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Barely.

I press my mouth to her temple, not a kiss, just needing to know she’s real, that she hasn’t burned away under my hands.

If she does, the world loses its last goddamn chance at my mercy.

And this time, when they call me Wrath, I’ll answer.

I stay there until her breathing evens out like her body decided the rules didn’t apply. Counting each rise like it’s a bargain, but also knowing this fucking fever is only getting started. Somewhere between breath eighty-seven and ninety, exhaustion drags my eyes shut.

I don’t remember letting them close.

I don’t hear her get up.

XIX

Is it really you?

“Selah.”

The voice slides through my sleep like fingers combing through my hair—slow, familiar—and my chest caves in before my eyes even open. Cass’s voice. Warm. Worn-in. Carrying the shape of safety my body still remembers even if my mind shouldn’t.

“Selah…come on, little bird.”

My eyes snap open, but the room doesn’t come with them all at once. It lags, like my vision is dragging itself out of thick water. The ceiling bends at the corners. The air presses heavy against my lungs, syrup-thick and too warm.

Shadow is pressed hard against my ribs, whining at a pitch that scrapes nerves raw—but the sound stretches thin, like it’s echoing down a long hallway instead of coming from right beside me.

Cass’s voice cuts clean through everything else.

“Cass?” My mouth forms the word late. It comes out dry. Cracked. Barely mine.

I stand, and the floor angles sharply, like it’s been set wrong. Heat rolls off my skin in slow waves. The fever never left. It just learned how to hide better.

The hallway feels too long when I step into it. The walls crowd closer than they should. Light leaks through the windows sharp and white, cutting the world into pieces instead of illuminating it.

“Selah…come outside.”

Her voice again. Closer.

It doesn’t warp the way Shadow’s whining does. It lands clean. Anchored. Real in a way everything else isn’t. The voice doesn’t come through the air. It comes through me.

Yes. She’s here.

The certainty settles heavy and sweet in my chest. Cass wouldn’t leave me fever-sick and shaking and half-burned out of my own skin. She wouldn’t leave me after the barn.

I limp through the house calling her name. My voice sounds wrong—too slow, like it arrives after the moment already passed—but I don’t need an answer. I can feel her the way you feel a storm before it breaks.

Morning light hits me too hard when I step onto the porch, bleaching the yard flat and bright like a photograph left out in the sun. The air sparkles at the edges. Colors sharpen until they almost hum.

Shadow growls low behind me, the sound bending until it barely resembles a warning.

She’s here.

I know she’s here.

The fever pulses hotter under my ribs. My skin feels too tight. Memory bleeds into now—Cass laughing on the hood of the truck, Cass yelling my name through the trees, Cass’s hand on my shoulder telling me to breathe.

“Cass?” My breath shakes. “Where are you?”