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“Selah.” My name comes out rough, almost ruined. “I won’t kneel for them again.” His gaze cuts to mine, and something terrible lives there. “And if I kneel for you, little crow, there won’t be enough of me left to stand.”

That’s the boundary.

I move.

Branches tear at my coat as I retreat, heart hammering, and Malek stays where he is—rooted, unyielding, crownless and furious—standing alone in the space where authority thought it belonged.

The woods don’t forget him.

They make room.

XXI

She chose the monster anyway

The pines swallow sound the deeper we move into them, as if the forest has learned to hold its breath around the kinds of things that bleed. Good for hunting. Bad for everything else.

Selah trails behind me, it’s been days since the fever broke, but the limp is still there. The Hollowborn tore into her leg badly enough that she still favors the left when the ground dips—a slight hitch, a ghost of pain—but she hides it well. Too well.

She thinks I don’t notice.

I notice everything about her. Her breathing. Her foot placement. The way she keeps her hatchet close enough that it taps her thigh like a heartbeat.

The way she keeps moving even when her leg should be slowing her down. That’s new.

And I don’t know if I should be proud of it or sickened by it.

Shadow ranges ahead, cutting through the trunks with the tight, tense energy of something that knows a storm is close. His tail is up, stiff, not wagging. He smells what I scented two miles back.

Gospel movement.

“Three of them,” I murmur, crouching near a snapped branch. “Two healthy. One injured.”

Selah shifts her weight from her bad leg to her good one—subtle, almost invisible—but I see every flicker of discomfort she tries to bury. She doesn’t ask how I know. She’s learning the lessons no one should have to learn. Lessons that made me what I am.

Wind threads through the needles, carrying the faintest trace of incense ash. The taste of ritual. My jaw clenches. Scripture dust. Zealots have been whispering prayers into the dark again. Preparing. Or hunting.

For me.

For her.

Either way, someone bleeds before nightfall.

I move faster. Selah keeps up, even when her limp sharpens for a beat on uneven ground. She bites it down, breath steady, and doesn’t fall behind.

There’s a strip of cloth snagged on a branch ahead—white once, now stained with dirt and old sweat. She stops to look at the scripture smeared across it. Her pulse jumps in her throat.

I look away before she notices. She doesn’t need to know that verse is the same one they carved into me. Not today.

Shadow freezes.

I stop instantly.

Selah takes a heartbeat longer to react. The hesitation hits her bad leg first—the slight buckle she catches before it shows. Her breath fogs in the cold. Her fingers slide toward the hatchet. Good. Instinct is catching. Faster than I expected.

One rushes. The other two hold back to watch. To report.

Over my shoulder, Selah’s gaze snaps past me—she sees the movement before I turn.