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The farm breathes around us. The grave stays quiet, and the truth sits between us, ugly and unresolved and alive.

Cass chose to leave.

The Iron Gospel chose to finish it.

And I’m sitting here realizing that sometimes the thing that hurts most isn’t betrayal. It’s knowing everyone did the best they could, and it still wasn’t enough.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

Then his name rises between my ribs, unwanted and heavy.

I keep my eyes on Scarlett’s grave because looking at Cass might make the question feel too much like begging.

“Then tell me where Malek fits in all this.”

Cass’s gaze flickers.

“He knew.” Her voice drops around it. “Not everything. Maybe not enough to stop it. But enough to know the day had teeth before the rest of us felt the bite.”

I don’t breathe.

“He could have warned me,” she continues. “Not enough to stop it. Maybe not enough to change anything. But enough that I wouldn’t have been standing there blind.”

Blind.

The word hits harder than any confession.

“He went to you instead,” Cass says. “He chose to keep you out of reach.”

My mouth goes dry.

Because I know what she means before she finishes. I know it in the awful, rearranging quiet that comes right before a truth becomes something I have to live with.

“And Scarlett?”

Cass’s face folds in on itself for half a second before she gets it under control.

“She was home.”

The world doesn’t tilt.

It just rearranges itself around the shape of what that means.

I see it all now—the way Malek held me like he was memorizing something. The way Cass didn’t look back. The way Scarlett never got the chance to run.

Lucas’s voice echoes, unwanted and exact.

You haven’t paid the cost of being chosen yet.

Cass watches me carefully, like she’s bracing for something violent.

I don’t give it to her. Instead, I nod.

“I hated you.” My voice comes quiet, stripped down to the ugly truth.

Cass takes it without flinching.

“I know.”