Tehali grunts in pain, almost quieted by the fire still ravaging the camp. “He went north,” she says. “That’s all I know.” With a hard inhale, Tehali starts to walk away, footfalls still familiar, then stops. “Captain?”
Basuin cracks his scarred knuckles, but he turns to her in response.
Tehali pauses before she speaks. “Be well, Basuin of Ankor.” Then, she trudges off.
The fire blazes around him, collects in a tornado which swallows the encampment. He waits until he can’t hear Tehali anymore to murmur, “Congratulations.” She’s gone, but he still says, “Congratulations, Captain Tehali.”
Basuin stands until his knees start to give out, and then he stomps out the flames. Culls them with the last of the magic sunk into his bones. He waits until there is nothing left but blackened bodies to leave the legion camp behind. It’s quiet, the aftermath. No cicadas and no animal cries and nothing at all. Only the sound of charred grass beneath his boots, the crunch of twigs and ash.
Basuin walks all the way back to his own camp, the sky turning to a dusky lavender overhead. He turns before he comes too close, heading down to the stream that runs through the woods. Yaelic is fine—he can feel it through their bond. Ren, too. He doesn’t need to check on them. He needs, first, to wash the blood and ash from his skin. It crawls all over him like fat centipedes wanting to burrow inside him.
He kneels at the bank, shoving his arms into the cold water. With quick, rough hands, he scrubs his limbs of what he can until his skin feels raw. Then, he splashes his face and rubs it clean, washing soot from his eyes and blood from his jaw.
Basuin sits back on his heels, wiping water from his vision. But when he looks down at his reflection in the creek, it isn’t him.
Instead, he stares at the Wolf God—black skin, red lines, a black wolf’s head. Basuin raises his hands to his face as the Wolf God raises his clawed ones. No, it is him. Basuin is the Wolf God, just like he told Tehali.
What’s happened to you? Who are you? he asks himself just as Tehali asked him. What have you become?
He plunges his hands back into the water, gritting his teeth to bite back the scream in his throat. His lungs feel empty. Choking. He’s losing himself. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know who he was before. A man, a god, a soldier—who was he?
Basuin bows his head and grits his teeth to swallow the sob bubbling up in his chest as fear sinks lower into his stomach. He’s dead. He really is dead.
When he looks again, reflection only seen by a sliver of moonlight, he’s staring at himself again. Bronze skin, dark eyes, scar threaded white through his brow. And behind him, Ren is staring at him, too. Her skin is mottled with red burns. New burns. The ones he’s given to her as easily as he could give her a fistful of wildflowers. The ones he’s caused by setting a fire that burned black rings into the forest floor.
He hurt her again. He always hurts her. Basuin doesn’t know any better than this. Horrified, ashamed, he hangs his head, hand covering his mouth to hide the tremble, eyes squeezed shut and burning with unshed tears. These hands—they only bring war.
But Ren, despite it all, sits beside him. And her hands—her hands made of peace—fall to his arms, gentle and soft and forgiving.
Despite it all, Ren lays her head on his shoulder as Basuin cries into the creek. The gods, they damned him. But not before he damned himself.
Chapter 30
“Kensy’s not with the army,” Bass says, thumb soothing red magic over a burn on Ren’s forearm. He can’t look at her right now. He can’t hide the fear lurking in his eyes. “He’s moving north, alone.”
If Ren’s face changes, he doesn’t see. He busies himself with healing every new wound that crawls across her skin—the wounds he brought to her. This is the one thing he can control right now, as laughable as it is. Trying to find forgiveness in his own guilt and shame.
Godhood, it seems, is as despicable as being a soldier.
“For how long?” Ren’s voice is a tremble.
“I don’t know.” He inhales, running his fingers down the rivulets of her knuckles, only pulling away when the urge to slip his hand into hers grows too heavy. “But I do know him, and this isn’t anything new. Kensy’s always been crafty. We used to move ahead of the legion in the middle of the night together, just me and him, and bargain with whoever was heading the opposition in whatever city we wanted to take. We wouldn’t sleep, sometimes for days.”
His vision dims. Ren must think him a monster for such horrific things. But it’s true. All of it.
“And once we bargained,” he continues, “we’d kill whoever we’d just conned, and when the fighting started, the legion had already caught up with us.”
A chill crawls up his spine. Ren says nothing, nothing at all, and he chooses not to look at her.
“He’s outpaced us. He could be there right now,” he stresses.
Ren’s free hand draws up to touch the godstone she still wears. She closes her fist around it, much like he used to do, and it makes his heart quicken. He wets his lips, the ghost of her kiss setting a blaze of want through his mind again. If only he could reach up now and cover her mouth with his. Banish that worried look she tries so hard to hide from him, the one that creases her brows.
He has to get to the Winter River first. He has to go—now.
“Don’t worry,” he says instead, and brings her hand up to lay a kiss upon her knuckles. It’s the closest thing he can get. “We’ll figure it out.” He’s said that too many times now, but every single time, he’s meant it. He hopes Ren believes it, too.
“Let’s go, then.” Ren’s eyes meet his, but she blinks and they wander down to his lips. Then, her gaze falls completely. “The army has slowed down. The spirits are safe, for now.”
