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“And you’re still standing here asking me to live with that.”

“I’m not asking.” His voice comes out low, almost gentle, and that makes it worse. “I’m telling you the cost.”

That’s when it settles in my chest, heavy and unmistakable. Not the plan. The restraint behind it. He isn’t choosing for me—he’s refusing to choose without me.

The night exhales around us, slow and waiting, and I realize this stopped being about finding a clean road the moment Cass was taken.

There are no clean roads.

Only decisions you walk into with your eyes open—and the ones that haunt you because you didn’t.

I look at Malek, at the man the Iron Gospel thinks it owns, at the man who’s standing here anyway, offering himself like leverage instead of scripture.

I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to.

“Do you remember,” I say, and the way his attention snaps to me tells me I already have him, “how you knelt for me?”

The word lands between us like a live wire. His mismatched eyes catch the glow of the fire, giving away more than his mouth ever would.

“You called it worship,” I say. “You said standing felt like lying.”

Something tightens in his face—fast, involuntary. Good. I don’t let him recover.

“You looked at me like I was worth kneeling for,” I tell him, and my voice almost breaks around the truth of it. “Like I was something you chose. Something you bowed to instead of bled for.”

I step closer and press my palm flat to his chest, over the steady, dangerous beat of his heart. Not hard. Not gentle. Anchoring.

“Now you’re standing here offering yourself up like a debt, like your life is just another blade you’re used to sliding across the table when the math gets ugly.”

His breath catches, barely there, but it is enough.

“You don’t get to do that.” My voice drops, not softer, just closer to breaking. “You don’t get to worship me on your knees and then make yourself the sacrifice.”

My hand curls in his shirt.

“Not for them,” I whisper. “And not for me.”

He doesn’t argue, and that’s how I know it hit somewhere it couldn’t be shrugged off or rerouted. Malek only stays silent when something has cut past strategy and lodged itself where decisions are supposed to be clean.

The fire pops once behind us—sharp, abrupt, the sound of pressure finally giving way—and my body reacts before my thoughts do, pulse spiking like something just moved downhill in the dark. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, the night feels closer now, like it’s leaning in to see what he’ll do with what I just handed him.

His jaw works slowly. I watch the muscle flex, the tight swallow of something he was prepared to offer up—himself, I think, whole and unresisting—and then doesn’t. Not yet. Not the way he planned. Whatever script he was running just lost its next line.

For the first time since Black Harvest stepped out of the trees, he looks at me differently. Not as a factor to manage or a risk to offset, but as something unstable in the equation—something he can’t isolate, can’t neutralize, can’t move around without changing the outcome.

Good.

I let go of his shirt and step back, giving him space he didn’t earn but clearly needs. My hand buzzes where it was pressed to his chest, heat and pulse lingering like my body hasn’t caught up to the fact that I’m no longer touching him, like some part of me is still counting his heartbeats out of habit.

“This isn’t your martyrdom,” I say, and I hear how soft it comes out, how that softness lands heavier than anger ever could. “And it isn’t their sermon.”

Behind us, Black Harvest shifts—not forward, not back. Just enough to tell me this wasn’t the outcome they had stacked their weight on. One of them adjusts their stance, boots scraping soft against dirt, like a calculation just lost a clean answer.

The night seems to pause around us, air thickening as if it’s waiting to see whether he’ll flinch now that the terms have changed.

Malek stills again, but it isn’t the same stillness as before. This one isn’t armor locking into place—it’s restraint pulling tight, something dangerous choosing not to move because it knows it’s being watched. Like a feral thing that just realized it has a witness and doesn’t know yet what that means.

I don’t tell him not to go, and that’s how I know I’ve already agreed.