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I know because his body moves before he decides to let it.

One step—too fast, too instinctive—boots scraping dirt as he catches himself halfway through. His shoulders jerk like he’s been struck. His hands flex once, empty, furious.

“No,” he says under his breath. Not pleading. Refusing. “You don’t get to stand behind her.”

The thing behind me breathes—slow, patient, entitled. Malek steps again. This time he doesn’t stop himself. A sound gathers behind me.

Not a voice. The shape of one.

Air pulls tight, vibrating like a throat preparing to form a word that’s been spoken for generations. My ears ring. My vision swims.

The sound never finishes.

It dies in the space between Malek’s shoulders—cut clean, like the air itself refuses to carry it past him.

Whatever the Gospel meant to say does not survive his refusal.

He moves into my space, close enough that his presence cuts off the cold at my back. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t need to. His body becomes the line.

I feel it then—not protection.

Territory.

“I am not yours.” His voice comes low, stripped of everything but refusal. “And I don’t answer to the High Revelation.”

The words feel older than language. Like something he ripped out of his own chest and never put back.

The presence tightens. The pressure at my spine sharpens, testing.

Malek laughs once—low, humorless.

“That’s your mistake.” His voice comes quiet, stripped clean of mercy. “You think I still belong to anything that kneels.”

He steps sideways, deliberately placing himself between me and the thing in the trees. Not offering himself. Daring it.

The air trembles.

The Iron Gospel shape leans forward. A sleeve brushes my coat.

Malek reacts instantly.

He grips the cuff of my sleeve—fabric only, never skin—and yanks me backward a single step, violent and precise, putting me fully behind him.

“Stay,” he orders. Not to me. To the world.

His marked arm lifts slowly, scars catching the thin light—not in surrender, not in prayer, but as proof. As evidence of what survived them.

“You want a crown?” he says to the trees, voice steady, lethal. “You’ll have to kill what you couldn’t finish.”

The presence recoils—not fleeing, not gone—but retreating just enough to reassess. The woods breathe again, uncertain now.

Malek doesn’t follow it.

He releases my sleeve. The fabric is stretched thin where his fingers were. So is the space around him.

“Go,” he says, not looking back. “Before I stop caring about restraint.”

I hesitate. His shoulders tense.