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Then Cass leans in, close enough that I smell dirt and smoke and grief.

“Listen close, Crownless Wrath,” she whispers. Each word is precise. “She will bring you to your knees.”

Cass’s eyes flash toward the window again.

“Because you didn’t just take Scarlett.” Her voice drops to a blade. “You stole her from Selah.”

Not stole.

Exposed.

Which is worse, I fucking know that.

The scar along my temple burns at the conviction in her voice. I don’t touch it. I don’t deny it.

She steps back.

And she’s gone—down the steps, across the yard, moving fast and quiet like the world is already hunting her.

I watch until the trees take her. Then I turn toward the house.

Because if Cass doesn’t come back—Selah will still be here when the sun rises.

And I’ll be the one standing between her and what I started.

Even if she learns my name is the reason it came.

Even if she never forgives me for surviving it.

IX

Cold Water Mercy

The days don’t pass so much as smear together, soft and colorless, like time itself has lost its grip. I can’t remember when I last sat up. Or when the light crossed the wall and moved on without me. Shadow noses at my hand until the effort costs him too much and he curls against my legs, warm and patient in a way I don’t deserve. The world keeps turning. I stay where I am.

My stomach twists, hollow and aching, but the hunger never reaches my mouth. The pain in my body pulses somewhere far away, dulled, distant, like it belongs to another skin. Everything inside me feels unplugged, as if something vital was cut and never reattached.

I don’t leave the blankets. I don’t look toward the door. I don’t look at the space where Cass should be, because the second I do my chest tightens so hard it feels like it might split. Breathing turns into work—thin, careful pulls of air that scrape on the way in and burn on the way out.

It feels dangerous to exist like this, suspended between breaths, between moments—like if I let myself notice how alone I am, the weight of it will finally finish what the world started.

So I stay here, still and silent, letting the hours bleed into each other until they stop meaning anything at all.

Malek sits through it all. Silent. Unmoving. A presence I can’t escape.

Just…waiting.

He fills the corner chair, too big for the room, all that ruined muscle folded forward with his elbows on his knees. His head stays bowed, shadows cutting his face into pieces, that mismatched stare never leaving me—steady, unblinking, like he’s counting something I can’t see.

Maybe waiting to see if I’ll break.

Maybe standing guard against it.

There are moments—quiet, hollow ones—when the thought slips in without warning—not loud, not dramatic. Just there. The idea of not getting up again. Of letting the silence finish what it started. It feels simple in a way nothing else does. Simpler than opening my eyes and carrying this ache back into my body, over and over, every morning.

But then the memories claw back in.

Cass and Scarlett screaming at each other over the dumbest shit. Cass could start a war over anything—even over which hero was hotter, Batman or Thor. She always picked Thor just to piss Scarlett off.