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“You think I don’t know?” she snaps. “You’ve hated her for six years because Carter died and she didn’t. So you evened it.”

She points at the grave.

“You took the last soft thing she had left and called it fate.”

“Don’t say his name.”

It rips out of me before I can sand it down. My scars burn like they remember hands and knives and hymns.

Cass steps closer anyway. Brave. Stupid. Broken.

“If I wanted payment,” I say, low, “this yard would be full of graves.”

Her mouth tightens. She believes me. That’s the worst part.

Silence drops. Heavy. The windmill groans once in the distance, slow and tired.

Cass’s eyes flick—past me, toward the house. Toward Selah’s window.

Her voice goes quieter. Meaner.

“That’s exactly what you’ll pray for,” she says, “the second she finds out what you did.”

I don’t look back.

Because I already know she heard her sister say she couldn’t stand to look at her anymore.

Cass takes a breath like she’s about to say something she can’t put down again. Then she doesn’t, she squares her shoulders.

“I’m going,” she says.

“To run?” I ask.

Her gaze cuts. “To find out why they came.”

Good. There it is. The spine.

“If you pull Gospel threads,” I say, “they pull back.”

Cass’s smile is all teeth and grief. “Let them.”

I step into her space, close enough that she has to listen.

“They don’t take prisoners for mercy.”

“I don’t need mercy.”

“You’re not the one they’ll use,” I say. “You’re the lever.”

Cass stills. Just a fraction.

Because she knows exactly what that means.

“They’ll take you,” I continue, “to move Selah. To move me.”

Cass’s breath shakes, but she lifts her chin anyway—stubborn, vicious, brave as sin.

“And if I stay,” she says, voice breaking on the edge, “I’ll turn on her. I can’t—” She swallows hard.