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Nathaniel inhales sharply.

I turn toward him.

His face has gone white.

Not pale.

White.

Almost as if his blood has been drained.

“Wait a second,” he says. He steps toward her. “He’s dead?”

She doesn’t answer.

He tightens his hand around the shovel handle. “Hazel.”

Hazel opens her eyes. They shine with tears she refuses to let fall. For a moment, she looks at Nathaniel in a way I don’t know how to name.

Not like a mother.

Not exactly.

But like a woman looking at the son of the man who destroyed her.

Like she wants to hate him.

But she can’t.

Like some damaged part of her has been waiting years for one of Arthur Vexley’s children to ask the right question.

Then something inside her closes.

I see it happen.

The grief pulls back. The fear seals over. The woman who led us through tunnels and forest paths vanishes.

She’s back to quiet Hazel. Obedient Hazel. Hazel who knows too much and says too little because silence has kept her alive.

“There’s so much about your father you don’t know,” she says.

Nathaniel stares at her. “So enlighten me.”

“I can’t.” Hazel looks toward the trees. “You think you understand Arthur because he raised you. Because he trained you. Because he let you stand close enough to see the damage he did.”

“Hazel—”

“But proximity doesn’t show you everything,” she says. “Sometimes the people closest to a monster only see the face he chooses for them. Neither you nor your brothers know all of it.”

Nate goes very still and narrows his eyes. “Cain knows.”

Hazel shakes her head. “Not even Cain.”

Nathaniel’s expression hardens. “You’re lying.”

“I wish I were.”

“You expect me to believe Cain doesn’t know something important about my father?”