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“She’s alive,” he says finally. “Cass too.”

Relief cuts through me sharp and treacherous, so fast it almost looks like mercy.

It isn’t.

Relief is not absolution.

“She knows,” he adds.

I close my eyes.

“You told her.”

“No.” His voice stays even. “Cass did.”

That cuts cleaner than it should.

Lucas telling her would have been information. Cass telling her means the truth came from the same place the damage did.

Silence stretches—heavy, exact.

“You don’t get to explain it.” Lucas doesn’t soften the words. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

“I know.”

He looks away for half a second, toward the wall, toward the Hollowborn scraping softly outside, like even he needs somewhere to put the weight of it before he hands it back to me.

“You don’t get to dress it up as strategy.”

“I won’t.”

When he looks at me again, there’s no room left in his face for mercy.

“And you sure as hell don’t get to pretend you didn’t choose.”

My hand moves toward my chest before I can stop it, toward the place the Thread used to be. I catch myself halfway there and force my fingers flat against my thigh.

“I chose.” The words come out stripped clean. “And Scarlett died inside that choice.”

Lucas doesn’t contradict me.

That’s the mercy.

He turns to leave, then stops with his hand near the door.

“She stood between you and the fire because that’s who she is.” His voice lowers. “That doesn’t mean she’ll stand beside you after.”

Lucas closes the door softly behind him.

I’m alone again with breath that doesn’t know who it belongs to, with scars that have stopped answering to old names, with Hollowborn outside circling a signal that burned out of me in the fire.

Somewhere beyond these walls, Selah Crow is breathing, carrying truths sharp enough to cut through bone. The Hollowborn know her now. I can feel the way their attention bends—not toward me, but past me, like gravity changed hands.

They aren’t confused by her power. They’re confused by the absence of a leash.

They don’t press closer.

They wait.