River doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t need to. “I told her the truth.”
“You don’t know what that is.” Damien’s voice is low, caged.
“You don’t remember her,” River replies softly, almost pitying. “Not the way I do.”
“I remember enough to kill you.”
River finally turns. The world tilts as the two of them lock eyes. They look nothing alike, but the recognition between them is instant. It isn’t brotherhood. It’s two predators meeting again in the same cage they grew up in.
“You thought it was the priest, didn’t you?” River says, his voice eerily calm. “That’s who you were chasing. The one sending the tapes. The Polaroids. You thought you were fighting a ghost.”
Damien’s silence is a confession.
River’s smile is soft and void of humanity. “He didn’t want her. I did.”
The room sways. I can’t tell whose heartbeat is slamming in my ears—mine, Damien’s, or his.
“I watched her for years,” River murmurs. “You weren’t the only one who saw her first.”
Damien lunges.
I scream his name, but it’s too late. They crash into each other like hell finally ripped open. It’s a storm of fists and obsession—no tactics, just a decade of boiled rage.
“Stop!” I cry out, but I’m frozen.
There’s blood on the floor. A sound—a choke, or a laugh. River hits the stone wall hard, but he’s laughing. He’s laughing as if he’s missed the pain.
“You left her!” River spits, wiping blood from his mouth. “You left her in that house. You let the priest take her. You think you saved her? You think shechoseyou?” He grins, red-toothed and manic. “I was the one who stayed.”
Damien freezes. I do, too. Something in the air cracks.
“…It was you in the closet,” Damien whispers, his voice colder than I’ve ever heard it.
River looks at me. No words. Just a long, deliberate look that pulls the veil back all the way.
The moths. The whisper. The hand on my mouth telling me not to make a sound while the priest paced outside the door. It wasn’t the priest. It wasn’t Damien. It was him.
River.
My knees finally give out. Damien catches me before I hit the stone, one arm locking around my waist, pulling me against his wet, shivering heat.
But I’m not looking at Damien. I’m looking at River.
And for the first time, I see the boy behind the monster. He’s smiling as if he’s been waiting a lifetime for me to see him.
“I told you,” he whispers. “You never forgot me.”
Chapter 29
RIVER
She looked at me. Finally.
All those years in the dark, and it only took a single second of eye contact to make every silent hour worth it. I used to wonder if the closet would swallow me whole. If the priest would find me. If she’d hear my ragged breath behind the coats and cry out. But she didn’t. She just stood there—small, shaking, and silent—like we shared a secret neither of us was old enough to understand.
She doesn’t even know what she gave me that day. A purpose. A name. A reason to outlast the hell we were both drowning in.
And now? Now she looks at me like she’s finally seen the sun. Something behind her ribs remembers me—not fully, not yet—but it’s enough to feed the hunger I’ve been nursing like a religion.
