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Malek is in the tub.

The sight of him like this hits wrong—not shocking, not scandalous, just…misaligned, like the world slipped half an inch off its axis and never bothered correcting itself.

The clawfoot tub sits crooked in the middle of the room, one leg shimmed with a folded scrap of wood. The lamp on the dresser burns low and uneven, wick sputtering like it’s tired of pretending this place still knows how to be a home. Steam hangs in the air, clinging to the ceiling beams, softening the edges of everything it touches.

Malek isn’t clothed.

Water reaches his waist, gone gray with blood and ash and whatever soap he found that didn’t smell like incense. His pants are discarded somewhere behind me. His shirt is nowhere to be seen. The scars across his torso are bare to the lamplight—angry, livid, not healing so much as awake. They look like they’re listening, like they expect something to tell them what comes next.

His head rests against the porcelain rim, eyes closed, hair plastered dark to his temples. Each breath leaves him slow and measured, like he’s counting them carefully, afraid the moment he loses track, his body will remember it’s allowed to stop.

I don’t move at first, and neither does Shadow.

He stands just inside the doorway, body angled forward, ears lifted, watching the tub with the same stillness he gets before a growl. The room smells like iron and wet stone, lye sharp beneath it, and the floorboards leach cold through my boots while I stand there trying to understand whether I’ve walked in on a man resting or one quietly disappearing.

Malek’s hands tighten on the edge of the tub.

Then he sinks.

Only a little at first, just enough for the water to creep up his ribs and take the scars one by one, but every inch of him changes as it happens. His shoulders lock. His neck tightens. His body goes rigid beneath the water, braced for something that has nothing to do with relief.

I wait for him to stop.

He doesn’t.

The water climbs higher, and the room seems to hold its breath with him. Not long enough for his body to give out, not yet, but long enough for me to understand this isn’t rest.

It’s rehearsal.

Cold water mercy.

He resurfaces hard, breath tearing out of him as his hands clamp down on the tub’s edge and drag him upright by force. Water sloshes over the rim and hits the floor in dull, accusing splashes.

Shadow makes a low sound beside me, low enough that it barely disturbs the room, but I understand it anyway. He isn’t warning Malek away from me. He’s warning me to be careful, because whatever dragged Malek under hasn’t fully let go.

Malek’s eyes open, and for one second there is nothing there. No scripture, no calculation, no control. Just a man yanked back into his body before he was ready to live in it.

Then focus snaps in.

Copper first, bright and feral, sharp as a struck match.

Silver after, colder and reflective, catching the lamplight and throwing it back broken.

His gaze finds me and stops.

Something fractures in him, quiet enough that anyone else might miss it, but I see the way his breath catches before he smooths it down, the way his fingers still against the porcelain like one wrong movement might send him back under.

I take one step forward, and the floor creaks beneath my boot.

The sound is too loud in the quiet room. Too hard. Too much like a warning.

I stop, hold his gaze, then bend slowly and slip one boot off, then the other. I set them beside the door instead of letting them fall, because whatever Malek is right now, he doesn’t need another sound his body has to survive.

When I cross the room barefoot, the boards are cold beneath me.

I perch on the edge of the tub, close enough for the heat to reach my skin, close enough for the water to lap over my calves when it moves. The porcelain bites cold against the backs of my thighs, but I stay there anyway, letting him see every choice before I make it.

I don’t touch him.