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I hook my fingers in his collar and drag him down, and the kiss lands hard enough to take the air out of both of us. It isn’t soft, and it isn’t sweet, and it sure as hell isn’t gentle enough to be mistaken for forgiveness. It is anger and want and grief finding the same mouth, my hand fisted in his shirt while his body goes rigid for one terrible second before he realizes I am not asking him to vanish beneath me.

I am asking him to stay.

His first sound breaks against my mouth, rough and startled, like wanting still feels like something he should survive instead of something he’s allowed to answer.

His hands finally find me—firm at my hips, spanning bone like he’s checking I’m real, like he needs the weight of me to anchor him to the world. The heat of his grip bleeds through my clothes and into my skin. The ring on his finger scrapes faintly as his hand shifts, a small, involuntary reminder that he’s still trying to hold himself together with rules.

I break the kiss just enough to breathe.

Behind us, Shadow’s low growl keeps going, a quiet warning threaded through loyalty. At the edge of the settlement, the Hollowborn hold still, disciplined and attentive, watching like they’re waiting for a hymn, a command, some proof that I am finally ready to become what they already think I am.

I refuse.

I choose something smaller. Dirtier. Human.

I take Malek’s hand—the one wearing the ring—and bring it between us, pressing his palm to my throat where my pulse jumps hard beneath his skin. His fingers tense immediately, not closing, not claiming, just startled by the trust of it.

“Here,” I breathe. “If you’re going to listen to anything, listen to this.”

His thumb twitches, like the instinct to be gentle still exists in him somewhere under all the Gospel’s rot.

He shifts his stance like he’s about to step back—about to put distance between us the way he always does when the moment turns too real.

I catch him before he can.

I twist my grip in his shirt and shove him backward one step, then another, until his spine meets the scorched edge of the altar. The wood presses into him. The sight of it—him braced against the thing that tried to own him—sparks something hot and ruthless in my chest.

“Selah,” he warns, but it doesn’t sound like stop.

It sounds like don’t make me lose control.

“Lose it,” I say, close enough that my breath fogs between us. “Just don’t lose me.”

My hand slides down, catches the hem of my dress, bunching fabric in my fist the same way it did in the tub—no coyness, no performance, just decision. His gaze drops for half a beat and then snaps back up, like he’s afraid looking will make it worse, like he’s afraid wanting will turn into sin again.

I tip my mouth to his ear, teeth grazing the shell, and let my words cut clean through whatever doctrine is still clinging to him.

“Right now,” I whisper, “you don’t belong to the Gospel.”

My fingers guide his hand lower, to my hip, to the place where heat is building beneath my skin like a storm he can feel before it breaks.

“You don’t belong to the ring. You don’t belong to what they carved into you.” My pulse beats hard in my throat, but my voice stays steady. “You’re here because you chose to be.”

His hand tightens.

Not taking.

Choosing.

At the perimeter, the Hollowborn lean forward as if the air itself has been pulled taut, but I don’t look away from Malek.

His mouth finds mine again, harder this time, like staying has finally become its own kind of violence against everything that tried to hollow him out. The altar creaks beneath my boots when I shift closer, charred boards remembering fire and holding us anyway.

I don’t give the dark a command.

I give it the sight of us choosing.

And if the world wants to call it worship⁠—