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Lucas’s head tilts slightly. Not accusation. Accounting.

“Before Selah knew,” he says.

“Before anyone could prove it,” I answer.

That’s one of the holes I’ve been living with, and I don’t bother dressing it up.

“They were already testing Selah’s perimeter,” I continue. “Not with Hollowborn. With watchers. Scripture markers shifted. Supply runs failed only where she traveled. That pattern doesn’t form by accident.”

Lucas straightens slowly. “So Cass noticed.”

“She always does.”

Cass sees seams. Cass asks why. Cass doesn’t know how to leave well enough alone when something smells wrong.

“I told her what it would cost if she kept digging,” I say. “Told her the Gospel doesn’t warn twice. Told her if she felt watched, it was already too late to pretend she wasn’t.”

“And she didn’t stop,” Lucas says.

“No.”

Because Crow women don’t stop, they decide.

“She thought she could stay ahead of it,” I go on. “Thought distance and silence would protect Selah.”

Lucas’s mouth tightens. “And the Gospel let her think that.”

“Yes.”

That’s the part people miss. The Gospel doesn’t rush what it intends to sanctify.

“They didn’t want Cass,” I say. “They wanted the part of Selah that would come running when she screamed.”

Lucas exhales slowly. “A lever.”

“A blade,” I correct. “Levers can be put down.”

Outside, the rain has thinned to a needle-fine fall—just enough to soak everything through without washing anything clean.

“And the radio?” Lucas asks. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“No,” I agree. “It was deliberate.”

I close my eyes.

Selah’s scream hits me again—not sound, not memory, but pressure. Command. Something that bent the woods without asking permission.

“They wanted Selah to run.” My eyes track the yard without meaning to—porch, fence, treeline, every place I failed to keep invisible. “Out of the house. Past the markers. Into open ground.”

“And instead?”

“She screamed.”

Lucas lets out a low whistle despite himself. “Let me guess? The Hollowborn didn’t come.”

“No.”

They should have. Every rule says they should have. Instead, the forest held like it was waiting for permission.