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This time, it is a promise.

I don’t smile. I don’t soften. I stay exactly where I am, weight real on his lap, my hand steady over his heart while the steam thins around us and the night presses quiet against the walls.

There is no altar here. No hymn. No crown waiting to be answered.

Just his breath against mine.

My palm over his heart.

And both of us still here.

XLVI

You Knew

Morning doesn’t soften anything.

It just exposes what the dark was merciful enough to blur.

The light comes in thin and colorless through the cabin windows, catching on dust and scars and the shallow grooves in the floor where something heavy has been dragged back and forth often enough to leave a memory behind. The stove has burned down to ash. The air smells like iron gone cold, wood smoke, and the stubborn trace of soap that never quite wins.

Malek is awake, sitting at the small table with his hands wrapped around a chipped mug he hasn’t lifted to drink from. He’s pulled on a borrowed shirt that doesn’t fit him right—too loose across the shoulders, hanging where it should cling. Like even fabric understands this body is still under negotiation.

Shadow lies at his feet, head on his paws, eyes open. He hasn’t moved far from Malek since the water drained. Neither have I.

I stop in the doorway and take inventory the way you do after a fire—not looking for what survived, but for what’s gone. In daylight, Malek looks stripped down to something almost ordinary. Less myth. More man. The scars don’t fade, but they stop shouting.

He doesn’t look up when I move closer.

“You know.”

There is no good morning in it. No softness. No room for either of us to pretend this conversation hasn’t been waiting since the moment Cass put the truth in my hands.

I stop across from him, close enough to see the tremor he isn’t bothering to hide in his hands.

“Yes.”

He exhales through his nose, once controlled. Silence stretches between us, thin and sharp. Morning presses against the cabin like it expects something to give.

I set my palms flat on the table.

The wood is rough beneath my skin, nicked and scarred and familiar in the way places you survive always become familiar. I need the contact. I need something solid to keep my balance when everything inside me wants to tilt.

“You knew before they came to the farm.” My voice comes out too even. “Before Scarlett opened that door. Before Cass ever had a chance to run.”

Malek’s fingers tighten around the mug. Not enough to break it. Just enough to remind himself it’s real.

“Yes.”

One syllable. No armor. No excuse.

Someone moved a marker.

That’s what he’d told me the day we buried Scarlett.

“They were already inside.” I’m not asking. I’m putting the memory on the table between us and making him look at it with me. “The fences were down. The house was breached.”

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt.