I remember the rage. It was a sick, squirming thing that buried itself in my gut and clawed up my throat. I remember the first time he reached for her. I remember the knife. It wasn’t his. It was mine. I warned him once. He didn’t listen.
But someone else did.
The boy in the pews. The one they said was too slow to speak but too quick to mimic. The boy who watched me as if he wanted to unzip my skin and wear it. The one who never flinched when the belt came down. Who never cried.
The one who was always,alwayswatching.
“Mine,” I mutter, my jaw tight enough to shatter.
Raven shifts in her sleep, a soft sound escaping her as if she can hear the possessive rot in my voice. I kneel beside her and brush a stray hair from her cheek. My touch is light, but the obsession behind it is a chokehold.
I don’t know how to protect her from a ghost, but I’ll burn the world to the ground trying. Even if it kills me. Even if she eventually looks at me and sees the man who ruined her.
Because I did. But I never let anyone else touch her. Not then. Not now.
I rise, pick up the moth between two fingers, and carry it to the doors. There is no fear left, only a white-hot madness. I crush the insect, letting the grey powder fall from my fingertips like ash.
“You want a game?” I whisper into the dark. “You just fucking started one.”
I slam the chapel doors, letting the sound boom through the night. Let him hear it. Let him follow.
I don’t go far.
He wants a chase. He wants me to fall into the predictable rhythm of his rituals. That’s why he left the moth. But I’m done being led like a dog on a leash.
The chapel door remains shut, but the silence following the slam is too clean. Too surgical. This place is a mausoleum dressed up in the finery of mercy. Every footstep I take echoes against the stone walls, making it feel as though the building itself is eavesdropping. I move back down the corridor, past thescent of melted wax and iron, toward the vantage point where I know he watched us.
The hallway carries that decaying sweetness—the smell of old incense and sweat. His scent. Or the scent of whatever shadow is wearing his memory like a second skin.
I check the alcoves. Empty. Empty.
It isn’t until I round the final corner—where the red stained glass turns the floor into a pool of fresh blood—that I see it.
A mark. Single. Etched deep into the stone with a steady hand.
Obedient.
My pulse spikes, a frantic drumming in my ears. I know this handwriting. It isn’t the priest’s. It isn’t mine. It’s a mimicry—a perfect, chilling copy. Like someone spent years watching us bleed and decided they could do it better.
Behind me—a sound. Too soft to be real, too close to be imagined.
Click.
Not a gun. A camera.
I spin, my coat flaring, but the hallway is a desert of shadows. Empty. Yet I feel it—that same prickling sensation from the basement, from the classroom, from the moment I realised I wasn’t the only monster the priest had fostered.
My fingers twitch toward the blade stitched into my lining. It isn’t a polished weapon; it’s a tool of necessity. Sharp. Jagged. Like me.
I look back at the word on the wall.Obedient.It’s a warning directed straight at me. He knows I broke. He knows I crawled back to her with my mouth dripping with guilt. He knows what happened in that basement—what I did to ensure the priest never laid another hand on her.
The game hasn’t just changed; it’s inverted. I’m not sure I’m the predator anymore.
I back away, my eyes scanning every glint of glass, every shift in the dark. I need to get back to her. I need to get to Raven before he decides the game requires another sacrifice.
Chapter 20
RAVEN
