Chapter 27
RIVER
She doesn’t scream anymore. Not in the way girls usually do.
Not the shrill, decorative panic of someone trying to survive.
Not the messy, beautiful sound of someone who still believes they can.
No, Raven’s screams are buried now—folded neat and quiet beneath her ribs, like a secret she’s keeping from the world.
She learned early that silence buys more time than begging ever did.
I watch her from the shadows of the choir loft, perched where the angels have long since rotted out of the leaded glass. The candles I lit for her earlier have almost guttered out, soft wax puddling beneath iron holders like a melted, unanswered prayer.
She’s sleeping. Or pretending to. Curled on the velvet pew where I laid her after her last fall.
There’s blood on her thigh and bruises on her hips—the calligraphy of a history she’s too terrified to read.
Behind her lashes, a tiny sliver of the girl she used to be still flickers, stubborn and dying.
She always tried so hard to be good. Even when no one ever told her what that meant. Even when the man with the white collar used his sermons like a noose, tightening the knot of obedience until she called it love.
I wonder if she remembers me. Not like this—not the hood, the gloves, the predator.
But the boy who sat three pews back, quiet and watching.
The boy who never spoke a word but always noticed the way she flinched when the priest touched her shoulder after communion.
The boy who kept the moth with the broken wings because it reminded him of her.
She doesn’t, of course. Raven’s memory is a stitched-up thing. Torn, rewoven, and stitched again. I’ve spent years learning the gaps, threading myself into the empty spaces, becoming everything she chose to forget.
They think I’m the ghost of the priest. And that’s the beauty of it. Because they don’t realise the priest died screaming. I made sure of it. I made sure he never touched her again.
But I let Damien think he did. I let Damien burn the wrong bones. Because it was always me. Me who watched. Me who waited. Me who cut out the rot and buried it beneath the floorboards of a church that doesn’t know the meaning of forgiveness.
And now she’s here. Mine again.
A sob breaks from her lips in her sleep, and I’m already halfway down the spiral staircase before I realise I’ve moved.
The candlelight paints her skin in holy gold.
I kneel beside her, my heart a dull, heavy thud.
I don’t speak. She doesn’t wake. My fingers hover just above the pulse point of her throat. Not to hurt. To remember.
She belongs here—between prayers and punishments, between me and the ruin I’ll make of her. And when she finally remembers who I am? She’ll beg to forget all over again.
She stirs. Not all the way, just a twitch of her fingers against the velvet, a faint wince tugging at her brow. Or maybe it’s not a nightmare at all. Maybe it’s just me.
She always felt me first, even when she didn’t know she was being watched. Some part of her always sensed that the air had teeth, that the shadows bent around her body just a little too tightly.
I lean closer, just enough for the heat of my breath to brush her cheek. There’s a reverence to restraint. A holiness in denial. It’s the waiting that makes it sacred, and I’ve waited half a lifetime.
She flinches. Her eyes snap open, pupils blown wide and wet. For a split second, she’s underwater. Then—she jolts upright. She stumbles back against the altar rail, hands scraping along the stone, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps.
She doesn’t scream. She just stares into the dark, trying to piece the world back together.
“What do you want from me?” she rasps. Her voice is like gravel, dragged over too many sleepless nights.
I don’t answer. She isn’t ready for the truth, and I’m not ready to give it. I want her desperate. I want her broken open in the exact shape of me. But right now, she’s still too whole, stitched together by memories that lie to her.
“I thought…” she swallows hard, blinking against the gloom. “I thought you were someone else.”
A seed of doubt cracks through her concrete reality. I tilt my head, watching her like I used to from the choir loft. Quiet. Patient. Starving.
“You still think this is about him,” I say softly, the modulator making my voice a hollow rasp. “You think the monster you remember is the one who came back for you.”
She doesn’t reply, but I see the muscle tick in her jaw. Her legs are trembling, still shaky from the sedative I gave her, from the way I used her body to write scripture neither of us can erase.
“You’re wrong,” she says, but the words crack down the middle.
I smile. Just a little. Lies always taste better when they’re whispered with conviction. “I’m the only one who’s ever truly seen you. Even he doesn’t know what you are. But I do. I always have.”
She shudders—not from fear, but from the sick twist of recognition she doesn’t want to name. Deep down, she knows I’m not lying. She just doesn’t remember why.
I hear him before I see him. The heavy creak of the chapel door. The sharp, rhythmic echo of a boot over stone.
I smile. It was always going to end this way.
Raven freezes, her wide, frightened eyes snapping toward the darkness like she’s caught between two different devils. I don’t move. I let him come. I let the chaos catch up.
Damien bursts through the shadows, gun drawn, face wild. He’s soaked to the bone from the rain, looking like something unhinged and starving. When his gaze lands on me, he stops breathing.
“Get the fuck away from her.” His voice is a razor-edge across the nave.
Raven scrambles behind an altar column, her hand pressed to her chest. I raise my hands slowly. Mocking. Casual.
“Relax,” I murmur. “I didn’t break her. Yet.”
Damien lunges. I brace for the impact, but he doesn’t tackle me. He reaches out and rips the hood back.
The dusty, golden light of the remaining candles hits my face for the first time in years. The stained glass throws blood-red streaks across my mouth. Damien staggers back a half-step, his silence louder than a gunshot.
Raven stares. Her lips part. She takes a trembling step forward, trying to make the ghost align with the man. She looks at my mouth. My eyes. The scar just beneath my jaw.
And then—
“…River?”
The name is a soft, disbelieving exhale.
And the look on Damien’s face? Priceless. He didn’t just lose her; he realised he never really had her to begin with.