Page 55

The words sink slow and heavy.

I sob once—ugly and broken—because my sister’s voice was never here, because my body betrayed me, because I almost stepped over the fence and handed myself to them.

Malek releases me abruptly.

“Stay back.”

He moves like the kill already happened in his head—fast, efficient, terrifyingly calm. The knife flashes. Once. Twice. The Gospel man convulses, then Malek guts him with brutal certainty.

Not for strategy.

Not for protection.

Because I believed the lie.

We leave the body where it cools.

The walk back is silent—the kind of silence that follows a scream when the world doesn’t know how to breathe again. The light feels too bright. The air too heavy.

Malek walks a half-step ahead of me, blade dark in his hand. He doesn’t look back.

Shadow presses against my leg every few steps like he’s checking I’m still real.

The fever hums under my ribs—thick, insistent. Cass’s voice still echoes faintly in my head, and that’s what hurts the most.

My foot slips on a root. I lurch.

Malek’s arm shoots out, catching my elbow, steadying me. The moment I’m upright, he jerks his hand back like I burned him.

We keep walking.

Malek points at the kitchen table without looking at me.

“Sit.”

My legs shake as I lower myself into the chair. The wood is cold and solid, but the room feels too bright, too open—like it’s stepped back to watch.

Malek goes to the sink.

He washes his hands slowly. Thoroughly. The water runs pink, then red, then clears. His shoulders rise and fall in a tight rhythm, breath roughening the longer he scrubs.

He braces both hands on the counter. Water drips from his wrists.

A beat.

Then he yanks his blood-soaked shirt over his head and lets it fall.

It hits the floor wet.

My breath catches.

His back is a ledger of violence—scars layered over scars, burns braided into old wounds, bullet marks puckered like dying stars. A body shaped by survival and something worse. By hands that carved scripture into flesh and called it faith.

No wonder he flinches from touch. All it ever taught him was to endure.

He scrubs his arms and face with a towel, jaw locked tight. He’s not calming down. He’s holding himself together. When he turns, it’s like that’s the only thing keeping him upright.

“What the hell was that?” His voice is low. Controlled. “Do you have a death wish?”