“I was young, but when soldiers would come home—or when their shields would—my mother would wrap flowers from her garden into bouquets for graves. And she’d make big pots of stew, for the wives who were left behind.”
Ren’s eyes have gone all soft, a molten amber color he always gets lost in. Like sticky-sweet syrup. “She sounds very kind.”
“She was,” he says. “She would’ve liked you.”
Ren tries to turn before he can see the warmth in her cheeks. It draws a grin to his face.
“You said Ko was your first friend,” he recalls, prodding at her.
“Yes,” she says, a smile growing now. “The first friend I remember, anyway. But that was once I was…”
Ren stops for a moment, the world around them closing in. Becoming small, and safeguarded by this closeness between them. He gives her a moment as her dark eyes glaze with the cool burn of something unsaid.
“Once you were what?” he asks.
She hums, pressing her lips together for a moment. “Once I was on this island. Ko was my first friend once I came to this island.”
So Ren wasn’t always here. She came to the island somehow. Ko told him Ren wasn’t always a god—once, she had been human. Curiosity squeezes him. He wants to know more, more, more. It burns at his bones, he wants to know more about her. About what has hardened her, about what she can’t remember. He wants to know everything that she’s made of.
He gathers the strength to ask, then Ren speaks first.
“The fire,” she says, and it grinds everything to a halt. “What happened?”
Everything slows. Basuin stares, but the colors blur into one entity. The smell of smoke lingers in his nostrils, better than blood—but then the tang is on his tongue, all rust and red. He keeps marching forward, like he was taught, but all he wants is to fall to his knees right now.
Fall at Ren’s feet. Just for a moment.
“They burned the church,” he answers. “When they outlawed the gods in Xalkhir.”
Ren’s voice is murky, on the edge of his mind like the shack on the edge of the forest. “I’m sorry.”
Basuin tries to shrug, but his body doesn’t listen. “She was a god speaker, Ma was. So, without the church, they told us we couldn’t stay. We weren’t welcome.”
When his eyes regain focus, Ren’s gaze is heavy on him. Her fingers are touching the godstone at her neck, all delicate as if it might shatter. “They made you leave?”
“They were afraid of her,” he says. “Of what she could do.” His hands feel tight. “Of what I would do.”
“Afraid you would hurt them?”
There, in the middle of the woods, the march ends. Ren’s eyes are heavy on his prickling skin. The whole world feels like it isn’t real. Like this isn’t his body. Like he wasn’t the one who let his mother die.
“I could have,” he says. “I could hurt you, too.”
His throat is dry, lips wicked of moisture. He could if he wanted to. His whole hand could close around her neck and wring her dead. His boot could stomp her head into the ground like a stake. Basuin doesn’t need a weapon. The sword strapped to his back has always been insurance.
His hands are enough.
All the pretty facets of Ren’s face change in mere seconds. Her lips twitch, jaw tensing and slackening as she rolls something around between her teeth. She spends so much time thinking about what she says. Bass doesn’t know what that’s like. To think about what you’ll say before you speak it aloud. To build a gate around your words, to only let dignitaries through.
He’s crashed gates before. He’s crushed locks and broken into homes. He wouldn’t know how to swallow back any rotten words.
Ren takes a deep breath, lips finally parting to say something.
Then, her teeth gnash down on her lip in a clash of blood and her legs buckle beneath her. A sound ekes out of her as her eyes flash wide. Ren goes down, but Bass lunges to scoop her up in his arms, knees swept up in the crook of his arm. Blood drips down her arm, trickling off her fingers gone limp.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers. He bars the panic from entering his voice as he kneels to the forest floor. “Hold on, Ren.”
As soon as he lays her down, her head rolls to the side—she’s fainted. A strike of fear pierces his heart, his palm holding her cheek. Her skin feels colder. His imagination. No, his worst nightmare. He doesn’t know if he’s awake or asleep.
