“It was me,” he says, not daring to look at her. “I took your magic—weakened the barrier. I left Gyeosi vulnerable.” It was his fault that Gyeosi burned, that Ren was hurt. It’s his fault Hami died. He took her away from the village, made her journey to the Crying Trees so he could pawn off his duty. It’s his fault.
Ren shifts just outside his vision, but he turns enough to see her right hand tighten into a fist. He hears her next words: You’re right, it was your fault. You are as selfish as I thought.
“It could’ve been anything, Basuin.” Ren’s gentle voice brings him back into focus. “We don’t know what magic they have.”
“None,” he snaps at her, and in turn, the wolf-man breaks one of his ribs off. He grunts and begins to pace again, not wanting to look at the way her face twists into something foul. “Xalkhir—the legion—has shunned the gods. The legion doesn’t carry them, and no gods carry the legion. They have no magic.”
“They truly don’t care.” It sounds like sorrow bottled up in Ren's glass throat. “They don’t care if we live or die.”
Hami’s broken body, a white fur sack of bones loosened of blood, the wavering spirit of that little boy flashes across the blank plane of Basuin’s mind. No, they don’t. The legion doesn’t believe in their existence, doesn’t believe in the Winter River. If only Bass could have walked Hami there.
He stops in his tracks, a pause in his pacing.
“Basuin?” Ren’s gaze lingers on him, but he’s afraid to face her. She’ll see the puzzle unfolding on his face as he slots pieces together as best he can with his big, fumbling hands. She’ll see the guilt.
“Where do you walk dead spirits?” he asks.
“To the Winter River,” she says, matter-of-factly. “But—” Her teeth pull at her bottom lip. “I haven’t been able to take them all there. The army’s distracted me. Gyeosi—there were too many.” She turns her palms up, fingers trembling as if the spirits are slipping through her grasp.
Basuin wants to reach and pocket her hands in his, make them stop shaking. “Where is it? Can you go there?”
Ren bites her lip. “I don’t actually walk them to the River itself. It’s a vision, like a portal. My god magic links me to it.”
Kensy is searching for a powerful artifact that only gods know of. Basuin thought it would be at the elder tree. But Ko told him the elder tree doesn’t answer anyone but gods. No magic, no power, for mortals.
Help me, he almost asks the wolf-man, but he refuses to. He has the pieces in front of him, he just can’t see how they fit together.
Basuin turns, eyes finding the jade stone Ren now wears around her thin neck. It catches the light shining through the cracks in the canopy, almost mocking him. He can see Kensy’s clever smile so clearly in his mind, a snake flicking its tongue at Basuin, its prey.
Godstones are conduits, favors that gods bestow their speakers with. A blessing as much as it is a tool. If Kensy knew a god speaker, then he killed them—he could’ve taken their godstone for himself.
No. It’s impossible. Godstones channel god magic through them, but only the blessed can use it. That’s why Basuin could never speak to the gods—he wasn’t blessed the way his mother was, with lavender light pouring from her eyes and mouth. And Kensy isn’t blessed, either.
How do you know for certain? the wolf-man prods him.
Because he needed Bass. There’s a reason Kensy asked him to come back to the bastion. He just doesn’t know what. Bass shuts his eyes, tight as the fist he makes. He needs help.
“Kensy was looking for something,” he says. He puts his hands behind his back and wrings them away from Ren’s eyes. “A powerful artifact that belonged to the gods.”
Ren’s twilight eyes narrow in confusion. Then, they widen in realization. Fear colors her countenance and her hand darts up to touch the godstone resting upon her collarbone. And then, as quick as it came, that fear is replaced by a burning anger he’s become so familiar with. Ren leaps to her feet to stand against him.
“How do you know that?” she asks, voice simmering. Quiet underneath the rustle of the forest. Accusing.
He swallows, hard. “Because that’s why Kensy brought me to the island. He wanted me to help him speak to the gods.”
Betrayal flares in her eyes. “You knew this whole time.”
“I didn’t.” He holds up his hands, but it’s futile. “I’ve never known what Kensy is after. All I did was follow orders.”
Kensy’s always been so eel-like. Slippery and in need of a kill. He feeds on his prey, uses their life to sustain him. Kensy isn’t a liar, but he doesn’t speak in truths. He’s good at that, and Basuin learned that lesson hard.
“I should’ve told you,” he admits. “I didn’t think—” He cuts himself off, snapping his jaw shut. He did think, and to say anything less would be a lie. He did think, and he concluded that ignorance best served Ren’s survival. Stupid and selfish of him.
It’s the first time he’s ever seen her pace. “I could have been tracking him rather than focusing on the bastion.” She walks in circles, and a mean frustration bubbles up in him.
“Track him to do what?” His nostrils flare. “It’s not like you would have killed him.”
She whips around to face him. “Then why didn’t you?” Ren leaps across the gap she’s put between them. He looks anywhere but her eyes. “You’ve always said what I’m doing isn’t enough—so why didn’t you kill him instead?”
