Chapter 29
RIVER
She looked at me. Finally.
All those years in the dark, and it only took a single second of eye contact to make every silent hour worth it.
I used to wonder if the closet would swallow me whole.
If the priest would find me. If she’d hear my ragged breath behind the coats and cry out.
But she didn’t. She just stood there—small, shaking, and silent—like we shared a secret neither of us was old enough to understand.
She doesn’t even know what she gave me that day. A purpose. A name. A reason to outlast the hell we were both drowning in.
And now? Now she looks at me like she’s finally seen the sun. Something behind her ribs remembers me—not fully, not yet—but it’s enough to feed the hunger I’ve been nursing like a religion.
I lean back against the chapel wall, blood still hot on my lip.
My tongue darts out to taste it like a drop of communion wine.
Across the room, Damien’s breath is a ragged, broken thing, his chest heaving as if he’s trying to keep his soul from escaping.
He wants to come for me again. I can see it in the way his knuckles are split.
But he won’t. Not tonight. Not now that he knows he’s not the only one who bleeds for her.
“She remembers,” I murmur, watching the way Raven instinctively curls into his side even while her eyes stay locked on mine. “Maybe not everything. But enough.”
“Stay away from her,” Damien says. The words are low, venomous, a predator marking territory that was never his to keep.
“She’s not yours.” I smile slowly, letting the jagged edges of my teeth show. “You just borrowed her while I healed.”
He moves. Fast. But I’ve spent a decade training for this exact collision. The blade is at his throat before he can even blink. It’s a small thing—pretty, old, and sharp enough to split a hair. The same one I used to cut out the priest’s tongue before I let the fire take him.
Damien doesn’t flinch. He just stares at me with those eyes that think they’ve seen the worst of the world. He’s wrong.
“I will kill you,” he says.
“You already tried,” I whisper, leaning in until the blade kisses his skin. “Didn’t stick.”
I step closer, letting the metal bite just enough to draw a bead of red. “Tell me something, Damien,” I ask softly. “Did she beg for you the way she used to pray for me?”
He growls—a deep, visceral sound that satisfies something dark in my gut. It’s glorious. That little flicker of jealousy. That twist of possessiveness. We’re both gods in this ruined temple, and she is the only altar that matters.
I shift my gaze to her, speaking only to her now.
“They’ll lie to you, little doll,” I say, my voice smoothing into something reverent.
“They’ll try to twist your memories into something clean, something manageable.
But I was there. In the dark. When you cried.
When he hurt you. When you curled into yourself and whispered for someone—anyone—to save you. ”
I tap the flat of the blade to my own chest, right over my heart.
“It was me.”
Her lips part, a soft exhale of disbelief. Damien reaches for her, a protective reflex, but I shake my head slowly. The power has shifted. The vacuum of the past is pulling us all in.
“She gets to decide,” I say.
A beat. A breath. The chapel feels like it’s holding its collective breath.
I sheath the blade with a sharp clack and step back into the shadows, the stained glass light washing over me in shades of martyr-red and deep violet. I smile as I disappear into the gloom I was born in.
Because I know something they don’t. This isn’t the climax. This is just the invitation. And I’ve waited long enough to dance.