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“She’s a target,” Cass snaps back. “Same as us. You think the Hollowborn cares if she still sleeps with the damn window cracked when it storms? You think the Iron Gospel cares if she knows when to pick tomatoes from the garden—or that she still believes it matters?”

Her mouth twists.

“They notice people like that first.”

Cass doesn’t understand. Or maybe she does, and that’s why she hates it—why she hates that I still look for something worth saving in a world that’s already chosen what it wants us to become.

“Both of you, stop.” My voice comes out softer than I mean it to, but it slices the air enough.

I’m tired. Tired of being the battlefield between them.

“She’s mad because I hesitated,” I say, voice low. “She's right.”

I drag in a breath that burns all the way down. “I thought…” My gaze shifts to Cass, waiting to see if she’ll flinch. “I thought maybe there was still a piece of Ms. Cooper in there. Somewhere.”

The truth tastes bitter. “I just didn’t want to believe she was gone.”

The silence is sharp enough to bleed on. Cass’s jaw flexes. Scarlett’s face softens, and standing there between them I can’t tell which hurts worse—being wrong, or still hoping I’m not.

Scarlett’s eyes glisten, but her voice stays level. “There’s nothing left when they turn, Selah.”

She steps close enough I can smell soap on her skin, warmth cutting through the chill. Her hand finds my arm, gentle, thumb tracing slow circles like she can soothe the truth itself.

“Not their laugh,” she whispers. “Not their heart. Not the part that made them who they were. You keep hoping, baby, but hope doesn’t bring them back. All you’re standing in front of is what took them.”

Her fingers tighten once before she lets go. When her hand falls away, the cold rushes back in, and I’m left staring at the space where warmth used to live.

Later, after a hot shower—where I scrub Ms. Cooper from my skin—I feel almost human again. We eat around the table; nights like this are almost enough to make you forget the carnage outside. It’s strange how fast terror becomes routine—how death in the yard becomes dinner in the kitchen.

“Which one was this?” Cass mumbles around a mouthful of drumstick. “Cluck Norris?”

“The fact you want to know is just morbid,” I mutter.

She points the greasy leg at me like a weapon. “Hey! Don’t start with me. You two are the ones who name them like barnyard celebrities.”

I huff a laugh, then bite into corn on the cob. The butter runs down my thumb, the taste so warm and familiar it almost feels like before. For a minute, nobody speaks—just the scrape of forks, the creak of old wood, the quiet miracle of still being here.

Nights like this make you forget the world takes and takes. Makes you believe we get to choose who we are inside these four patched walls.

Maybe we do. Just not forever.

“You think she had anything left?”

The room stills.

Cass shakes her head. “Whatever was alive there died when she did.”

She leans back, eyes flicking to the dark window. “It isn’t safe over there. Smell alone’ll draw every damn thing for miles. You know how fast they move once they catch a whiff of meat.”

Her gaze cuts to me, sharp but not cruel. “It isn’t worth it, Selah. Nothing over there is.”

Cass says it like a vow. Like she’s already decided what she’d trade to keep it true. I hate how right she is.

Back then, we used to scavenge the neighbors’ places after they turned—or when they couldn’t take it anymore and took matters into their own hands. We told ourselves it wasn’t stealing if the dead didn’t need it.

That was before we learned how the Hollowborn lingered. How they haunted the places they fed—circling, waiting, gnawing down every last living thing.

Once Scarlett and Cass saw it for themselves, that was it. No more scavenging. No more creeping through empty houses with our hearts in our throats.