Chapter 18
RAVEN
Idon’t move.
Not even when the heavy oak door slams shut, the sound echoing through the rafters like a gavel. Not even when the vibrations fade into a thick, suffocating silence and I’m still here—wrists burning against cold steel, thighs trembling, slick and open on the altar like something ruined and holy.
He left me.
He walked away when I was balanced on the razor-edge of something I can’t name—something that wasn’t just pleasure, wasn’t just pain. It felt like the brink of a scream I’ve been holding in since I was fifteen. Since before I ever knew his name.
I drag my wrists against the cuffs again. They jangle—a soft, melodic clinking of metal against stone, like a perverse church bell announcing my sin. The sound sends a shiver down my spine so sharp it borders on agony.
Because I liked it. God help me, I liked every second of it.
The control. The calculated cruelty. The way he worshipped me as if I were both the altar and the offering. Most of all, the way he walked away as if he already owned every cell in my body.
My breath comes in shallow, ragged hitches—arousal and anger fighting for space in my lungs. My throat feels tight, something dark crawling up it, trying to take root in my chest.
How dare he. How fucking dare he leave me half-finished and completely gutted.
Then I see it. The key.
It lies there, glinting on the stone where he dropped it. A challenge. A choice. He thinks I’ll use it. He thinks I’ll unlock myself and crawl back into the light.
But I don’t move. Instead, I lie back. I stretch my arms above my head until the cuffs bite deep and the chill of the altar seeps into my spine.
I wait. Because he’ll come back. He has to. We aren’t done with each other—not by a long shot.
A sharp, jagged sensation curls in my belly. It’s not lust anymore; it’s rage. It’s power. And underneath it all, a voice I haven’t heard in a very long time begins to whisper. Not since the moths. Not since the first time I felt eyes on me in the dark.
You left me there.
The words are faint, a ghost in my own head. But they don’t sound like me. They sound like a boy. They sound like him.
I blink up at the stained glass, the colours bleeding like fresh bruises across my skin. I feel it—that terrifying, tectonic crack in my mind splitting wide open. Something happened. Something I buried so deep it turned into a haunting.
The closet. The moths. The blade of light through the door. The smell of burning.
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Because I think I know. I think I know who was watching me that night. And I think he saved me.
But I don’t understand why it feels like he’s still holding the match.
The moment I whisper his name, I hate the way it tastes.
“Damien.”
Soft. Broken. A prayer with a knife inside it. But the second it leaves my lips, I feel him. He’s still stalking the shadows of this chapel, hunting demons only he can see, but we are tied by something older than us both. A blood vow. A scream buried alive.
I close my eyes, and the memory doesn’t just flicker—it surges.
My body locks. My breath cuts short. I’m fifteen again. I’m in the closet. The smell of sulphur and dust is overwhelming. The priest’s footsteps are pounding down the hall like war drums, and then… silence.
Followed by him. A shadow slipping into the room. He crouches beside me, his fingers pressing against my lips.
Don’t make a sound.
His eyes tell me to trust him even while the world burns. Even when the priest screams my name from the other side of the door. That boy—he didn’t run. He stayed. He touched my ankle with soot-stained fingers, his thumb stroking the bone just to prove I was real.
And then he whispered the only truth I’d ever heard: “I won’t let him have you.”
I blink back to the present. To the altar. To the cuffs.
I finally understand. It wasn’t just obsession. It was a promise. He found me again because he never really let me go. I’m not his victim. I’m his answer. His unfinished war.
The door creaks. I lift my head slowly as Damien walks back in. His eyes are wild, his jaw clenched, his hands bloody. He’s shaking with a rage that looks centuries old.
“Raven,” he says, his voice cracked open like a wound. “Unlock the cuffs.”
I don’t move. I want him to do it. Because I remember now.
I don’t unlock them.
The metal is a cold reminder, keeping me honest. My body is still humming with the fire he started and refused to douse. I look at the blood on his knuckles, the tremor he can’t quite master.
“Do it,” he says again, the word sounding like it hurts him.
“No.”
His jaw tightens. “Raven.”
“I remember,” I whisper. The words land between us with a weight that makes the candles gutter. “I remember enough.”
I watch the rage shift in him, rearranging itself into something colder, more precise. He takes a step toward me and stops, waiting for an invitation.
“You told me to be quiet,” I say, my voice steady despite the pulse racing in my ears. “You put your fingers on my mouth and you stayed. You didn’t leave me to the fire.”
His breath stutters.
“You promised he wouldn’t have me.”
He steps closer, moving into my space until the air is thick with him. “I kept that promise,” he says, low and absolute.
“Then keep this one,” I say. It’s not a plea. It’s a demand. “Don’t leave me like this.”
He looks at the cuffs. At the key. At me—open, unflinching.
“You’re not trapped,” he says.
“I know. I’m choosing.”
Something in him snaps—clean and silent. He reaches for the key, his hands steady now. He unlocks the first cuff slowly, deliberately, as if he’s undoing one vow and making another in the same breath. Metal clicks. My arm drops, tingling.
The second cuff opens.
He sets the key aside and leans in, his forehead nearly touching mine. He lifts my wrists, pressing them flat against the altar above my head. He’s not binding me this time. He’s holding me.
“Listen to me,” he whispers. “What’s coming for us doesn’t want your body. It wants your memory. It wants you to remember the wrong things, in the wrong order.”
“Then don’t let it.”
A ghost of a smile haunts his mouth. “I can’t stop you from remembering, Raven. But I can decide who stands with you when it breaks.”
“Stand with me.”
He stays. He braces me with his presence, grounding the chaos.
“There’s more,” he says. “About that night. About what I did after.”
“I know. And I’m not running.”
Outside the chapel, something shifts—a soft footfall, a hush that feels watched. Damien’s fingers thread through mine, anchoring me to the stone.
“We’re not alone,” he says.
I squeeze his hand back, the fear sharpening me into something lethal.
“I know,” I answer.