“You still think this is about him,” I say softly, the modulator making my voice a hollow rasp. “You think the monster you remember is the one who came back for you.”
She doesn’t reply, but I see the muscle tick in her jaw. Her legs are trembling, still shaky from the sedative I gave her, from the way I used her body to write scripture neither of us can erase.
“You’re wrong,” she says, but the words crack down the middle.
I smile. Just a little. Lies always taste better when they’re whispered with conviction. “I’m the only one who’s ever truly seen you. Evenhedoesn’t know what you are. But I do. I always have.”
She shudders—not from fear, but from the sick twist of recognition she doesn’t want to name. Deep down, she knows I’m not lying. She just doesn’t remember why.
I hear him before I see him. The heavy creak of the chapel door. The sharp, rhythmic echo of a boot over stone.
I smile. It was always going to end this way.
Raven freezes, her wide, frightened eyes snapping toward the darkness like she’s caught between two different devils. I don’t move. I let him come. I let the chaos catch up.
Damien bursts through the shadows, gun drawn, face wild. He’s soaked to the bone from the rain, looking like something unhinged and starving. When his gaze lands on me, he stops breathing.
“Get the fuck away from her.” His voice is a razor-edge across the nave.
Raven scrambles behind an altar column, her hand pressed to her chest. I raise my hands slowly. Mocking. Casual.
“Relax,” I murmur. “I didn’t break her. Yet.”
Damien lunges. I brace for the impact, but he doesn’t tackle me. He reaches out and rips the hood back.
The dusty, golden light of the remaining candles hits my face for the first time in years. The stained glass throws blood-red streaks across my mouth. Damien staggers back a half-step, his silence louder than a gunshot.
Raven stares. Her lips part. She takes a trembling step forward, trying to make the ghost align with the man. She looks at my mouth. My eyes. The scar just beneath my jaw.
And then?—
“…River?”
The name is a soft, disbelieving exhale.
And the look on Damien’s face? Priceless. He didn’t just lose her; he realised he never really had her to begin with.
Chapter 28
RAVEN
It takes a second for my brain to catch up with what I’m seeing. Another second to remember how to breathe.
And a third to realise that every memory I’ve used to survive the last decade has just been lit on fire.
Because when the hood drops—when the shadows peel back and the monster finally has a face—it’s not what I expected. It’s worse.
It’s him.
He isn’t the priest returned from the grave. He isn’t some ghost from Damien’s past. He isn’t a stranger with a grudge. He is a boy I once knew and forced myself to forget, and he’s not a boy anymore. He’s a living sin carved into bone and breath.
God, how does he look like that?
His hair is dark—thick, messy, falling over his brow as if it’s never known a gentle touch. His cheekbones are blades, and his mouth is a crooked, beautiful ruin that looks like it was made for secrets. His jaw is shadowed with a dark rasp of stubble, and hiseyes… they’re ice cut from a glacier. Electric, lethal, and staring straight through me as if he’s been watching me sleep for years.
Because maybe he has. Maybe he never stopped.
My throat hitches. My knees threaten to turn to water. He’s taller than Damien, leaner—his body composed of jagged lines and a predatory stillness, wrapped in the same black hoodie that has haunted my nightmares. But there’s no mask now. Just a man who looks at me like I’m a debt he’s finally come to collect.
