You always sat in the third pew. You used to hum when you thought no one could hear.
The note flutters in my hands as I read it. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. Because it’s true. I did hum — little melodies under my breath when I needed silence but couldn’t stand loneliness. I never told anyone. Damien couldn’t have known that. No one could have.
I shove the note into my coat pocket and stand too fast, my heart climbing into my throat. The floor creaks again — behind me this time — and I spin, eyes scanning the aisle, but there’s no one there. Only the warped shadows stretching toward the doors. The air smells wrong now, like dust and old wax and cedar — faint and misplaced, the kind of scent that belongs to someone else’s home.
My stomach twists. I start walking fast, pushing through the doors and out into the overgrown courtyard, gravel crunching under my boots as my shaking hands fumble for my phone. I call Damien.
It rings once. Twice.
“Raven?” His voice is alert, clipped.
“Don’t say anything,” I whisper. “Just listen.”
There’s silence on the line.
“I’m at the old academy chapel.”
A beat. Then his reply. “I know.”
I freeze. “What?”
“Your location pinged. I was about to call you.”
My mouth goes dry. “I found another note.”
“What does it say?”
I hesitate, my pulse too loud in my ears. “It’s… personal.”
His voice tightens. “You’re coming home. Now.”
“I don’t think?—”
“Now, Raven.”
I flinch. Because there’s something in his voice that isn’t anger, isn’t control — it’s fear. Real, heavy, unguarded fear.
I nod, even though he can’t see me, and I start to run. The courtyard blurs behind me. The gate rattles as I push through it, breath ragged, heart pounding. The note burns in my pocket, a pulse of its own. I don’t look back at the chapel, but I swear I can feel it — that hum rising again beneath my ribs, that sound I thought I’d imagined as a girl.
It follows me all the way home.
CHAPTER FORTY
DAMIEN
She lied. Not with words—with silence. She told me she needed air, but what she really needed was to go back. To the beginning. To the old chapel—the one she never mentioned but that I’d seen in files buried so deep I’d stopped myself from opening them. Until now.
Her location pinged five minutes ago. Then it went dark. She turned off the signal.
I’m already moving before the thought finishes forming. The gun slides into the back of my jeans. Gloves. Burner phone. The backup key to the secondary server vault in my coat pocket—not because I think I’ll need it, but because I know I will.
When she walks through the door, I’m waiting. She stops cold, hair tangled, eyes wide, jacket half-open, breathing like she ran the whole way here. But she isn’t alone. Not physically—her silence carries something else with it. Something clinging to her shoulders, her jaw, her stillness. I shut the door behind her and lock it. She flinches at the sound.
“Tell me what he left,” I say. Notif.What.
She doesn’t answer. I cross the room in three long strides and catch her wrist—not hard, just firm enough to stop the tremor. I don’t want her to feel pain. I want her to feel the truth.
“You thought I was the only one,” I whisper. “Didn’t you?”
