When Basuin looks up, the wolf-man is standing before him. The body of a man and the head of a wolf, all black except for glowing red eyes and red lines drawn up and down its skin, tattooed like veins.
“Stand, Basuin of Ankor,” the wolf-man commands, slamming its ruby-tipped staff upon the ground. Basuin scrambles to his feet, fisting his shirt right where his heart used to be. “You would ask me for help?”
Basuin swallows. “Yes.”
“You are unworthy.” The words are cutting as the wolf-man peers down at him. It tries to cow him into submission, but Basuin won’t be rocked.
“Unworthy or not, I need help. If you want me to prove my worthiness, then help me do so,” he spits back. “If you want me to save Ren, then help me.” He labors a breath, chest rising and falling in quick succession.
“What is it you ask for?” The wolf-man’s voice echoes in the endless darkness.
“To find the Winter River,” he answers. “I need to find it before Kensy does.”
He isn’t smart, but he understands now. Kensy wants to find the Winter River. And Basuin knows him well enough—Kensy isn’t here to worship. He’s here to destroy it. The same way Kensy marched into Grimmalia to liberate its faithful from their godly fetters, Kensy marched to this forest to destroy what’s left of the gods.
Queen Ye’suite wants to rule the whole world, but Kensy wants to eat it. If there’s no way to get to the Winter River, then there will be no more prayer. No more worship.
But it’s more than that. If Sa-cha’s shrine is what guards the Winter River, then Kensy will destroy Sa-cha, too. Kensy destroys anything that’s in his way. Ko said gods can’t walk freely without bodies—without magic. If not a body, then a shrine. A host.
Kensy doesn’t plan on outlawing gods. He plans to get rid of them.
The wolf-man looms over Basuin, golden eyes staring down at him. “What will you do, little soldier boy?”
Basuin closes his eyes. If Kensy kills Sa-cha, destroys the Winter River, his ma will go nowhere. The rest of the spirits, like Hami and Aless—they’ll go nowhere, too. He is a god now. He has people who belong to him, who have sworn their lives to him in exchange for protection. The grief that’s made holes and homes inside his bones is only a reminder that when people belong to him, they die.
The forest will die. Ren will die.
And Kensy wins.
“I’ll stop him,” Basuin answers, looking up at the wolf-man. He straightens out his back, leveling them head to head. Dead on. “I won’t let Kensy get to the Winter River.”
The wolf-man’s maw opens, its long tongue licking its sharp canines while it laughs.
“How do I get there?” he asks, voice thick in his throat.
In a split second, the wolf-man swoops down, snout nearly pressed to Basuin’s nose. Its fierce, angry eyes search his, looking for signs of fear, or hesitation maybe. But there is no hesitation inside of him. There is fear, yes. But it is fear for the forest, and fear for Ren.
When it’s satisfied, the wolf-man pulls back only slightly. “I will lead you there, Basuin of Ankor. But it requires sacrifice, as all things do.”
Hasn’t he sacrificed enough already? Others, and his own. He’s skipped death twice already and a third is on its way. And despite it, he’s swallowed his protest and regrets and shouldered his duty, become the Wolf God. What else must he do?
The wolf-man reaches into Basuin’s chest, painless this time, and pulls on the red string tied around his soul. It unravels, thread pulled from a spool, and the wolf-man wraps it around its wrist.
“What are you willing to give up?” the wolf-man asks him.
Basuin looks down at his hands. Ren’s blood stains his skin, filling in all the lines and scars marking his palm. He squeezes his fingers into a fist.
“Everything,” he says, and he means it. He would give up everything for Ren. That was his promise—to protect her. Even his mother’s godstone he hung around her neck.
“Everything,” he repeats.
And the wolf-man takes. It yanks on Basuin’s thread so hard it sends Basuin sprawling on the floor of the darkness. He loses all senses except the feeling of a burning, searing pain in his heart. Razor-thin wires sink into his organ from where the wolf-man pulls him, trying to end Basuin’s life again.
In the midst of the darkness, two black hands tie Basuin’s red thread to a blue one, knotting them together. It’s different than before somehow. When Ren showed him their connection, their magic, it was different.
This feels like death.
“You wish it was,” the wolf-man says with a mean chuckle. “If you are so willing to die, then it means nothing that you are willing to die for her.”
