Right. Because he’s slaughtered every camp they had.
He squeezes her hand. “I’ll go, and you can stay and protect them.”
“No.” Her answer is quick and snipped, her nails biting into his skin. “You said we do this together.” Those eyes of hers are so dark and so sharp, so cutting, and so beautiful. So sad.
His heart is so full and so heavy in his chest.
“We’re partners,” she says harshly. Then, softer, she asks, “Right?”
“Of course,” he answers with no hesitation. “We’re partners.” Basuin clasps her hand in both of his, pocketing her away. He doesn’t want to let go of her. Ever.
Ren’s whole body eases, and she blinks what he thinks might be the blossoming of tears away. “So we go together.”
It makes his chest ache something foul. Basuin keeps hurting her, but she still believes him a partner. Once, he thought he wouldn’t find another human as kind and gentle and patient as his mother was—she didn’t seem human to him in the first place, touched and blessed by gods. But Ren was a human once, and she is more kind and more gentle and more patient than even his mother was.
Ren lets him heal the rest of her wounds with magic that feels like it belongs to him now. The Wolf God. The acceptance tastes like rot and fester in his mouth. But he tries to believe it’s worth something. He’s a protector, and this magic allows him that. An extension of this feeling he harbors for Ren—this affection, the need to protect her and steal away her pain.
“You are going to the Winter River.” Ko startles them both, a hitch in Ren’s breath that he only hears because she’s so close to him. Ko stands a few feet away, draped in his dark robes and looking as tired as ever. More, somehow. Bruised undereyes and mussed hair.
Basuin looks to Ren, who meets his eyes. What will they say?
But Ko doesn’t wait for them, tipping his chin up to look toward the sky with a heavy sigh. “I wonder if Ithika watches this unfold, and if she is saddened by it all.”
Basuin, too, wondered that. As he sat on the boat that brought him to this island, he wondered if Ithika might rise and swallow them whole in her seas.
“But she has long since been dead,” Ko says. “She cannot protect the Winter River, as she did before, from up in the godrealm.”
His eyes widen. “Ithika is dead?” Across from him, Ren closes her eyes and turns away.
Ko gives him a sad smile. “I told you before that gods cannot roam without a body or a host.”
“Yes,” Ren says before he can ask anything else. “We’re going to the Winter River.”
A sad silence covers them, then Ko nods. “Of course you are.” Then, he kneels beside them, letting his eyes fall closed and his shoulders droop as he hides his hands in his lap. “You make her proud,” he says.
“Who?” Ren asks. But her hand clasps the godstone at her neck. Can she feel the grooves that he’s worried into the jade stone—the imprints of his mother’s wishes and worries? Of his own fears?
“The Forest God,” Ko answers. “The one who lives in you.”
Ren’s eyes flash wide and bright, a mirror of the moon above them. “You spoke with her?”
Ko’s smile only gets kinder, but more somber all at once. “I knew her, before I knew you. The determination in you is the same that she bore. I know she feels pride in you, Am-sa.”
Ren bows her head, touching her forehead to her clasped hands—a prayer that goes unheard. Then, she buries her face in Basuin’s chest. His mother’s stone is a heat between them, the only thing that keeps the place where their hearts might be from pressing together.
Ren has a heart, he knows. The gods don’t speak to her because they let Ren keep hers.
Basuin startles awake. He can’t remember what he dreamed about, or what woke him at all. His eyes scan their camp, trying to listen for any other sound—but there’s nothing but the whistle of the forest. Everyone is asleep in their tents. He checks on each one, counts heads and bodies, lingers until he can breathe.
It isn’t enough. He pushes to walk the perimeter of the forest, too. Then, he’ll be able to sleep again.
He traipses into the darkness, thinking better of making light out of magic. If there’s something out here, he’ll hear it before he sees it.
But there’s nothing out here. Only the dawning light of day, rays of light beginning to color the sky as he makes one final round through the trees. He’s tired—his eyes are starting to ache and his joints are stiff in the cold morning air.
Bass slows to a stop, ready to turn back and go check on Ren again. Then, he sees it.
Movement, in the forest. A flash of color. A glimpse of someone. Bass is pulled underwater in an instant, drowning, the rush of waves too loud in his ears for him to hear anything at all.
