Then I see it. The key.
It lies there, glinting on the stone where he dropped it. A challenge. A choice. He thinks I’ll use it. He thinks I’ll unlock myself and crawl back into the light.
But I don’t move. Instead, I lie back. I stretch my arms above my head until the cuffs bite deep and the chill of the altar seeps into my spine.
I wait. Because he’ll come back. He has to. We aren’t done with each other—not by a long shot.
A sharp, jagged sensation curls in my belly. It’s not lust anymore; it’s rage. It’s power. And underneath it all, a voice I haven’t heard in a very long time begins to whisper. Not since the moths. Not since the first time I felt eyes on me in the dark.
You left me there.
The words are faint, a ghost in my own head. But they don’t sound like me. They sound like a boy. They sound like him.
I blink up at the stained glass, the colours bleeding like fresh bruises across my skin. I feel it—that terrifying, tectonic crack in my mind splitting wide open. Something happened. Something I buried so deep it turned into a haunting.
The closet. The moths. The blade of light through the door. The smell of burning.
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Because I think I know. I think I know who was watching me that night. And I think he saved me.
But I don’t understand why it feels like he’s still holding the match.
The moment I whisper his name, I hate the way it tastes.
“Damien.”
Soft. Broken. A prayer with a knife inside it. But the second it leaves my lips, I feel him. He’s still stalking the shadows of this chapel, hunting demons only he can see, but we are tied by something older than us both. A blood vow. A scream buried alive.
I close my eyes, and the memory doesn’t just flicker—it surges.
My body locks. My breath cuts short. I’m fifteen again. I’m in the closet. The smell of sulphur and dust is overwhelming. The priest’s footsteps are pounding down the hall like war drums, and then… silence.
Followed by him. A shadow slipping into the room. He crouches beside me, his fingers pressing against my lips.
Don’t make a sound.
His eyes tell me to trust him even while the world burns. Even when the priest screams my name from the other side of the door. That boy—he didn’t run. He stayed. He touched my ankle with soot-stained fingers, his thumb stroking the bone just to prove I was real.
And then he whispered the only truth I’d ever heard:“I won’t let him have you.”
I blink back to the present. To the altar. To the cuffs.
I finally understand. It wasn’t just obsession. It was a promise. He found me again because he never really let me go. I’m not his victim. I’m his answer. His unfinished war.
The door creaks. I lift my head slowly as Damien walks back in. His eyes are wild, his jaw clenched, his hands bloody. He’s shaking with a rage that looks centuries old.
“Raven,” he says, his voice cracked open like a wound. “Unlock the cuffs.”
I don’t move. I want him to do it. Because I remember now.
I don’t unlock them.
The metal is a cold reminder, keeping me honest. My body is still humming with the fire he started and refused to douse. I look at the blood on his knuckles, the tremor he can’t quite master.
“Do it,” he says again, the word sounding like it hurts him.
“No.”
His jaw tightens. “Raven.”
