He crouches in front of me.
Not to comfort.
To confess.
“I thought maybe if I fucked you hard enough,” he says slowly, eyes like a storm, “if I kept you too full of me to remember—he wouldn’t come back.”
My throat tightens.
“And when that didn’t work?”
“I decided to kill him.”
It’s said without drama. Without emphasis.
Just truth.
Bare and brutal.
My breath catches.
“You tried.”
His jaw flexes.
“I thought I did.”
And there it is.
The final lie I didn’t know I was carrying.
He never told me that. Not in the chapel. Not when we ran. Not even when River stood right in front of us and said,remember me.
“I tried to burn him,” Damien says. “I thought he was in the room. I thought I sealed it. But I didn’t know he had a second exit. A secondface.”
I blink, trying to process that.
“A second face?”
Damien doesn’t answer right away.
Because it’s not literal.
It’s worse.
“He played me,” he admits. “Pretended to be a patient. A boy with catatonia and a burn scar on his shoulder. No speech. No reaction.”
My stomach twists.
“And?”
“I watched him for weeks. I thought maybe he was harmless. But then he smiled.”
The room stills.
“He smiled at you,” Damien says, voice like a blade through velvet. “While you were sleeping. And I knew.”
I can’t breathe.
