I drag a hand over my jaw, my pulse still jerking with a rage I can’t cage. He watched her. He saved her? No. He stole her before I even got the chance. And that’s what twists the knife—because I thought I was the one. The shadow behind her. The reason she was alive.
But now there’s this new version of the story. One that smells like blood and moths and half-remembered prayers from a broken girl in a pew. I turn toward her slowly. She’s still standing where he left her.
“I knew him,” she whispers.
I nod once. “You did.”
“Why don’t I remember more?”
I don’t have the answer. This isn’t just her memory failing; it’s her mind protecting her from something older. Something buried. But I don’t get to comfort her right now. All I can see ishim, with her name in his mouth and that vow in his eyes.
I step closer, enough that she flinches. “Don’t say his name again.”
“Why?”
“Because it does something to you.”
And I can’t handle that. Not when I saw the way her body leaned forward, like she was tethered to him and didn’t know why. She has to walk into that fire on her own. And then? When she comes back to me—I’ll burn with her. Or burn everything else down first.
I don’t speak again. Not yet. She’s looking at the door like she wants him to come back through it.
I step between her and that exit, blocking her view. I make sure when she looks up, it’s me she sees. Not him.
“You’re shaking.”
“No, I’m not.”
She is. Tiny, involuntary tremors. She wraps her arms around her stomach like she can hold it all in.
“You need to sit down.”
“No. Because if I sit down, I’ll fall apart.”
I nod. I can respect that. But then she says it again. Softer.“River.”
I flinch like she slapped me. She doesn’t see it, or she doesn’t care. The ghost is in her voice now. She takes a step toward the door, and I catch her wrist. Her skin is ice; her pulse is fucking frantic.
“You don’t remember him,” I murmur. “Not really.”
Her chin lifts like a dare. “Then why does it feel like I do?”
That’s the part that’s going to drive me insane. I want to be the first. I want to be the only. But I was never the first. I was just the one who stayed long enough to bleed.
“He’s not what you think.”
“You don’t even know what I think.”
I lean in, my voice dropping to a whisper that scrapes bone. “He’s the reason you don’t sleep through the night.”
She swallows hard. “I thought that was you.”
It guts me. Cuts clean through the parts of me still trying to be enough. I let go of her wrist. “Whatever he was to you, Raven… he doesn’t get to be it again.”
She nods, but her eyes are bleeding. Like she’s not sure which ghost to follow anymore.
She nods, but it’s for survival, not agreement. She locks something away behind her eyes, and I know she’s already gonesomewhere I can’t follow. The chapel feels smaller now, the walls leaning in.
“You’re not going after him,” I say.
