Chapter 22
RAVEN
It’s cold.
That is the first anchor my consciousness finds. Not the blinding, suffocating dark. Not the thick, industrial stench of damp concrete and oxidised rust that clings to the back of my throat. Not even the rhythmic throb at the base of my skull where something cracked against stone.
It’s the cold. The kind of predatory chill that doesn’t just sit on your skin; it creeps into the marrow, whispering that no one is coming. That you are already a ghost.
I try to move, and every nerve ending screams in protest. My wrists are bound in front of me—tight, but not with the clinical cruelty of steel. It’s rope. Fibrous and coarse. It feels deliberate, as if whoever did this wanted me to feel the friction, wanted me trapped but not entirely helpless.
He wants me to struggle.
There is a hood over my head. The fabric is thick, smelling of gasoline and old ash. My breath echoes inside it, sharp and panicked, bouncing back against my lips until the air feels recycled and thin. I flinch at the sound of my own terror. It’s too loud. Too much.
I’m not dead. Not yet.
My mouth is a desert. My pulse sounds like distant gunfire. But I am alive, and in this room, that feels like a threat. Because I don’t know what he wants. Not Damien. This He. I want to scream Damien’s name, to call him into the dark, but the thought dies.
What if he’s listening?
What if he’s already here?
What if it was Damien all along?
No. My heart rejects the thought before it can take root. I know the way Damien touches me—the jagged edges of his devotion, the way he sees me even when I’m trying to hide. Even at his most brutal, Damien never wore a mask.
This man did.
My head rolls to the side, sluggish and heavy. I can’t tell if I’m sitting or slumped against a wall. My body feels distant, like a radio station losing its signal, leaving only the static of pain.
Then, I hear it.
The drag. Boots on concrete. Slow. Methodical. Steady.
The silence thickens until it has a physical weight. A door creaks—metal groaning against metal.
Then a voice—warped through a modulator, low and inhuman—wraps around me like spilled oil.
“Do you remember me, Raven?”
My heart stops. That voice doesn’t belong to Damien. Not even close. My breathing turns frantic, a ragged scratching sound against the fabric of the hood.
“No? That’s okay,” the voice purrs, dropping to a softer, more intimate register. “I remember you.”
The hood stays on, but I feel his presence like a cold front. He’s kneeling. I can hear his breath now—steady. Too steady. He is enjoying the geography of my fear.
“You wore white that night. Do you remember that, Raven?”
My stomach turns over. A memory surges—not a face, just flashes. Moths. The smell of ozone. An open window. The prickly, localised heat of eyes watching me when I believed I was alone in the world.
“You were the first girl I ever wanted to break.”
I flinch, my bindings biting into my wrists as I jerk away from the sound. He laughs—a soft, delighted sound that makes my skin crawl.
“We’re going to have fun this time.”
Then, silence. He leaves me in the dark, but the knowing stays. This isn’t a random kidnapping. This isn’t just about Damien. This man has known me for a long time. Longer than I ever knew I existed.
My breath comes in shallow, staggered gulps that burn my throat.
I twist against the ropes—my wrists are raw, my thighs trembling—but the knots are a masterpiece of calculation.
He didn’t just tie me; he measured me. He gauged exactly how hard I would fight and how long it would take for the rot of surrender to set in.
But I don’t surrender. Not when I have his hands to remember.
I think of Damien. The chapel. The way he pinned me to the altar as if I were something holy and damned all at once. His voice, starved and broken: Don’t you dare die on me again.
He’s going to find me. He has to.
But even that hope feels like a fraying rope. Because of that other voice—the silk soaked in gasoline. You wore white that night.
How could he know? The memory rises like smoke. A summer night. Moths beating their suicidal wings against the glass of my bedroom window. The unshakable sense of a shadow watching me. A boy? Or something worse?
Something clicks—too soft for a lock, but loud enough to send my pulse into a frenzy. I go still. The air in the room changes. Someone is here.
I hear the scrape of metal on concrete. Purposeful. Then a heavy drag.
He never left. He’s been here the whole time, perched in the dark, listening to my heart try to beat its way out of my chest. He’s treating me like a specimen.
The voice returns, right against my ear. “You remembered something, didn’t you?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. Because I did. But the memory is slippery, half-formed, a jagged piece of glass that doesn’t want to be touched.
“You don’t know what it is yet, but you will,” he says, his gloved fingers brushing the sensitive skin of my inner knee. “And when you do—when it all comes rushing back—I wonder if you’ll still scream for him… or for me.”
His touch vanishes. I hear his footsteps fade—slow, casual, utterly unconcerned. He isn’t worried about me escaping because he knows he’s already won. He planted a landmine in my head, and now he’s just waiting for the countdown to hit zero.
I stare into the blackness of the blindfold.
Even with my eyes shut, I see it. That window. The moths slamming into the glass like they were trying to warn me—or break in. Something is crawling up my spine, and it isn’t the cold. It’s the realisation that I wasn’t just watched once.
I was watched for years.
A shiver rolls through me, a primal, bone-deep memory that my brain buried for a reason.
“You wore white that night.”
A hallway. Not the chapel. Somewhere older. Flickering fluorescent lights. A door that never quite shut, with scratch marks at the base. My white dress. And behind me… footsteps.
I try to scream, but I’m back in the now. My wrists burn as I clench my fists. He’s in my head, and the worst part is that Damien is there too. Because when I think of those footsteps in the hall… I don’t know whose they were.
The stalker’s? Damien’s? Both?
My memory isn’t a line; it’s a fracture. I’m crawling across the shards on bare knees.
“Not yet,” I whisper through the blood in my mouth. Not until I remember.
I try to count my breaths. Ten… nine…
Something shifts outside the door. A soft thud.
Eight… seven… six…
I hold my breath until my lungs ache. Another sound. Louder. The sound of a world breaking open.
Five…
Then I hear it. The voice that belongs to my soul. Not the stalker. The one who broke for me.
“Let her go, you fucking coward—”
Damien. His voice is a cocktail of rage, gravel, and bleeding devotion.
But it’s already too late. The hooded man is behind me again. I feel his cold breath on the nape of my neck. His hand settles on my shoulder with terrifying possessiveness.
“It’s not time yet,” he whispers.
Then—the sharp, icy bite of a syringe. A rush of liquid fire through my veins.
And the dark swallows me whole before Damien can reach the door.