Chapter 13 #2
Another step. He’s close enough now that I can smell him—dust, sweat, candle wax, and something older. The stale, recycled air of a room with no windows.
Images flicker in my head, a strobe light of trauma. A hole in a wall. Moths in a jar. Small, trembling hands passing scraps of food through the cracks. A whisper: count with me.
My stomach flips.
“You’re not Damien,” I say, forcing the words out through a throat that feels like it’s closing.
“No,” he answers, the corner of his mouth curling into something that isn’t a smile. “I’m the part he left here.”
The knife trembles in my grip. My pulse is loud in my ears, counting by itself, faster and faster. He takes another step, and my back hits the cold, hard wood of the altar.
“You don’t belong here,” I manage.
He laughs softly, the sound sliding over my skin like a razor. “Neither do you.”
Another flash—the priest’s polished shoes, the drone of the hymn, the heavy hand over my mouth. But this time there’s another hand too, a small one, trying to pull me away. The boy. This boy. Before he became whatever this ghost is.
“You kept the moths,” he says. “I told you you would.”
My throat is dry. “I don’t remember.”
He leans in, and his voice drops to a whisper intended only for me. “Then why are you here?”
My heart stops for a beat. Because I don’t know. Because some part of me followed the sound of the counting before my brain caught up. Because some part of me always knew this moment was coming.
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. And then the chapel door slams with the force of a thunderclap.
Footsteps. Heavy. Sure.
Damien.
The boy’s eyes flick past me toward the noise. The small smile vanishes instantly. His posture shifts, dropping low and sharp, like a wild thing ready to bolt or strike.
“Looks like he found us,” the boy says softly.
And then, without another word, he backs away into the shifting candlelight and disappears between the shadows of the pews—leaving me shaking, knife in hand, alone on the altar steps as Damien’s massive shadow fills the doorway.
The chapel walls breathe with ghosts. The air is too thick, too old—like it remembers what I forgot. Like it’s trying to pull me back into a cage I never truly escaped.
Damien’s voice cuts through the stagnant air like a match thrown into a gas leak.
“Raven.”
I blink, the world snapping back into focus. The boy is gone. The hood, the whisper, the candlelight—all vanished like dust scattered under a heavy boot. But the echo of him—of the boy Damien used to be—lingers in my spine like static. Like moth wings against my skin.
I turn toward him. He’s watching me like I might crack in half at a single touch. His chest is rising and falling in heavy, ragged bursts.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
I hadn’t noticed. My hands are fists at my sides, my nails biting so deep into my palms I think I might draw blood.
“I saw…” I whisper. “I saw a boy.”
He stiffens, his entire body locking down. “A boy?”
I nod. “Here. Just now. He lit a candle. He said… he said I left him.”
Damien doesn’t speak. Not right away. The silence is a physical weight.
“What else did he say?”
I shake my head, trying to sort the memory from the madness. “He said I used to count. That I stopped. That I… that I forgot him.”
The silence that follows could choke a god. Damien steps forward slowly—like I’m a wounded animal that might spook if he moves too fast. His hands hover near mine, but he doesn’t touch me.
“Do you remember the first time you came here?” he asks softly.
I frown, the static in my head growing louder. “The first time…?”
He nods. “Not the services. Not the hymns. I mean the first time you found this place alone.”
I open my mouth, searching for a date, a feeling, anything. “I… I don’t know.”
He studies me. Not like he’s confused, but like he’s reading the chapters of a book I haven’t opened yet. Like he remembers it better than I do.
“Why did you bring me back here?” I ask, my voice too thin, too fragile.
Damien’s jaw clenches. “I didn’t want to.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He finally meets my eyes—really meets them—and something in his expression cracks. Because he doesn’t look like the monster who ruined me anymore. He looks like the boy I forgot.
“I needed to know,” he says. “If you remembered.”
“And do you?”
He swallows hard, his throat working. Then he nods. “I remember everything.”
I take a step back, the cold stone of the floor seeping through my boots. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His voice breaks, low and ruined. “Because you didn’t choose me then. And I wasn’t going to let you not choose me now.”
I don’t breathe. I don’t move. He steps closer. Closer. Until the air between us feels like a loaded gun. His palm brushes mine, the heat of him a shock. He curls his fingers into my fist.
And he whispers: “You were the first girl I ever wanted to keep. And the first one who left me behind.”
The words gut me. Because I don’t remember doing that, but the ache in his voice says I did. And that memory—the chapel, the candle, the boy in the shadows—it’s not a hallucination. It’s a debt I never knew I owed.
The candles hiss. The moth on the altar doesn’t move. Damien’s fingers are still wrapped around mine, but the weight of his grip has changed. It isn’t possession now. It’s a tremor, like he’s bracing himself for an impact he knows is coming.
I swallow hard, forcing my eyes away from him and back to the altar, back to the single pinned wing.
“The message,” I whisper. “Damien… the message told you to come alone.”
His jaw flexes. “I know.”
“I got one too,” I say, my voice breaking in the middle. “It said ‘Come too.’”
His head snaps up, eyes wide and feral. “What?”
I nod, the phone still heavy in my pocket. “That’s why I’m here. He didn’t just call you. He called me.”
For a heartbeat, there’s nothing but the sound of our ragged breathing. Then he lets go of my hand and drags both palms down his face, fingers digging into his temples like he’s trying to claw the thought out.
“Fuck,” he mutters. The sound is low, dangerous.
I step back, my spine pressing against the altar again. “Who would do this? Who would know how to—”
“I don’t know yet,” he cuts me off. “But this isn’t a trap for me anymore. This is a trap for you.”
He’s scanning the pews now, his head snapping left and right. His eyes flick to the stained glass, to the broken door, to the darkness between the seats. “He’s been inside my feeds. He’s been inside my backups. Now he’s inside your head.”
“Stop.” My voice is sharp but shaky. “You’re scaring me.”
“Good,” he snaps, then his voice softens into something even more terrifying. “Good. Because you need to be scared enough to listen to me.”
He turns back toward me, stepping back into my space, lowering his voice to a whisper that vibrates against my skin.
“I didn’t bring you here,” he says. “I would never bring you back to this place. He brought you.”
My stomach turns. “Then why are we standing here?”
His eyes bore into mine. “Because if he’s watching,” Damien murmurs, “he’s watching right now.”
I freeze. The air feels thick again. My skin crawls like there are insects under it. “Then why can’t we see him?”
“Because he’s not a man who stands in the open,” Damien says. “He’s a man who hides in walls.” His hand slides around the back of my neck, his thumb brushing the base of my skull. And then he leans in, voice low and dark. “The way I used to.”
A shiver runs through me so hard it feels like my bones are vibrating. My fingers twitch around the knife. The chapel feels smaller, closer, like it’s folding around us.
Somewhere, a floorboard creaks. Not under Damien. Not under me. From the shadows behind the last row of pews.
We both turn toward the sound at the same time.