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I try.

Black spots bloom anyway, swallowing the edges of my vision. The heat climbs higher, devouring everything.

My fingers curl weakly into his shirt.

Then slip.

The last thing I feel is the tremor in his arms—the one he can’t hide—as he carries me like I might disappear if he loosens his grip.

I draw one more breath—slow, careful, like it might not belong to me—and then the night tilts.

XVIII

Feverish

Her fever has burned through the entire goddamn night.

Every breath she drags in feels borrowed. Every breath she lets out feels stolen. I sit rigid in the old rocking chair beside Cass’s bed—Selah curled in it like a bundle of fire and agony—counting the rise and fall of her chest with the same fear I used to count breaths when the Red Sermon tried to reshape me in broken vows and crazed hymns.

The house creaks around us, settling under the weight of ghosts.

Scarlett’s ghost.

Carter’s ghost.

Cass’s, if she doesn’t come back.

Mine, if Selah doesn’t make it.

Sometimes Selah whimpers. Sometimes she twists the blankets like she’s fighting something in her dreams. Sometimes she whispers Scarlett’s name, soft and devastated, and that’s the moment I break.

When she says it again, barely above a breath, I’m already on my feet. The bowl of water on the bedside table sloshes as I grab it. My fingers tremble—an old instinct, one I spent years beating out of myself—and I hate that it’s back just because she’s hurting.

I dip the rag and wipe the sweat from her brow. Her skin is scorching. Fever heat radiates off her in waves, thick as smoke, clinging to my own skin like a warning.

She settles, breath easing just barely, and somehow that tiny bit of calm terrifies me more than the delirious thrashing.

Too still.

Too quiet.

The house is never quiet. Not when Cass lived here. Not when Scarlett hummed through the kitchen at dawn. Now it’s only quiet when something is wrong. The radio on the kitchen counter crackles once—then goes dead again.

I pace the room like a caged animal, boots thudding softly on the worn planks. The floorboards have grooves from Cass pacing the same way—her footfalls, her worry carved into wood. She paced this room when Scarlett was sick, when Selah was feverish at thirteen, when every time the Iron Gospel got too close to their backyard.

Now it’s my turn to wear the floor down.

A Hollowborn bite is certain death. But a scratch?

No one knows. The Gospel preached about it—claimed scratches were the will of God deciding who would “ascend.” I saw more men die of fever than transform, but the uncertainty? That’s the real cruelty.

Her leg will scar. The deeper gashes were already angry and inflamed before I stitched them, my hands slipping in her blood as I tried to piece her back together. The fine cuts will welt. The deepest ones will rope and twist into something brutal.

And she’ll carry them.

Because of me.

Shadow hasn’t left her feet. He’s curled there like a sentry, growling low whenever her body jerks or her breath catches. His tail thumps once whenever I pass too close—warning or comfort, I can’t tell which. His fur is matted with sweat from lying beside her fevered skin.