“Was Ren always a god?” he asks.
Ko stares across the distance at him for a long while, contemplating. The moon is a sliver of itself, no light to be cast upon the abandoned village.
“No,” Ko finally says. “She wasn’t.”
Chapter 23
It takes him a long while to work up the courage to apologize. Far too long. Basuin spends a whole day contemplating what he might say to Ren, how he can gain her forgiveness again. How to convince her that it was not betrayal, but ignorance—and he doesn’t wish to be ignorant any longer.
He doesn’t have time to be wasting like this. The army is moving. Haaman returned, early in the morning, with news that the legion is marching toward them still. Whatever used to be his heart is steadily buzzing and his stomach keeps churning. He tried to speak with her then, but couldn’t get his words together. Panic, whether at the army or at the apology, made him hesitate.
Then, after lunch, when Yaelic caught him to ask what their next plans were, since Ren said they’d be leaving soon. His last attempt was after dinner, but Ko swept her into a conversation before Bass had any chance at all.
Excuses, anyway. Basuin is scared shitless that Ren won’t accept his apology.
How pathetic. A war hero, scared of a woman refusing to forgive him. Basuin considers, for far too long, whether he should go looking for some wildflowers to give her.
That’s a memory he hasn’t unearthed in so many years. Of his mother, before she was too sick to walk, who cut fresh flowers from the garden every week to set in the windows of their village home. Before they were cast out into that hellish shack Bass built, shoddy windows and his ma bedridden.
“What are you doing stalking around out here?”
Bass spins around, face to face with Ren, her arms crossed over her chest and annoyance sprawled across her countenance. He hadn’t realized how far he’d paced away from their camp, on the outskirts of the abandoned village—almost as if he were walking to that little shack in Ankor.
And here Ren stands in the darkness with him. This is the first she’s spoken to him.
Ren looks away, pursing her lips. “Are you leaving?” But she says it with a heaviness, a pit of sorrow in every vowel. The distance between them suddenly aches. No, it’s always ached, but he feels it now.
The wolf-man whines, nosing at Basuin’s flesh, pawing toward Ren.
“I’m sorry,” he says like he’s drowning.
Ren’s eyes snap to his, burning golden in the moonless night.
“I’m sorry for hiding what I knew.” Bass steps closer to her and she doesn’t move away. “It wasn’t malicious. I didn’t mean to betray your trust, but I know I did. And I’m sorry.”
His hands feel so empty at his sides, flexing and grabbing at his pants and then hiding behind his back so Ren won’t see how he wrings his wrists.
Ren takes a moment before she responds, watching him. “You’re sorry.” Confusion lurks in her voice.
“I am.” He sighs, glancing away from her. “I am ignorant, but I won’t be anymore. I need to learn more magic. I want to,” he says. Then, he looks up and meets her eyes. Holds their gaze steady. “Will you help me?”
Ren looks completely taken aback at his request, eyes gone wide. “You want to learn more magic?”
He swallows hard. “I want to save the forest.”
She turns away, hiding her face from him. All he sees is a peek of her neck when the breeze blows her hair back and a still-healing series of cuts on the back of her arm. If only he could see her face, try and read her ever-unreadable emotions.
If only he could save her the pain.
“I’m sorry, too.” Ren’s voice is quiet. “You said you would help, and I should trust that, after everything.”
Relief floods him, washing away all the fear and guilt that once coated his insides. Ren’s gentle hand finds his, her face shadowed by the night, and she tugs him toward the trees. Further into the forest.
She feared that Basuin was leaving. The thought sends a twisted thrill through him, the idea that Ren didn’t want him to leave again. But her touch grounds him as they weave through the woods together.
Ren nestles into a bed of roots, back pressed to the trunk of an oak. It looks like she belongs there, right in the heart of the forest. As if this tree built its home to welcome her, to shelter her. The choppy ends of her hair blow across her face, hiding her lips as a cool night breeze coasts over them.
He sits across from her, lumbering a bit to get his legs in order. Too long, too big, too bumbling. If Ren is grace, then he is crude. She is balanced, he is clumsy.
