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I glance at the tin box again.

The relic sits there like it hasn’t ruined enough already.

I think about what it could make us if we let it. What it could turn us into if we used it the way the Gospel did, with power as permission and faith as a weapon and love twisted into a leash.

Then I look down at Malek.

At the scar I kissed like a vow. At the shadows under his eyes. At the way he watches me like I’m the only thing he believes in that hasn’t learned how to rot.

“I’m not looking for peace.”

His eyes stay on mine. “Then what are you looking for?”

I take his wrist and press my fingers to his pulse, because sometimes I need the simplest proof first. Skin. Heat. The steady, stubborn beat of him still here beneath my hand.

“I’m looking for the thing that’s left,” I whisper. “After the world takes everything.”

His throat works once, and I know he understands before I say the rest. Maybe he’s always understood. Maybe that’s why he’s been so afraid to let me choose it.

I lean in until my forehead touches his, until his breath warms my mouth and there’s nowhere for either of us to hide from the truth of it.

“I choose you,” I tell him. “Even knowing what it costs.”

For a second, he doesn’t move.

Then his hand lifts and finds my throat, not squeezing and not cruel, just there, thumb resting against my pulse like he needs to feel that I’m still here.

His voice comes rough and low. “Say it again.”

I don’t flinch. “I choose you, savage and all.”

Something changes in him then. It isn’t softness, not exactly, but some part of his body seems to ease by the smallest degree, like he’s been braced for an impact that doesn’t come.

His mouth brushes mine, warm and brief, a promise more than a kiss.

“Good,” he murmurs. “Then God help anything that tries to take you from me.”

Cass snores on in the next room, loud and alive, and the sound works through the wall in uneven little bursts. The farmhouse settles around us, old wood shifting in the dark, wind dragging softly at the windows, Shadow breathing beside the bed.

For a moment, I let myself believe in the quiet.

Then someone knocks on the front door.

Not loud. Not frantic. Just three slow taps that seem to move through the whole house.

Malek stills against me, but not in the way he does before a fight. This is quieter than that, stranger somehow, like whatever he hears at the door has reached a place in him violence never could. His mouth stops moving against mine, his breath catches, and the hand at my throat slips away so slowly it feels less like he’s letting go and more like something inside him has gone numb.

The warmth of him leaves my skin too fast.

Cass stops snoring.

Shadow rises from the floor, his nails clicking once against the boards before his growl starts low in his chest.

The knock comes again.

Three taps.

Same rhythm.