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That’s when she breaks.

The sound that comes out of her isn’t human. It’s ripped straight from her chest—raw, animal, unbearable. She folds over Scarlett, pressing her face into her hair, clutching her so tight it’s like she’s trying to crawl inside her, like if she can just get close enough she won’t have to let go. Her whole body convulses. Blood smears across her cheek, streaking through her tears until her grief turns red.

I drop to my knees beside them. The floor is slick, cold seeping through my jeans. My hands are shaking so badly I barely trust them, but I brush damp black strands from Scarlett’s face anyway.

Her skin is pale beneath the blood.

Too pale.

Too still.

I touch her like she might feel it. Like she might forgive me.

My hand finds Cassie’s. She grabs me hard, nails biting into my skin, desperate, anchoring herself to anything that isn’t gone.

It feels like nothing.

It’s everything I have left to give.

I lean forward until my forehead rests against Cassie’s, our tears blurring together, the room dissolving into sobs and blood and the sound of something precious breaking beyond repair.

We knew this life was cruel. We knew nothing was promised. But out here—where the garden still grew green, where we thought the chaos couldn’t reach us—we believed we were safe.

We were wrong. Whatever usually stopped things like this hadn’t been here, or it had—and it chose not to interfere.

Because at twenty-three, I learned the world doesn’t have to take everything to ruin you.

Sometimes it only has to take the one person who made you believe there was still something worth saving.

VI

We Gave the Dirt a Daughter

Istare at the fresh mound of dirt where Scarlett should never have fit.

My sister belonged in warm kitchens and firelight, in bad jokes and soft hands and the smell of honeysuckle clinging to her skin. Not under six feet of earth. Not with her throat opened and her light poured into the floorboards.

The weight of that soil presses down on me until I can barely breathe.

Cass stands beside me, fists locked so tight her nails cut into her palms. She hasn’t spoken since it happened. Neither have I. Her silence is louder than a scream, mine just as hollow. Words are nothing here. They can’t fix, can’t mend, can’t bring Scarlett back.

The wind shifts, carrying damp earth and the sour tang of rot. My chest hollows out with the ache of what’s gone, a void no vengeance will ever fill. We stand together, bound only by grief and the thin threads of what’s left of our family.

But when I close my eyes, I don’t see her grave; I see the kitchen, the blood, and the floorboards that soaked in the last of her light.

It calls to me—iron in the air, hot grease still on the stove turning sweet and wrong—like if I can just scrub hard enough, I can unmake it.

That’s when rage takes me.

I find a rag. A bucket. Drop to my knees.

The smell of blood on wood twists into something else—roast chicken, salt, smoke. The night before, when the world was still holding its breath and we laughed about horny bats and idiotically named poultry.

The echo fades. The kitchen’s cold again, wet and red beneath my hands. I scrub like I can rip her death out of the wood. My arms shake, my back screams, my knuckles split until blood mixes with water, but I don’t stop. Can’t. Each stroke is a curse, a prayer, a plea. Scarlett doesn’t deserve to linger like this—smeared across our walls, streaked across the floor like a warning.

I scrub until my body gives out, the rags shredding in my hands and the water turning black, until a rough throat-clearing finally shatters the silence.

The rag slips from my raw fingers as I lift my head. Malek stands in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame, his shadow spilling across the bloodstained boards. His face is carved from stone, but when he speaks, his voice catches—just barely.