Chapter 5 #2
A chill climbs my spine rung by rung, and my blood lights up like it just found an outlet. My body knows exactly what this is. I don’t even have to look behind me to know the monster that’s there.
I can feel it. Feel him across my skin, and in my lungs with every breath.
Of course he’d come for me. I always knew he would.
The Thorned Patch said I was chosen— the pure one . Finn dying for me last year may have satisfied him for a while, bought me a little borrowed time. But hunger like the devil’s, doesn’t stay quiet forever.
How could he not come back for me?
So I do the obvious, and most sensible thing.
I run.
Corn stalks whip at my arms and snag at my skirt. The rows blur past, the world shrinking to my ragged breath and the hammering of my heartbeat. I stumble once, knees jarring against the ground, but shove up with a fistful of dirt and veer deeper into the field.
I zigzag through the stalks, remembering how Finn once told me after a hunting lesson with the elders that smart prey never runs in a straight line. They weave, cut angles, try to throw the predator off, hoping the path they cross will scatter their scent.
Whispers chase me through the stalks, threaded low in the wind—maybe words, maybe my name. A breath follows, keeping time like a metronome.
Steady. Patient. Certain.
If I stop, it’ll be right there.
A narrow cut between rows appears and I dive into it, drop to a crouch, hands on cool earth.
The corn rattles around me. Silver shards of moonlight slice across my fingers.
That’s when I hear it—a sharp croak above me.
The crow. Its inky shape wheels overhead, circling like it wants to drag the devil straight to me.
Panic spikes. I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing my heartbeat down, dragging each breath slowly. Useless. Running is useless too. The Thorned Patch taught me one thing—you don’t outrun death.
The crow vanishes as quickly as it came.
The field goes still.
Silence.
“Salem.”
The voice is not loud. It doesn’t need volume. It lands between my shoulder blades with surgical precision. Everything in me flinches and leans at once. Because I know that voice.
I look up.
He steps out of the shadows, and for a moment I forget how to breathe.
He’s taller than I remember, broader too, muscle cut hard under skin that looks like it’s been rebuilt from ash and bone.
Shirtless, he’s a map of ink and scars—tattoos crawling over both arms, wrapping his ribs, and sliding down one side of his torso in heavy, dark shapes.
Flowers, skulls, script I recognize all too well, all tangled together like they’ve been burned into him instead of drawn.
My eyes catch on his chest and stall.
Right there, above his heart, is the symbol, the one he carved into himself that night. It’s healed over ugly, a scar carved too deep to ever fade, stark against the ink that tries to surround it.
My gaze drops before I can stop it, down the hard slope of his abs, the sharp cut of his v-line, lower still.
He’s changed since memory—taller, broader, more carved from shadow than boy.
My stomach twists because I hate that some part of me feels relief, recognition.
Like my body remembered him before my head could.
“Hello, bonepetal.”
The name lands like a hook. My chest seizes.
I push myself up from the dirt, legs unsteady and take a step toward him before I can talk myself out of it. My hand lifts on its own, cupping his cheek.
Warm. Too real.
My voice trembles as it slips out, softer than I mean it to. “Finn…”
His smile is small, wrong. “You broke the vow.”
My brow furrows. “What?—”
“You let him touch you,” Finn says, voice heavy with possession. “You let him have what was only ever mine. You gave him what belonged to me.” His fingers tighten on the mask, dragging it lower so its hollow sockets stare right through me. “So I made sure it won’t happen again.”
The teeth of the mask glint in the moonlight. Something about the curve of the bone, the shape of the jaw, it hits me like a punch.
My stomach twists. My knees threaten to buckle.
Nathan.
The skull on his face isn’t just some relic. It’s Nathan’s.
The vow. The mask. His words. It all crashes together so hard my pulse goes ragged, roaring in my ears until I can’t breathe.
I stumble back. Panic makes the choice for me. I run.
His laughter follows—ragged, wrecked, echoing through the corn.
“Run harder, bonepetal! I want that little body shaking when I pin you. I’ll lick the sweat off your spine while you cry out for a god that isn’t watching. Only I am. Only I ever was.”
Stalks whip at my arms and catch my hair.
My platforms pound the dirt, lungs burning, but his voice is always there, threading the rows like he’s already inside me.
Overhead, crows burst into the night, croaking loud enough to rattle my bones, their cries chasing me through the field as if they’re hunting too.
I break left, then right. Doesn’t matter. He’s everywhere. Every turn feels like it belongs to him.
And then he’s just… there.
I slam into him, his hands already closing on me, anchoring me to him like he’d planned every step. His breath ghosts my throat, hot and unyielding. The bone knife flashes in the dark, the hilt cool against my skin.
Fear coils sharp in my gut. And yet my body betrays me, thrumming with something I don’t want to name.
I thought the devil would come for me.
But I never thought Finn would.
He moves before I can bolt again. One rough hand catches my wrist, the other finds my waist, and the ground comes up hard against my back. Dirt presses cold through my clothes, corn stalks rattling overhead like a fucking audience.
I twist, but he’s heavier now, stronger. He pins me with his whole body, his breath hot at my ear, his weight making the earth dip beneath us.
“You still fight pretty,” he murmurs, voice low and jagged. “But you forget I’ve been waiting for this. Waiting to feel you again. Waiting to fucking break you all over again.”
I shove at his chest, but he’s already catching both my wrists, forcing them above my head. A snap of something rough, fibrous —corn stalks, pulled and twisted—binds them together, lashed tight to keep me there. My pulse hammers against the restraints, useless.
The skull covering his face dips close until the teeth nearly graze my cheek. His breath is hot, ragged. “You forgot who you belong to,” he whispers. “You forgot who bled for you. Who died for you.”
I shake my head, panic surging up my throat, but he only laughs, a sound wrecked, broken, and cruel.
“Finn… please.” The words scrape out of me as I stare into the hollow sockets of Nathan’s skull, desperate for even a flicker of the boy I used to love.
He leans closer, voice a guttural rasp. “Don’t act surprised, bonepetal.
While you were giving away the parts of yourself that were mine, I was rotting in hell.
Burning. Suffering. Watching. Every scream, every flame, every fucking second they tore me apart I saw you .
And I promised myself when I came back, you’d remember exactly who owns you. ”
The mask tilts, the sockets staring down into me like hollow eyes. “You broke the vow, Salem. Now you’ll learn what a broken vow costs.”
He leans back just enough to reach for something. The scrape of bone against leather shreds the silence, and then I see it.
The knife.
Its hilt is made from yellowed bone, rough and ridged with old teeth still set into it. The kind of relic no one sane would touch. The blade catches moonlight in a jagged grin, steel pitted and scarred, but still sharp enough to cut truth from lies.
The ritual knife.
The same one from the Thorned Patch.
The one he used to carve that symbol into his own chest the night everything changed.
My breath stutters hard in my throat.
“Recognize it?” His voice is low, vicious.
He tilts the knife so the bone handle gleams pale in the fractured light, so the shadow of its teeth crawls over my stomach.
“This blade tasted our people's blood that night. My blood. A fucking promise written in dirt and pain.” The mask dips, eyes glinting through the sockets. “And tonight? Tonight it’s your reminder.”
My legs kick, but he shoves his knee between them, pinning me open. His free hand slides rough up my thigh, catching the edge of my panties, and with one sharp tug he tears them down and flings them aside.
“Fuck,” he growls, his breath hot against my cheek. “You think you can just give yourself to someone else, forget me, forget what we are? Not a chance. You’re mine, Salem. You’ve always been mine.
“I knew you were meant to be mine from the first moment I saw you,” he growls.
“In the chapel, when we were kids. That velvet red dress bringing out the color of your eyes. The way you knelt to the devil like he was your father. Everyone else thought you were meant for the sacrifice. I knew better. I knew you were meant for me.”
The bone hilt grazes my skin, trailing slow and merciless along the inside of my thigh. My body betrays me with a shiver, a gasp I can’t hold back.
He hears it.
Of course he does.
“There she is,” he snarls, darker now, voice scraping raw. “The girl who swore. The girl who fucking forgot, and yet still shakes for me, still answers when I come back from hell to claim her.”
The corn rattles overhead as the night holds its breath. Pinned beneath him, bound and trembling, I realize the devil never needed to come for me at all.
Because he knew Finn would do it for him.
The first push inside her cunt is slow and brutal, the bone hilt forcing me open as it slides inside, cold at first before the stretch turns sharp, unbearable, and achingly familiar.
Every movement after is measured, dragging me out only to sink me down deeper, making me feel every inch.
My body betrays me, slick and greedy, pulling his blade in like it remembers it.
Like it remembers him even when my head wants to deny it.
My eyes squeeze shut, shame and heat clashing too hard to face.
“Don’t you dare close your eyes,” he snarls, voice sharp as the grip at my throat. “You fucking look at me when I ruin you, bonepetal. Look through Nathan’s empty fucking eyes. Through his skull. Through the grave you fucking made me crawl out of.”
My pulse pounds so loud it feels like the field itself can hear it.
The hilt pumps deeper, faster, until I can’t keep still. My hips buck against the dirt, bound wrists pulling uselessly against the stalks. He grinds into me mercilessly, then slows, making me whimper before picking up again, fucking me with a rhythm that keeps me dangling right at the edge.
The jagged teeth carved into the hilt scrape that spot inside me every time he drives it deeper, sharp little shocks of pleasure that make my thighs quake.
It’s brutal, overwhelming, and it’s killing me how much I need the release, how my body clenches around it like it’s begging.
“Yeah,” he growls, rough and wrecked. “That’s it. Your cunt still knows me. Still squeezes for me. Every fucking twitch says my name even if your mouth won’t. You were mine first, bonepetal. You’ll be mine last.”
His free hand drags down, fingers finding my clit.
Circles.
Cruel, and perfect.
He matches the movement to the rhythm of the hilt, bone pumping in and out while his fingers work me harder. I gasp, back arching off the dirt, shame and heat colliding until I can’t tell one from the other.
“Look at you,” he taunts, mask grinning. “Taking it so fucking well. Made for me. Fucking carved for me. You hate how much you want it, don’t you? Hate that you’re dripping down my blade like you’ve been starving for it.”
I sob, twisting under him, and it only makes him laugh, low, and guttural.
“Beg,” he orders. “Beg me to let you cum. Beg like the whore you swore you’d never be for anyone but me.”
My body is shaking, every nerve screaming. His hand rubs harder, faster, and the hilt drives deep with every thrust. I don’t want to give him the words, but my voice betrays me just like the rest of me. “Please?—”
“Good girl,” he snarls, pushing me harder. “Cum for me, bonepetal. Cum for the man who burned for you. For the man who carved himself open for you. Who clawed his way out of hell just to fucking ruin you again.”
The pressure rips through me, unbearable, and then I shatter—eyes wide on the sockets of the skull mask, my wrists burning, my body convulsing helplessly while he holds me down and watches me break.
His laugh twists through the corn, low and triumphant, as I cum around the bone handle he’s fucking me with, every spasm another confession my body can’t hide.
When it’s over, I’m shaking and raw, breath ragged in the cold air.
He doesn’t let me go right away.
His hand steadies my throat until the last tremor leaves me, until I’m forced to feel the wreckage he’s made of me. Then, with a slow tug, he loosens the stalks around my wrists.
I collapse forward, arms numb, the dirt clinging to my palms. He pulls the knife free, bone hilt gleaming wet in the fractured light. Without looking away from me, he drags his tongue along it, a filthy benediction, and lets out a low laugh.
“Fuck, sweet as I remember,” he snarls. “Your pussy tastes better on bone than it ever did on my tongue. Almost makes me want to keep it buried inside you.”
Then he tucks it back into his pocket like a relic, casual as sin.
My chest still heaves, lungs catching on air that doesn’t feel like mine. He offers me his hand, steady and sure, like he could just lift me to my feet and pretend we were still those kids in the forest.
I take it, shaking, weak. But the second I’m upright, my instincts cut through the fog.
I run.
The corn splits around me, my legs stumbling into speed I didn’t know I had left.
Behind me, his laugh follows, jagged and merciless, promising there will be a next time.
Crows burst overhead, their wings a black tide blotting out the sliver of moon as I sprint toward the line of trees, toward the forest we grew up in. My chest aches, not just from running but from the war tearing through me. I wanted it. God help me, I wanted him. Even though I know I shouldn’t.
He’s dead.
He’s gone.
And yet every part of me still answers to him like he never left.