The room is empty.
No priest.
No surgeon.
No mirrors.
Just me.
And the leash still wrapped around my throat.
I look down.
The water is red now.
Still.
Sacred.
My reflection doesn’t flinch anymore.
She smiles.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
DAMIEN
She’s still sleeping—or pretending to. Either way, I don’t move. I just sit there on the edge of the bed, watching the rise and fall of her breath under the black sheets—my sheets—her throat wrapped in my collar, red wax still flaked across her skin like dried petals after war. She twitches in her sleep, not from fear but from memory—of me, of us, of the things I became to make her mine: the surgeon, the priest, the shadow that kissed her beneath the water. All of them still echo inside me like ghosts with her name on their tongues.
And now, I don’t know which version of me she dreams about—or which one she wants to wake up to. My hand hovers just above her hip, where the last brand healed clean, darker now against skin pale with surrender. I don’t touch it, because I don’t know what I’ll do if I do.
I gave her everything—my obsession, my discipline, my ruin—and she gave me hers in return: body, mind, soul. Now that she’s finally mine, I wonder what I’ll become if I stay—or worse, what she’ll become if I don’t.
She stirs again, eyes still closed, mouth parted the same way it was when I told her to say goodbye to her name—to who she was—and she did. Willingly. Begging. Smiling. I don’t think I’ve ever loved her more than I did in that moment, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid of what I’ve made.
She shifts again, slower this time—intentional. Her lashes flutter, lips part, her breath stutters when she realises I’m watching her. But she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t reach for the collar, doesn’t scramble for space between us. She just lies there—bare, beautiful, and ruined in the way only I understand.
“Are you awake?” I ask softly.
She nods once, and I don’t miss the way her thighs tense under the sheets—like she thinks I’m going to reach for her again. Like she wants me to.
I don’t.
Instead, I speak the question that’s been chewing through my ribs since she came for me. “Do you want me to stay?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She licks her lips, eyes still locked to mine. “Are you going to leave?”
The question isn’t fragile; it’s curious—like she wants to know what version of me she’s waking up to. And I don’t blame her.
I stare at her for a long moment, my pulse slow and measured, but everything in me is screaming because I don’t know how to be anything but hers now. I don’t know how to be with her as just one man, either.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and folding my hands. “I could walk away. You’re broken in all the right ways now. You wouldn’t chase me.”
She shifts onto her side. The sheets fall from her shoulder, exposing the collar, the bruises, the blood-washed aftermath of everything I did to her—everything she asked me for.
“No,” she says simply. “I wouldn’t chase you.” A pause. “I’d wait.”
My heart kicks once, hard. “Why?”
