But his mind is red with blood. With lust and rage. Hatred and betrayal. There’s still time to catch Kensy. Basuin swallowed a god. He’s faster than Kensy. But Ren’s stare on his back is too heavy, and he can’t move underneath it. He whirls on her, sword in clawed fist, looking down at her through eyes that don’t belong to him.
“You don’t want me to kill him?” he growls in question.
“No,” she says, as if it were simple. “You can’t kill him.”
“This is what you wanted.”
“I never wanted this!” Her hand comes up to grip the wide collar of her shirt, right over her heart. Does she even have one? “I said I don’t kill. I won’t kill. You told me you wouldn’t.”
“I never said that,” he snarls at her. “I vowed to protect you—whatever that may cost.”
“I said I didn’t want war.”
“But war is here.” His teeth grind together. “If I kill him, it ends. It’s done.” Rage shocks through his spine. It aches, his want to kill. The need to slaughter. To end the war that Ren doesn’t want. To taste the blood of the man who betrayed him. Manipulated him like the dumb dog he is.
He’s a wolf now. He bites back.
“Don’t kill him.” Ren’s twilight eyes are pained, as if it hurts her. “Please,” she whispers.
Basuin lets his sword slip through his fingers and fall to the blood-wet ground.
He really can’t deny her anything anymore.
Slowly, he reaches for her hand still twisted in her shirt. He unfurls her fingers from where they’re tangled in the cotton. Ren takes her trembling hand and places it against his chest, right above where the wolf-man should reside. There’s no flutter of his heart there anymore, only the hastened rise and fall of his chest. He closes his eyes, lets himself rest for just a moment.
“Thank you.” Her voice is so soft. So soft. So soft, he can barely hear her. It draws the wolf-man out of him, sings it sweetly back into its home among his ribcage. The boiling heat that frenzied him floods from his skin. The red of his magic recedes.
Once again, he’s just Bass, and she’s just Ren, and all that’s left of Kensy are the dead rabbits, black eyes glassy and gone cold. He failed Ren—and their forest—again.
Basuin draws Ren into him, sheltering her from the grief. She lets her head rest against his shoulder, hand still drawn to where the wolf-man lives in him, and swallows in defeat. The wolf-man paws, claws retracted, toward Ren’s fingertips.
If Ren won’t let him kill, then she will let him die. Because Basuin will die for her. That’s the duty he’s been given. The duty that brought him back to life.
He waits for the wolf-man to agree, but nothing ever comes.
Chapter 25
Pacifism is shit-all for protecting Ren. Basuin is reminded of this—of how bad he is at the one duty he’s been given—once the scorching starts again. The army doesn’t just fill the sky with a glaze of smoke, a threat that smells of fire and brimstone and danger trailing behind them. Not just spirits who run from their homes and curse Ren’s name as they look for safety. It isn’t just Kensy, who knows Ren’s face now, hunting them for the thrill of it.
It’s Ren’s skin, purpled with bruises and reddened with new burns.
It hurts Basuin more than it seems to hurt Ren, her head held high all the while. But when they stop to make camp in the forest for the night after hours of traveling north—trying to put as much space between them and Kensy as possible—Ren meets him alone, in the dark, and slumps against him.
Basuin folds her into a half-embrace and heals her wounds. It’s all he can do. But he needs to be doing so much more. If only she would let him.
Once again, he lies awake under the night sky, staring up at the moon glittering above the forest canopy. The fire has died to a low spittle of embers, darkening their camp. Basuin, fist to his chest, breathes heavily.
He needs help. And he’s never asked for the wolf-man’s help, but he needs it. Ren, Ko, and Hou-tou—they don’t have answers for him. They don’t know how to get to the Winter River, and much less, how to stop Kensy from getting there first.
Inside him, the wolf-man is curled up and ignoring him, chuffing a breath.
He beats his fist on his chest, the empty chamber the wolf-man lives in now, where his heart was eaten out of him.
Help. Gods, help him. If they want him to save the forest, why don’t they fucking help him.
Basuin beats his fist against his chest so hard he can’t breathe. And then, out of thin air, Basuin is yanked from his body and dropped into darkness.
He reaches, hands searching the black nothingness he’s trapped in. Where is he? Where is Ren? His nonexistent heart hammers in his chest, panic building in his body and pumping through his veins. But he falls to his hands and knees, eyes open wide, the scar on the left side of his face twitching with pain.
