Do you accept the baptism of sin?
It isn’t a thought. It’s an echo. The kind that clings to bone after a confession you never finished. I freeze, my pulse slowing until the only thing I can hear is that voice—the Priest’s—sliding through the cracks of memory I thought I’d sealed shut.
She doesn’t remember him. She doesn’t remember what he made her say, or how the water burned when he lowered her beneath it. But I do. Every word. Every tremor that tore through her when she looked at me and saw something holy where there should have been a monster.
My hand finds my throat. The skin there is smooth now, but I can still feel where his fingers once pressed, where faith and violence shared the same breath. I wonder if he ever really left—or if he’s just been waiting for her to remember him. For both of us to.
Because I do. God help me, I do.
Every drop of blood that touched her lips. Every whispered vow. Every time she said my name like it meant absolution. She’s forgotten it—forgottenhim—but I haven’t. I can’t. The memory lives beneath my skin, coiled tight as wire, humming with the weight of what we were before she ever knew my face.
And now, as I stare at the black screen where her image should be, the question I’ve avoided all night crawls back to life.
What if it isn’t someone new reaching for her?
What if the one who watched her first—the one who blessed us both in the dark—isn’t gone at all?
What if the Priest never died?
What if he’s been here the whole time, waiting inside the quiet, reminding me that sin doesn’t end just because you rename it love?
The thought cuts through the stillness, clean and cold. I press my thumb against the edge of my tattoo until the skin blanches, whispering to the dark like it might answer.
Because maybe he’s right.
Maybe this isn’t over.
Maybe the real haunting hasn’t even begun.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
RAVEN
Anote is folded between the pages of a book I’ve never read. Spine cracked once, never opened again. It’s buried on the shelf behind my sweaters now, shoved into the corner like hiding it can make it untrue.
But it still echoes.
The sentence. The implication.
Do you remember what he took from you that night in the chapel?
My skin itches.
Not the kind you can scratch.
The kind that starts under your ribs and blooms behind your eyes when the walls get too quiet and you realise you’re not alone. That you never were.
Damien’s pretending not to notice.
He’s good at that. At restraint. At watching me without letting it show. But I can feel it—the tension in his shoulders. Theway he only pretends to type. How his eyes flick toward the hall every time I move.
He knows something’s changed.
I hate how fast he notices me.
I hate how badly I want him to.
Because the truth is, I don’t feel like myself anymore.
