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I know that picture. Haven’t seen it in years. Didn’t even know it still existed.

Scarlett’s laugh flashes through me—the Ferris wheel jerking us skyward, lights blurring into stars—and then the present slams back into place so hard it hurts.

Why does the Iron Gospel have this?

They didn’t steal this to find me—they brought it to see if I’d come.

I glance at Malek.

Just long enough to see his face when recognition hits. He goes utterly still—not shock, not confusion. Knowing.

Something cold slides through my chest, sick and sharp all at once. He kept it. All these years. A piece of me I didn’t even realize I’d lost.

The kneeling thing chokes out a laugh.

“The crow,” he rasps. “The one The Wrath shelters. The one The Crownless keeps close.”

The way he says it is practiced—like he’s repeating something he was taught to believe. Malek exhales sharply beside me. Shadow snarls and lunges, but Malek whistles once—short, absolute—and Shadow drops instantly into a trembling crouch.

Malek moves.

There’s no warning. No escalation. No speech.

One long stride.

He grabs the acolyte by what’s left of his robes and slams his forehead into the frozen dirt. The crack rings sharp and final, blood spraying across the frost like spilled paint.

“Mal,” the man mutters, stepping back—not panicked, not surprised. Just clearing space. “Watch the⁠—”

“The Red Sermon died screaming scripture,” the acolyte gurgles, breath wet and reverent. “Now she will speak it⁠—”

Malek hauls him upright, expression unreadable, voice calm enough to terrify me.

“I protect what my dead leave behind,” he says. “And she’s not yours.”

He turns toward the trees. Toward the butcher block.

The acolyte’s feet drag uselessly through the dirt, carving crooked lines in the frost, his breath coming in broken, worshipful gasps, like this is exactly where he hoped to end.

Not rough. Not rushed. Careful in a way that still feels like a wall.

“You don’t want to see this,” he says.

I look at him properly for the first time—really look—and realize he’s not standing there because he thinks I’m fragile. His stance mirrors Malek’s without copying it: weight balanced, shoulders loose, attention split between me and the treeline like he’s already measured three ways this could go wrong.

But he doesn’t touch me.

Doesn’t reach.

Doesn’t put his hands on me and call it protection.

He just blocks the view and lets me decide whether I’ll move around him.

That unsettles me more than the warning. Because whoever this man is to Malek, he learned the same rules.

Just not the same cruelty.

“I don’t know you.” My voice stays low, but my body doesn’t move around him yet. I’m still deciding what kind of wall he is.