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Listening to him.

They routed around us because they were not hunting blindly anymore. They were moving toward something already decided, toward a road Malek had seen before I ever understood there was one beneath our feet.

My stomach drops into a cold, final place.

He didn’t get taken.

He went to them.

And he didn’t tell me because telling me would have turned it into a conversation, and conversations are where mercy still has a chance to get its hands on the blade. Malek doesn’t operate there when the math is clear. He does not ask permission from the person he’s trying to save.

He finds the cost, and he pays it before anyone can stop him.

I draw in a breath that tastes like ash and pine sap and the metallic ghost of old blood—the same flavor the air carried right before the Hollowborn stepped out of the trees. My ribs ache with the effort of staying quiet, of keeping panic from tearing loose and stealing my ability to move.

Because if I break here, I don’t follow.

And if I don’t follow, he stays gone.

I turn back toward the fire. Toward the empty cloth. Toward the dog who refuses to leave his post.

My hands shake once. Just once. Then I curl them into fists until my knuckles burn.

Malek’s voice echoes from last night like it’s been pressed into the air, waiting for me to remember it.

Used. Finalized.

The Binding Thread is gone because he needed it, and the thought settles into me with a coldness I can’t breathe around. Not for later. Not as a precaution. Now. Because Malek is already inside their scripture, already standing somewhere I can’t reach yet, already paying the cost he decided belonged to him before I ever opened my eyes.

My throat tightens until it hurts. I don’t get to argue with a choice that’s already been made, but I do get to decide what I do with it.

I pull the folded photograph from my pocket—the one taken in his cabin, proof that someone stood close enough to watch me breathe. I smooth the crease once with my thumb, like that could make it less true.

Then I fold it again. Smaller. Sharper. And tuck it away like a blade.

Shadow whines low.

I look down at him, at the only witness left. If Shadow comes, he’ll announce me before I get close enough to choose my own moment.

“Stay,” I tell him, even though my voice wants to fracture.

I shoulder my pack. The straps bite into my skin, grounding me in something solid and physical, something I can carry without letting it carry me. I need to arrive to this clusterfuck unannounced.

Then I step to the edge of the clearing and look down the mountain as daylight finishes bleeding through the trees.

Somewhere below, Marrow Ridge is breathing.

Singing.

Waiting.

Malek is already there.

The knowing doesn’t come with tears. It doesn’t tear a sound out of me or send me to my knees for the mountain to witness. It arrives quieter than that, colder than that, like a door locking somewhere behind my ribs.

He is gone, and this time he made sure I woke up too late to stop him.

“Okay,” I whisper, not because I accept it, but because I understand it.