Basuin lets the godstone rest on her skin once again, fingers brushing against her collarbone by accident as he pulls away. Under the dark light of the moon, Ren’s cheeks color like a peach and it makes something in his chest feel white hot.
They sit in that moment forever, staring at one another. Basuin listens to the sounds of the forest, so loud in his ears but as gentle as the lap of the creek’s water across the stones in its bed. A dragonfly, buzzing in time with every breath he takes, flits over each silver lining that trails downstream.
But then the treetops shake and a flock of birds, black as the night, rush through the sky with a flap of their wings. They create a gust of wind that vibrates through the leaves of the forest’s canopy, screeching and squawking as they fly away from the burned grounds of Gyeosi and toward the north.
He wonders if they’re saying their goodbyes.
“We need to go,” Ren finally says, eyes raised to the sky and trailing after the birds.
