There’s always been something lurking behind that cool expression she likes to wear. Soft, and a little afraid. A woman wearing the clothes of a god.
But here, with him, she’s a feral animal. Wild and scared. A deer caught in the scope of its hunter, gun aimed to kill.
And here, with her glaring at him like that, he’s still just a wolf who bites at hands that come too close.
“I do fear it,” he snaps at her, all teeth. “You, dying.” He marches toward her now, and she doesn’t cower away. Not even when he snatches her arm away from her chest and clasps her fist between his own, swallowing her small hand in a cage made from his fingers. “Do you even know who I am?”
Does she even know what he did?
Ren’s eyes search his, and it breaks something deep inside him.
“I’ve trained since I was seventeen,” he tells her. “Went to war under an oath and command. Let them beat the gods out of me, lash me until my faith bled from my skin. They didn’t promote me because I was smart. They made me a captain because I fight good. Because I know war.”
Ren reaches for him, trying to pull him closer. But he won’t move. He locks his knees and grits his teeth.
“And what did I do?” Basuin huffs a laugh and looks away. “I marched all those people who were forced to follow my command into a trap that I knew was a trap. Valkesta was a mistake. I killed everyone in that squad. I let them die.”
The anger burns out of him. Snuffed out. He intertwines their fingers, slotting their palms together—a perfect fit. God mark against god mark.
“It should’ve killed me,” he says. “I couldn’t protect them. Don’t you understand that?”
Basuin’s grasp tightens, but his hand is still entwined with Ren’s. He studies it, how their fingers connect, how fragile each bone braces under her skin. Someone’s hand is shaking, but he can’t tell whose. Maybe it’s both of them.
“I couldn’t protect them,” he bites like a snake, afraid of contact. “So yes, Ren. I’m leaving you.”
Just like he should’ve left them behind. Like he should’ve left Tomaas behind, because he knew that Tomaas was dead the minute he was dragged off. Prisoners of war aren’t prisoners. They’re dead.
“I wanted to die,” he rasps. How pathetic. “I deserved to—in Valkesta. A captain goes down with his squad and I should’ve, too.”
Ren reaches up and brushes her hand along his cheek, fingers finding the line of his jaw under the thick hair of his beard.
“Please.” And it sounds so pretty from her lips. “Don’t ever say that again.”
Basuin bites back a sob he didn’t taste before. “But I can’t protect you.” Teeth in tongue, Basuin forces back a sound only a wolf could make. “It’s what I was made to do,” he stresses. “I’m a god. The wolf-man changed me to protect you—but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to protect you, Ren.”
Here, he isn’t a soldier. Because a soldier would know what to do. A soldier follows orders. Here, he’s a god. His hands aren’t sure what to do with the power between them. He doesn’t know how to carry out the duty he’s been given.
If he was a bad soldier, then he is a worse god. But Basuin was a good soldier—so he was never meant to be a god at all.
Before the tears come, before he breaks in half, Ren gathers him into her arms and pulls him into an embrace that smells of fresh soil and something so Ren he can’t even name it. Her hand paints patterns across his back as she holds him against her, so much smaller and still somehow enveloping him in all that she is. If the world was to end, if the forest was to die right now, he wouldn’t be able to stop it. Not here, right now, in this glass bubble he’s afraid might shatter.
“Basuin.” She says his name so softly, so gracefully—it reminds him of his mother, the way it’s said with love. “You must let go if you are to ever find peace.”
“There is no peace for me,” he says, canine teeth and all. “I always bring war.”
“Do you bring war,” Ren asks him, “or do you chase after it because you fear peace?”
He cries. Basuin has cried in this forest, cried before Ren, more than he has since his ma died. Soldiers don’t cry. He knows that; he’s known that since he was seventeen—and now, moons away from thirty, he cries not as a soldier, but as a god.
“I’ve become it.” Basuin bows his head to her shoulder. His tears mar her skin and it’s akin to the way his mistakes have marred her in the form of burns and bruises. It’s not enough. He’ll never be enough.
“And I’ll wage war again,” he hisses into her skin. “I’ll bring war to them the way they brought war here—but I’ll finish it. I will.”
“You’re scared.”
“And I’m angry.” His body trembles. “I’m an angry man, Ren. I am.”
“They both exist inside you because they are both the same.” Ren’s hand presses to his chest, harder this time. Less gentle. Heavy in a way that makes him feel like she’s real. “And like anger and fear, war and peace both exist inside you, too.”
