Basuin draws his hand back and clenches a fist he hides from view. He shouldn’t touch her. The fear is heavy in his gut, a lead bullet leaking all his happiness he’s found. He’s trying to hang on too tightly. Everything he’s ever tried to hold on to has crumbled beneath the crush of his grip. Ren might, too.
But he swallows that back, because she’s sitting here in front of him, the most beautiful thing he’ll ever see.
“I’ll bring you one,” he says instead. “When I go to the mainland again, I’ll bring you back a kite. One in each color.”
And Ren, gods damn him, laughs. So preciously, she laughs, her crown of flowers slipping off her head until he catches it for her and readjusts it among the nest of her hair, laughing along with her.
“Captain!” someone shouts over the blizzard.
“I’m here!” he calls back. His hand is set to his brow, trying to keep the snow out of his eyes. Hail pelts his shoulders, plinking off his armor, the sound rhythmic and fading into the whipping winds that scrape by his ears. His boot catches on a rock hidden beneath the blinding white and he plummets toward the ice.
“Captain!” Someone’s hands scramble to catch him. When he rolls onto his back, Qia is atop him, eyes alight with fear and the red of her robes drifting like a raised flag in the wind.
The flurry thickens and she’s gone. Basuin heaves to his feet.
“If we keep going, we’ll die.” Ko’s voice echoes behind him. “I am scared for you.”
He whips around, but there’s only an oak sprouted in the middle of the mountain. Valkesta screams.
“I won’t leave him behind!” he screams back.
He loses his grip on the rocks and slides down the face of the mountain, hands splitting apart. There’s nothing beneath him, no one to catch him. He doesn’t make a sound as he falls, just shuts his eyes and hopes he doesn’t feel it.
And when he opens them, the sky is gray above him. The battlefield is rife with gunshots. He flinches as one blooms close, shattering through glacier.
“Get up!” Haaman screams at him. Their hair whips across their eyes. “You marched us here—get the fuck up!” Then, a shot ruptures their gut. Haaman falls to their knees, choking, bleeding into the snow.
But he can hear it. In the dingy cells beneath the outpost, he can hear the screams of the captured. Tomaas is down there. He can still make it.
“Captain!” another voice wails. Bass turns, looking for the source. Who’s out there?
“Captain,” a pup cries. Bass whips around. Yaelic’s gone. He shoves his arms into the snow, digging for it. Yaelic’s underground. The tree above him is dead, all rotten wood. He can’t find the den. He can’t reach.
“Help me,” Yaelic sobs.
“I’m trying.” Bass gasps for air. His hands turn black with frostbite as he digs and digs and digs until his nails have peeled from his fingers and the snow has turned red. “Where are you?”
“They trapped me,” Yaelic answers. “I’m in a cage—I can’t get out!”
“I’m coming!” Bass stumbles to his feet, the winds of Valkesta pushing and shoving him back and forth as he teeters on the edge of the cliff. “Where—”
He looks to his left and there Ren stands. Blood leaks from her chest, saturating her shirt. Where her eyes should be, there are stitches closing the sockets.
“It’s your fault,” she tells him.
I know, I know, I know.
Her head tilts to the side. “He’s already dead.”
He knows. He knows that.
Ren’s body breaks, collapsing into the snow. He dives over the ice for her. Her skin is already so cold. So cold. He cups her face in both his hands, blood-stained and aching.
“I’m already dead, too,” she says, mouth unmoving.
Bass shoots to his feet, blankets tangling around his ankles until he falls to his knees with a curse. Forest ground is beneath him—not snow. Not ice. Not Valkesta. It’s cold here, but not freezing. The fire has burned out but the smoke still permeates their camp. It makes him gag.
He beats his fist on the ground. Wake up.
