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.
Damien’s jaw clenches with a sickening crack, his thumb dragging hard across my lip, pinning the sound in my throat like he’s reminding me I promised to stay. His eyes are fixed on the monitor, pupils blown so wide the hazel is gone.
The next line appears.
Do you remember when she used to beg you to stay quiet?
My throat tightens, the taste of incense and dust coating my tongue.
Do you remember when she told you to keep your eyes closed?
The cursor blinks. A steady, mocking heartbeat.
Do you remember the quiet place?
The chain pulls tighter around my ankle, a sharp, metallic yank that forces me flush against him.
Damien’s pulse snaps against my spine, a rapid-fire staccato of terror.
I feel his breath stagger against my temple, hot and wet, but I don’t think he’s breathing right anymore.
It’s the shallow, ragged air of someone about to drown.
Should I remind her what she promised?
I shake my head, my breath cracking into a low, broken moan.
Damien’s hands slam the keyboard, the plastic keys clattering under his frantic strength as he tries to trace the source, trying to break the feed, trying to kill the ghost in the machine, but it’s no use.
The screen is a mirror of a nightmare. The next message punches through.
You were supposed to save me.
The air freezes, the temperature in the room plummeting as if someone just opened a door to a winter that never ends.
You forgot me.
My pulse fractures, a thousand needle-pricks of heat radiating from the scar on my ribs.
Damien’s hands freeze mid-strike, hovering over the glowing keys.
The words don’t make sense. They’re not for me.
They’re not for him. But they are. They are the missing syllables of a prayer we both stopped saying. The cursor blinks.
She left me in the quiet place.
I stagger back, my chest convulsing as if a physical hand just reached inside and gripped my lungs.
My breath is slipping, a ghost leaving my body.
Damien catches me by the chain, a violent, desperate pull that drags me into his lap like he’s trying to hold me here in the physical world, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish into the static if he lets me go.
“You’re mine,” he breathes, his voice cracking into a jagged, raw splinter. “You’re not his.”
I can’t speak. I can’t move. I can’t look away from the screen, where the letters are burned into the glass like scars.
She told me to stay quiet.
The words slam against my ribs, echoing the rhythm of a heartbeat I haven’t heard in years.
She told me he would pick someone else if I was good.
Damien’s hand slides to my throat, not cruel, not tight—just there. A heavy, warm weight. Just enough to keep me still. Just enough to make me his prisoner.
“You promised,” he whispers against my skin, his voice a ragged fracture. His thumb presses to my lip, seal and key all at once. “You promised you’d keep me.”
Another message blinks.
You forgot me, Raven.
My stomach caves, a sickening drop into an abyss of guilt I can’t name.
You promised.
Damien’s breath shudders against my ear, a broken, weeping sound that makes the chain rattle.
“You promised.”
The cursor blinks.
I waited for you.
The air shatters. The sound of the cooling fans, the buzzing light, the heavy hum of the house—it all disappears, leaving only the weight of that sentence. Damien’s hand trembles against my skin, his fingers twitching. His voice fractures.
“I waited for you.”
The cursor blinks. And then the feed dies.
The screen cuts to black, leaving us in a darkness so absolute it feels like the chapel after the candles are blown out.
The silence slices through me like I’m the one who left someone behind, like I’m the one who promised to come back and let the years turn that promise into a lie.
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I don’t know who sent the message, whose fingers were on the keyboard, or whose voice I’m supposed to believe.
But I know the chain keeps me here. I know Damien keeps me here.
And I know—God help me—I know some part of me remembers the quiet place, too. Even if I don’t want to.
The screen stays black. The cursor gone.
The words burned into the air between us like a brand on the skin.
You forgot me. You promised. I waited for you.
Damien’s grip on my throat tightens—not cruel, not violent—just there.
A tether. Just enough to keep me here. Just enough to keep me his.
His breath staggers against my temple, sharp and frantic like he’s fighting to stay in his body, fighting to keep the memories from swallowing him whole.
“You’re mine,” he whispers, the words shaking with the force of his desperation. “You’re not his.”
My pulse thunders against his thumb, a frantic drumbeat of realisation. His other hand drags the chain tighter, winding the cold metal around his fist until there is no slack, pulling me so close I can’t tell if I’m trying to escape or trying to crawl inside him just to find the light.
“You’re not his.” His voice fractures, a low, guttural moan. “I kept you.”
The silence gnaws at the edges of my ribs. I should speak. I should move. I should tell him I don’t understand, that the screen is a trick, that we are safe. But I think part of me does. I think part of me remembers something I’m not supposed to.
The quiet place. The chapel. The songs. The braid. The cold weight of hands over my mouth. The sound of heavy shoes clicking on stone behind me. The scrape of a rosary against my ribs. The scar.
My breath cracks. Damien’s lips crush against mine, desperate, shaking, keeping. He kisses me like he’s trying to reclaim a soul he lost ten years ago.
“You promised you’d stay.”
His hands grip my face, his fingers splayed across my jaw like he’s afraid I’ll disintegrate into ash if he lets go.
“You told me if I was good, he’d pick someone else.”
The words split me open, a clean, vertical strike from collarbone to hip.
“You told me you’d come back.” His breath hitches, a jagged, wet sound. “You told me I wouldn’t forget you.”
His thumb drags across my lip, the same rhythm he always uses—slow, possessive, rhythmic—the one I never noticed was familiar until the memory finally punctured the surface. It’s the same way I used to soothe him. The same way I used to seal his silence.
“You promised you wouldn’t leave me in the quiet place.” His forehead presses to mine, his skin slick and cold. “But you did.”
My throat shatters. The memory glitches, a strobe-light effect of past and present.
The chapel door. The sound of counting—one, two, three.
The suffocating heat of a hand over my mouth.
The braid slipping loose as I turned to run.
I don’t know if it’s mine. I don’t know if it’s his.
I don’t know if it’s a nightmare we’ve both been living since we were seven years old.
“I—” I choke, the words tasting like dust. “I didn’t—”
“You left me there.”
His voice cuts sharp, a razor across the skin.
“You forgot me there.”
His hands fist in my hair, pulling my head back until I’m forced to look into the hollow abyss of his eyes. His mouth crashes to mine again, sharp, filthy, brutal. A collision of guilt and starving need.
“You begged me to be quiet.” His breath breaks against my lips.“You told me it would save us.”
My ribs collapse. The words don’t make sense.
But they do. They do. They are the only things that make sense in this room full of flickering screens and iron links.
The memory flickers: my hand covering his mouth, my voice a frantic, weeping whisper begging him to stay still, stay quiet, stay good.
The quiet place. The promise to come back with help.
Did I say that? Did I leave him there to endure the worship while I ran for the sunlight? Did I leave him with him?
My stomach twists. My pulse snaps. Damien’s mouth trails over my jaw, down my throat, tracing the line of my collarbone before settling over the scar on my ribs.
“You promised you’d save me.” His voice splinters, a hollow, echoing sound. “But you didn’t.”
I can’t breathe. The air is gone, replaced by the ghost of incense and old wax. His breath shudders against my skin. “You always leave me.”
His hands drag the chain so tight it burns into my skin, the metal biting deep into the raw flesh of my ankle. “You forget me.” His voice drops to a whisper, a secret meant only for the shadows. “But I don’t.”
His lips press to the scar again, soft, reverent, and utterly terrifying, like he’s tracing a door only he remembers how to lock. “I won’t let you leave this time.”
His hands pull me closer, locking me down, pressing me into him like he can force the memory back into place by sheer physical will.
“I won’t let you forget me again.”
And I don’t know if he’s trying to cage me—or if he’s trying to crawl back into the quiet place we left behind, dragging me into the dark so he never has to be alone with the silence again.