“I’ll stay.”
“Say you’ll never forget me.”
“I’ll never forget you.”
“Say you’ll keep me this time.”
Her breath stumbles.
But she says it.
“I’ll keep you.”
The words lock something inside me. Something sharp. Something soft. Something that hasn’t breathed in years.
I crush my mouth to hers, desperate, savage, breaking apart at the seams.
Her hands clutch my shirt like she’s anchoring herself to me. Like she’s afraid I’ll vanish too. Like she realises we are both ghosts in this room.
She should be.
Because I don’t know if I’m here. I don’t know if I’ve ever been here. I don’t know if I’m the one who stayed or the one who escaped.
But I know I won’t let her leave me again. Even if she already did. Even if we’ve done this a thousand times before. Even if I’m the one who walked out and left her with the ghost of me.
I’ll keep her this time.
I’ll lock her so tight she’ll forget what it feels like to breathe without me. I’ll make my heartbeat her only clock.
I’ll keep her.
Even if I have to break her to do it.
Chapter 6
RAVEN
The chain drags when I shift, the cold biting into the raw skin around my ankle where the cuff never loosens. The metallic rattle sounds like a clock ticking down in the hollow silence of the house, a heavy, rhythmic rasp against the industrial floorboards.
Damien’s breath still clings to my skin, humid and desperate, smelling of salt and the iron-scent of a storm that hasn’t broken yet. His hands still haven’t let me go; they are iron bands around my waist, anchoring me to his lap as if he can physically stop the world from spinning. But the words he said—the jagged shards of a past I’ve spent ten years scrubbing from my subconscious—the things he thinks I remember—the things I might actually remember—won’t stop echoing.
The quiet place. The chapel. The door that never closed. The promise I don’t remember making.
The air in the room feels thick, saturated with the smell of ozone from the flickering surveillance monitors. Did I leave him? Did I truly walk through a door and let it latch behind me,leaving a piece of myself to rot in the dark? Did I forget him? Or is he building memories for me to step into, constructing a haunt out of old shadows and blue light just to keep me from running? I don’t know anymore.
The walls of the room seem to shrink, the stacks of servers and tangled black wires closing in like the pews of a cathedral. And I think I want to stay here anyway. Even if the chain’s too tight, biting into the tendon until I can’t feel my foot. Even if the scar on my ribs burns under his touch, a phantom heat rising from the marrow. Even if some part of me is whispering that I’ve already been here before, that this cage is just the ending to a story I started a decade ago.
The monitor buzzes, a sharp, electric hum that vibrates in the back of my skull. Damien’s grip on me hardens, his knuckles ivory-white against the dark fabric of my clothes. The chain rattles as he drags me toward the surveillance room, his steps sharp, fast, frantic—the sound of a man who knows the walls are listening.
The screen flickers. A seizure of white static, then a void of black.
A new message. Typed live. Character by character, bleeding onto the screen right in front of us.
Good morning, little boy.
You’ve been keeping her quiet.
How sweet.
