My knees hit the stone, the sound echoing sharp and humiliating. But it’s not the priest looking down at me. It’s Damien. And he looks wrecked.
His hand fists in my hair. “You’re shaking again.”
“I don’t know if it’s fear or memory.”
“It’s both,” he says, his thumb pressing under my chin. “That’s why it feels like drowning. You think you’re here because I told you to be. But you’re here because you chose to walk straight into my hands. That’s not obedience. That’s recognition.”
“What am I recognising?” I ask, my heart in my throat.
“Me,” he says. “And what you were willing to burn to survive.”
He drifts his fingers lower, over the waistband of my skirt. “I should ruin you right here. In front of everything you were taught to worship.”
“I want you to,” I whisper.
But then—a sound.
The rustle of paper. Soft. Intentional.
Damien stills. His entire posture shifts into something lethal.
“What was that?” I breathe.
He doesn’t answer. His eyes scan the pews, the altar, the pulpit. A candle snuffs out, the smoke curling in the gloom.
“Get up.”
I obey. He pulls me behind him, the glint of a blade appearing in his hand. We move toward the altar, and there it is. A single piece of paper, white and folded, nestled under the crucifix like a curse.
Damien picks it up. Unfolds it. His jaw clenches so hard I hear the grind of bone. He turns the page to face me. One line, scrawled in that familiar, jagged script:
“Did she tell you what she did to me, Damien? Or are you still pretending you were the only one he broke?”
My stomach drops into a void. Damien crumples the page with a violent force. He doesn’t look at me, but I see the realisation clicking into place in his eyes.
And I realise, with a sudden, sickening clarity, that the memory I just had was only the beginning.
Chapter 18
RAVEN
Idon’t move.
Not even when the heavy oak door slams shut, the sound echoing through the rafters like a gavel. Not even when the vibrations fade into a thick, suffocating silence and I’m still here—wrists burning against cold steel, thighs trembling, slick and open on the altar like something ruined and holy.
He left me.
He walked away when I was balanced on the razor-edge of something I can’t name—something that wasn’t just pleasure, wasn’t just pain. It felt like the brink of a scream I’ve been holding in since I was fifteen. Since before I ever knew his name.
I drag my wrists against the cuffs again. They jangle—a soft, melodic clinking of metal against stone, like a perverse church bell announcing my sin. The sound sends a shiver down my spine so sharp it borders on agony.
Because I liked it. God help me, I liked every second of it.
The control. The calculated cruelty. The way he worshipped me as if I were both the altar and the offering. Most of all, the way he walked away as if he already owned every cell in my body.
My breath comes in shallow, ragged hitches—arousal and anger fighting for space in my lungs. My throat feels tight, something dark crawling up it, trying to take root in my chest.
How dare he. How fucking dare he leave me half-finished and completely gutted.
