Page 157

“No.” His eyes hold mine, wrecked and unflinching. “She chose to stand. And I chose the place where death found her.”

Something splits open in me so cleanly I don’t feel it at first.

“And I chose you,” Malek says.

He steps closer—not reaching, not crowding—just enough that the air tightens, that I’m aware of him in my space the way you are of something heavy shifting its weight.

“Not because it was clean,” he says. “Not because it was fair. Because when the line closed, you were the one I could still reach.”

The words don’t rise. They settle into the room like something old, something decided long before this moment ever found us. My chest tightens until it feels less like pain and more like part of me giving way under too much weight, but Malek doesn’t wait for me to answer. He already knows there isn’t one I can give.

“If the Iron Gospel had taken you alive,” he continues, voice low, roughened by memory, “they wouldn’t have killed you. They would’ve kept you. Hollowed you. Taught you how to wear their scripture without flinching.”

I taste smoke before I remember where I am. Ash coats the back of my tongue, and the memory of Marrow Ridge flashes white behind my eyes—burning hymns, screaming men, the smell of faith finally catching fire.

“They would’ve made you survive it,” he says. “Long enough to turn you into proof.”

Shadow presses into my leg. I grab his fur, grounding myself in the weight of something still breathing.

“So I chose you whole.” His voice is rough, stripped of anything that might soften it. “And Scarlett died inside the cost of it.”

Silence drops between us, heavy and final enough that even the morning seems to stop pressing at the windows.

I don’t forgive him. I don’t absolve him. But the truth of it settles into my bones anyway, not as comfort and not as an excuse, but as something I will have to carry whether I want to or not.

The worst part is that he will too.

My lungs empty, and when I try to pull air back in, it feels thin, like the room has quietly decided there isn’t enough left for both of us.

“You don’t get to put that on me.”

His face hardens, but his eyes don’t.

“I already did.” His voice comes low, brutal with honesty. “The moment I stayed.”

I laugh, short and wrecked, because if I don’t, something worse is going to come out of me.

“So this is you justifying it.”

“No.” His hand leaves the mug, palm flattening against the table like he needs something solid beneath it too. “This is me owning it.”

My heart slams so hard it hurts.

He doesn’t look away.

“I’m not sorry for choosing you, little crow.”

The name lands in my chest, too familiar for a moment this sharp, too tender for the blood still sitting between us.

“I’m sorry Scarlett paid for it.”

My throat closes.

“But don’t make her death the thing that proves you mattered.”

I go still.

“You mattered before the blood. Before the choice. Before any of us knew what it would cost.”