Chapter 17
RAVEN
The room disappears.
Not in pieces—in a plunge.
Like my mind just stepped off a cliff and decided the only way out is down.
I don’t remember falling. I just land. Hard.
The tile bites into my knees, a cold, clinical sting that vibrates through my bones.
Breath hitches in my throat like it’s been gagged by a phantom hand.
My fingers twitch—small, frightened, the frantic spasms of a girl I thought I’d outgrown.
I know this place. Not from the selective scrapbooks of my memory, but from my nervous system.
From the way my skin shrinks to fit the terror of the child I used to be.
The room is smaller now. Sharper. A suffocating hush clings to the air like stale incense.
On a stone shelf, thick candles drip slow, wax pooling like white blood.
Their flicker warps the shadow of the man behind me, stretching it across the wall until he has too many arms, too many ways to reach for me.
But he doesn’t touch me. Not yet. He circles first, his boots echoing like funeral bells against the floor.
“Good girls are obedient.”
I’m thirteen. My voice is gone.
He crouches beside me, his cassock whispering as he lowers himself with the reverence of a man kneeling in confession. Like I’m the sin he’s about to purge. And then—the worst part—he smiles. That saintly, solemn curve of the lips. The one that always comes just before the pain begins.
“I saw you watching him,” he says, brushing a lock of hair behind my ear. “You and the boy.”
I flinch. His fingers freeze in my hair. And then, they tighten.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
My heart is a trapped bird. I want to scream, to run, but I know the physics of this room. He yanks my hair, dragging my gaze up to meet his.
“I saw how you looked at him,” he whispers, his breath smelling of wine and ancient dust. “Like he mattered more than me.”
A shaky breath. Mine. And then—the slap. Not hard enough to bruise, just enough to claim my silence. I crumble. He stands. His robes whisper as he walks behind me. I hear the sound of wood dragging across stone. A chair. Heavy.
“You’re a vessel,” he says, his voice velvet, his voice God’s. “You’re here to be filled.”
I start shaking. I want to rip my skin off. I want to crawl out of this memory and die. But my body is frozen. Just like it was then. Just like it is now.
The chair creaks as he shifts his weight, the sound loud enough to echo off stone walls that never cared for the screams they swallowed.
“You’re trembling,” he says gently. “Do you know why that is?”
I don’t answer. My tongue is a lead weight. My hands are fisted in my lap, nails biting into the palms because that is a pain I can control.
“You’re afraid of what you want,” he continues, leaning forward until his shadow swallows the candlelight. “Fear is part of devotion.”
The word devotion makes my stomach turn. I feel the weight of his attention like hands on my skin.
“I saw you watching the boy again,” he murmurs. “He’s angry. Anger makes boys reckless. Dangerous. He doesn’t understand what you are.”
His fingers land on my shoulder, claiming space, reminding me that my body is a colony he owns. I stare at the floor, counting the cracks in the tile. One. Two. Three.
“Good girls don’t look,” he whispers.
Then—glass. Shattering.
The candle flickers wildly. The priest jerks to his feet, fury snapping through his calm like a whip. I look up.
There he is. In the window. Wild-eyed. Bleeding. Furious.
Damien.
Not the man. The boy. His mouth is open, shouting something I can’t hear over the ringing in my ears, but I see his face twist with terror and rage as he hurls another rock. The priest spins toward me, his mask slipping to reveal the monster beneath.
“Stay here!” he snaps.
But Damien doesn’t stop. He throws himself at the world until it breaks. Chaos, shouting, hands grabbing me, dragging me toward the hall. I stumble. Trip. And then Damien is there, grabbing my wrist. Hard. Real.
“RUN!” he yells.
I don’t think. I just run. Bare feet slapping against stone, heart trying to beat its way free as I tear into the night.
The memory fractures. Jagged.
My body jerks violently in the present. Air floods my lungs in a broken sob as the chapel snaps back into place. Damien’s hands catch me before I hit the floor. I clutch his shirt, my fingers shaking.
“You…” My voice shatters. “You told me to run.”
He goes very still. And in that stillness, I know. He remembers it exactly the same way.
“You told me to run.”
The words are a confession I didn’t know I was making. His fingers tighten around my arms—not to hurt, but to anchor.
“I—” he starts, but the word dies. His eyes are glassy, a dark storm of things too dangerous to be called safe.
“You were there,” I whisper. “You tried to—”
“Don’t,” he cuts in, his voice wrecked. “Don’t say it like it was kindness.”
“What?”
“I didn’t save you to save you, Raven. I saved you because he wanted you more than he wanted me.” His jaw tics, a violent, repetitive motion. “I couldn’t fucking stand that. I didn’t care if you were innocent. I wanted to ruin what he loved. Just like he ruined me.”
The silence that follows is a blade. I don’t pull away. I don’t sob. I just look at him. And something breaks in him. He shakes his head and collapses into a hollow, haunting laugh.
“You’re still here,” he whispers. “You should hate me.”
“I should,” I say, my throat raw. “But hate is easy. And nothing about this is easy. You didn’t ruin me, Damien.”
“You chose me,” I whisper. “Even if it was twisted.”
His breath is sharp. Torn. “I never stopped.”
Then his mouth crashes to mine. No warning. Just years of hunger buried beneath fire and blood. His kiss is a punishment, and I meet it with my own desperation, raking my nails down his chest as he drags me back into the pew. The wood creaks, a groan of protest as he pins me.
This isn’t about comfort. This is possession. This is him saying mine with every breath.
“I remember your mouth,” he growls against my throat. “I remember thinking about it every night they locked me in that room. I wondered if you’d look at me the same way after I ruined you.”
“You didn’t ruin me,” I gasp. “You made me feel real.”
He freezes. Then laughs—low, bitter, broken. His hand slips beneath my dress, finding the heat he’s already mapped out in his mind.
“You don’t get it, little spider. I’ve never wanted anything to last. Until you.”
He yanks my panties down, spreading me open with a growl of pure, unadulterated starvation. When his mouth drops to my thigh, I don’t breathe. I burn.
“Stay open,” he snarls. “Take it.”
He flattens his tongue and licks a stripe up my slit, feral and unholy, cursing into the silk of my skin. The vaulted echoes of the church swallow me whole as he sucks bruises into the soft crease of my thigh, then bites—hard, just enough to make me yelp, make my hips jump.
I can barely see the stained glass behind my eyelids.
All I know is the sound he makes, half-starved, half-reverent, as he spreads my thighs wide enough to make the wooden pew creak and gets his mouth on me—tongue shoving into me, nose buried in the mess he’s making.
He eats me with a devotion that feels like damnation.
My legs tremble. I grab the back of his head, grind my hips against his face, feel the obscene slide of wetness and spit, the stubble burn on the inside of my thighs.
He growls when I clench, like he’s proud of how filthy I am, how eager.
His fingers dig into my ass, kneading, spreading, the pads of his thumbs slick with my arousal as he pushes one just inside.
I choke on a moan, the sound scattering up to the rafters, and he laughs, low and cruel, before sucking my clit so hard my breath stops.
“God can’t hear you here,” he rasps, voice muffled by my cunt. “But I can. Louder.”
He alternates between relentless licks and sharp, perfect nips.
Heat streaks up my spine. My eyes roll back as I arch, heels digging into his shoulders, desperate for more, for everything, for his hands and mouth and cock splitting me open in this place where I’m not supposed to want it.
My orgasm shudders through me, ragged and ugly, too much, not enough. I sob, clutching at his hair.
He doesn’t slow. He keeps licking until I’m shaking, until my thighs try to snap shut and he forces them wider, holding me open and helpless. When I whimper, “Please, please, fuck me,” he grins into my flesh.
He stands and I taste myself on his lips when he kisses me. He hikes my dress up to my waist, bends me over the pew, then—without ceremony, without warning—drives into me. No prep, no patience, just the hot, thick press of him splitting me raw, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal thrust.
I yelp, but his hand is already at my throat, pinning me to the worn wood, holding me steady as he fucks me. The rhythm is punishing, desperate, each snap of his hips slamming my body forward and into the curve of the pew, making the whole ancient thing groan and shudder.
“You belong to me now,” he hisses, lips at my ear, teeth nipping my earlobe, the heat of his breath sending shivers down my back. “You’re mine. Say it.”
“Yours,” I gasp, every word punctuated by the slap of our bodies, the slick slide of his cock inside me, deeper than anything I’ve ever felt.
I scream into the rafters of the chapel, coming apart in a place built for saints while I surrender to a sinner. When he finally lifts his head, his eyes are black.
“On your knees, Raven. I want to see how much you remember now.”
My knees hit the stone, the sound echoing sharp and humiliating. But it’s not the priest looking down at me. It’s Damien. And he looks wrecked.
His hand fists in my hair. “You’re shaking again.”
“I don’t know if it’s fear or memory.”
“It’s both,” he says, his thumb pressing under my chin. “That’s why it feels like drowning. You think you’re here because I told you to be. But you’re here because you chose to walk straight into my hands. That’s not obedience. That’s recognition.”
“What am I recognising?” I ask, my heart in my throat.
“Me,” he says. “And what you were willing to burn to survive.”
He drifts his fingers lower, over the waistband of my skirt. “I should ruin you right here. In front of everything you were taught to worship.”
“I want you to,” I whisper.
But then—a sound.
The rustle of paper. Soft. Intentional.
Damien stills. His entire posture shifts into something lethal.
“What was that?” I breathe.
He doesn’t answer. His eyes scan the pews, the altar, the pulpit. A candle snuffs out, the smoke curling in the gloom.
“Get up.”
I obey. He pulls me behind him, the glint of a blade appearing in his hand. We move toward the altar, and there it is. A single piece of paper, white and folded, nestled under the crucifix like a curse.
Damien picks it up. Unfolds it. His jaw clenches so hard I hear the grind of bone. He turns the page to face me. One line, scrawled in that familiar, jagged script:
“Did she tell you what she did to me, Damien? Or are you still pretending you were the only one he broke?”
My stomach drops into a void. Damien crumples the page with a violent force. He doesn’t look at me, but I see the realisation clicking into place in his eyes.
And I realise, with a sudden, sickening clarity, that the memory I just had was only the beginning.