I lean back against the chapel wall, blood still hot on my lip. My tongue darts out to taste it like a drop of communion wine. Across the room, Damien’s breath is a ragged, broken thing, his chest heaving as if he’s trying to keep his soul from escaping. Hewants to come for me again. I can see it in the way his knuckles are split.
But he won’t. Not tonight. Not now that he knows he’s not the only one who bleeds for her.
“She remembers,” I murmur, watching the way Raven instinctively curls into his side even while her eyes stay locked on mine. “Maybe not everything. But enough.”
“Stay away from her,” Damien says. The words are low, venomous, a predator marking territory that was never his to keep.
“She’s not yours.” I smile slowly, letting the jagged edges of my teeth show. “You just borrowed her while I healed.”
He moves. Fast. But I’ve spent a decade training for this exact collision. The blade is at his throat before he can even blink. It’s a small thing—pretty, old, and sharp enough to split a hair. The same one I used to cut out the priest’s tongue before I let the fire take him.
Damien doesn’t flinch. He just stares at me with those eyes that think they’ve seen the worst of the world. He’s wrong.
“I will kill you,” he says.
“You already tried,” I whisper, leaning in until the blade kisses his skin. “Didn’t stick.”
I step closer, letting the metal bite just enough to draw a bead of red. “Tell me something, Damien,” I ask softly. “Did she beg for you the way she used to pray for me?”
He growls—a deep, visceral sound that satisfies something dark in my gut. It’s glorious. That little flicker of jealousy. That twist of possessiveness. We’re both gods in this ruined temple, and she is the only altar that matters.
I shift my gaze to her, speaking only to her now.
“They’ll lie to you, little doll,” I say, my voice smoothing into something reverent. “They’ll try to twist your memories into something clean, something manageable. But I was there. In thedark. When you cried. When he hurt you. When you curled into yourself and whispered for someone—anyone—to save you.”
I tap the flat of the blade to my own chest, right over my heart.
“It was me.”
Her lips part, a soft exhale of disbelief. Damien reaches for her, a protective reflex, but I shake my head slowly. The power has shifted. The vacuum of the past is pulling us all in.
“She gets to decide,” I say.
A beat. A breath. The chapel feels like it’s holding its collective breath.
I sheath the blade with a sharpclackand step back into the shadows, the stained glass light washing over me in shades of martyr-red and deep violet. I smile as I disappear into the gloom I was born in.
Because I know something they don’t. This isn’t the climax. This is just the invitation. And I’ve waited long enough to dance.
Chapter 30
DAMIEN
The door doesn’t slam.
That’s what fucks me up the most. He slips out like a shadow, like he’s still that fucking boy in the corner of the chapel, sitting so still no one noticed him but her. And me. I noticed. I just didn’t understand—not back then. Not until tonight, when the hood came off and his name hit the air like a detonator.
River.
My chest still feels like it’s caving in around the syllables. He didn’t scream. Didn’t threaten. Didn’t beg. He looked at her like she was the last goddamn thing on Earth worth burning for. And I know that look too well. Because it’s mine.
He said it without saying it: She was always his.
I pace the length of the chapel, knuckles bleeding from the wall I punched when he vanished into the dark. He didn’t run. No. Heleft. Like he was in control. Like he was just biding his time until she remembered everything.
And the way she said his name? Soft. Like it hurt. Like it was branded somewhere beneath her skin.
“Say it again,” I’d growled at her the moment he was gone. And she had. Quietly.“River.”And I fucking shattered. Because now I see it. The cracks in the timeline. The parts of her past she couldn’t piece together. The ones I thought were mine to unravel—but he was already there. Before me. Before the priest. Before any of it.
