Page 48

“You survived the end of everything,” I whisper. “I’m trying to survive you.”

His gaze drops to where my finger touches him, voice lowering into something dangerous. “You asked for this.”

“I did.” My voice comes out raw. “But I didn’t ask you to break me and pretend it was teaching.”

“Throwing me to the Hollowborn?” I continue. “That wasn’t training. That was cruelty.” His silence lasted too long to be denial.

The bitterness coats my tongue. “The only training I’ve had is from Cass. And yeah, she’s brutal. But she’s not you. That’s why I asked you. Not for the pain. For the strength.”

I stagger.

The scratches along my calf throb, the skin around them flushed and swollen, heat radiating outward in slow, vicious waves. The burn isn’t fading. It’s spreading.

Malek’s eyes snap to my leg.

Recognition hardens his face.

“Selah.” His voice goes flat. Surgical. “What’s is it?”

“Nothing,” I lie automatically—and then the ground tilts.

Pain spears up my thigh so fast it steals sound out of my mouth. My vision doubles, the sky smearing sideways like wet paint.

I try to step back.

My body refuses.

My heel drags through dirt. My stomach lurches. Heat pours up my spine, fast and merciless, like the Hollowborn’s nails carried something that waited for this exact moment.

“Selah,” he barks.

I try to answer, but my throat refuses to work.

The fever hits like a wave breaking over my head—heat, pressure, noise collapsing inward. My breath stutters once, twice.

“Malek—” The word dies in my mouth.

I fold.

This time, he doesn’t hesitate.

Hands clamp onto my shoulders, bruising, solid, real.

“Look at me.”

I can’t. The world is too bright. Too loud. My heartbeat is everywhere at once.

His palm presses into the back of my neck—hot against hotter—and even the contact feels like a brand.

“You’re burning up,” he growls. He swears—low, vicious, not at me. At himself.

Then his arm hooks under my knees, the other bracing my back, and he lifts me like I weigh nothing.

I feel the flinch when my head falls against his chest—that instinctive recoil—but he doesn’t let go.

“Stay awake.”

Not a plea. A command sharpened by fear.