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“They didn’t come blind,” I continue, my voice too steady for what it’s carrying. “They knew where the doors would give. They knew how to get in. They knew enough that Scarlett never had a chance to be surprised by anything except the ending.”

The words feel like they’ve been waiting years to be spoken.

They don’t echo.

They settle.

Malek doesn’t answer right away. He straightens instead, not defensive, but braced, like a man who already knows the next step hurts and takes it anyway.

“I hate that she died.”

I shake my head, sharp enough to feel it in my neck. “Don’t.”

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away.

A shadow passes through him then, fast and brutal. Not guilt. Recognition. The kind a person only gets after losing the one body in the world that made survival feel less like punishment.

Carter’s name sits there without being spoken.

“She held you together,” he continues, and the words cut through me before I can gather another blade. “Maybe nobody had the right to call her your mother, but she carried the weight like one.”

My breath stutters. My vision flashes white.

“And she didn’t die because she was soft,” he says, voice rougher now. “She died because she stayed when running might have saved her.”

I step forward without deciding to. My pulse is loud. My skin feels too tight.

“You don’t get to tell me why she died.”

“I do.” His voice doesn’t rise. That makes it worse. “Because I was there. Because I watched the line close. Because I made the call.”

My hands are shaking now. I don’t hide it.

Malek’s jaw works once, like the next words have edges he doesn’t know how to hold without cutting both of us.

“I saw what she was to you,” he says. “I saw the way you leaned without knowing you were leaning, and the way she held like it was the only thing keeping the house standing.”

My chest burns acid-hot.

“She wasn’t fragile,” he continues. “She was tired. Bone-deep tired. The kind of tired people don’t notice in women who keep showing up anyway.”

“Stop.”

It comes out thin. Almost useless.

He doesn’t.

“And she still would’ve stayed,” he says, rougher now. “For you. For Cass. For that house. For whatever piece of the world she thought she could keep from falling apart with her bare hands.”

“Don’t make her noble because it makes your guilt easier to carry.”

His face changes, but it isn’t anger. It’s pain.

“I’m not making her anything.” His hand tightens around the mug until his knuckles bleach. “I’m telling you she wasn’t just taken from you. She chose you too.”

It lands wrong, too sharp and too close to the truth.

“She didn’t choose to die,” I snap.