He tries to laugh but it comes out as a growl. The fire burns brightly still, heat licking at the tent now. Ash rains down across his boots.
“Why are you here?” he asks her, because there is so much death here. And his hands still beg for more destruction. For devastation.
“Who are you?” Her gun is loaded.
“The Wolf God,” he answers. It burns from the hole in his chest and outward.
Tehali takes a step back. Basuin takes one forward, holstering his gun. And then another, and another until he snatches Tehali’s armor and forces her backward, out of the tent and into the burning grounds, snarling down at her until her shoulders are shoved against a tin supply shed.
“Where is Kensy?” he demands.
Tehali stutters. She’s afraid of him. “He hasn’t been seen in days. He came back without you—said you were dead.”
“I was.”
She searches his eyes, fire reflected in her black irises. “What happened?”
“Where did he go?” he asks instead, shaking her by her armor.
“What have you become?” Tehali whispers. His eyes go wide, then narrow with a heavy anger hanging on his brow.
“A god.” Dead, twice over. Saved first by Tehali. Saved again by the gods and made into this—this thing. He must look like a horror to her. Is his skin pitch black, has he grown fur, are his eyes bleeding red yet?
Is he monstrous yet, his outsides finally matching his insides?
“I’m sorry,” Tehali says, barely heard under the crackle of fire as tents and tarps collapse around them, eaten away.
Basuin shoves Tehali away from him with a guttural sound. He would kill the whole legion if it meant keeping Ren safe, but why must it be Tehali who stands here before him? Tehali—his only friend left. Captain Tehali, of Ariche’s Fleet, of the soldiers Basuin once led.
Please, not Tehali. Make Tehali go home so he doesn’t have to kill her, too. Basuin closes his eyes, feels the fury ripen and sour within him.
Then, an explosion bursts through the camp, incinerating the vicinity. Basuin is thrown forward by the impact, heat sizzling on his skin with a hiss. He topples over Tehali, shielding her from debris as the blast shudders through the camp.
When he turns to look back, the tent where the medics hid is completely destroyed.
“Fuck!” he screams. He checks Tehali, fingers pressed to her neck until she coughs and sputters alive, and then he breaks into a sprint for the medics. But it’s too late. Even as he sifts through the wreckage, hot and sharp, there’s nothing but bodies. No pulse. Just blood and bits.
Nothing solid to drag away, like the Grimmalian soldiers dragged Tomaas away.
Basuin stands, flicking blood from his hands. His claws have gone; his mouth is dry. He runs his tongue along his teeth and find all of them flat again. But it doesn’t stop the magic coursing through him. The need to howl. To track Kensy down and tear his throat from his body in hunger.
“Bass,” Tehali pants from behind him, struggling to stand. He doesn’t look at her. If she shoots him in the back, so be it.
“Get out of here, Tali,” he says. “Get off this island.”
“Will you come?”
A huff of a laugh leaves him in shock. After all the carnage she’s witnessed, he can’t believe she’s asking that.
“No.”
“It doesn’t have to end like this,” she pleads. “You can still go home.”
He shuts his eyes. There is no home anymore, no shack still left on the edge of the village. No Ma waiting for him to come back from the forest, trappings for stew and fallen branches to sturdy the roof.
There’s only Ren and the softness of her hand in his, the way her lips curve in a smile and the color of her bruises with every mark the legion leaves on the forest.
“Go, Tali. I won’t give you another chance,” he lies.
