Chapter 32
DAMIEN
She doesn’t pull away.
And that’s somehow worse. The weight of her trust is a leaden thing, pressing into the hollowed-out cavern of my chest where a heart should be.
I watch the moon catch the silver of her tears, feeling the phantom itch of every scar I earned in the dark. Because I don’t deserve her hands on me. Not after what I’ve done. Not after what I’m still doing—dragging her back into a world of ash and bone.
But she stays.
Fingers curled over mine, pulse stuttering beneath fragile skin like a trapped bird, heart thudding in that terrified, beautiful rhythm that tells me she’s standing on the edge of something—and she hasn’t decided yet whether to jump or run.
The air between us is thick, heavy with the scent of pine needles and the iron-tang of the blood still drying on my knuckles.
I want her to run. I want her to find a life where names like mine are never whispered.
But God help me, I want her to stay. I want to grab her by the throat and shake the truth out of her—Do you remember now?
Do you remember the fucking priest? Do you remember what he made me do?
What I did to keep him from touching you again?
The silence of the woods is suffocating, a vacuum waiting for the explosion. But all I say is her name.
“Raven.”
A single syllable, but it cracks apart in my throat like glass.
She flinches. Not like she’s scared of me—no, never that—but like the sound touched something deeper than it should’ve, a dormant nerve ending buried under a decade of repression.
Like some broken shard of the past just twisted inside her lungs, slicing through whatever part of her was still convinced she imagined it all.
“I remember…” she starts. Then stops.
The wind picks up, rattling the skeletal branches above us. She shakes her head like she can’t get the memory to focus, her eyes darting toward the tree line where the shadows are densest.
Then whispers, “No. I almost remember.”
Almost.
That word slices me to pieces. It’s the jagged edge of a knife that refuses to go all the way in. I should let it go. Should leave her there, tangled in the edge of something half-buried, let her brain protect her the way it always has, wrapped in the mercy of amnesia. But I can’t. Not anymore.
Because River’s back. I saw the look in his eyes in that chapel—the look of a man who has been tending a garden of vengeance. And if she doesn’t remember soon… he’ll take her from me. He’ll take everything.
“You asked me why I came back,” I say again, slower now, my voice dropping to a gravelly rasp that matches the crunch of the earth beneath our boots. “But that’s not the real question, is it?”
She looks up at me. Silent. Still. The world around us seems to shrink until there is nothing left but the heat of our breathing. I step closer, not touching her, just close enough to let her feel the static of my presence—that thing between us neither of us ever had words for.
“The real question is why I left.”
Her eyes flicker. Some shadow flashes behind them, a dark shape moving beneath the surface of a frozen lake. I see it. Feel it. The flick of a match just before the flame. The moment the trapdoor opens and you don’t fall—you remember falling.
“You didn’t,” she says, her voice trembling like it’s struggling to hold onto a lie. “You never would’ve—”
“I had to.”
My voice breaks. I don’t care. The poise I’ve spent years building is sloughing off like dead skin. I step closer. And this time, I touch her. Fingers ghosting up her ribs, stopping just beneath her jaw. I tilt her chin until she’s looking at me like I’m the last thing she’ll ever see.
Maybe I am.
“There was a boy,” I say, the words scraping out of me. “Do you remember him? A quiet place. A floor covered in dust. A prayer whispered into the dark.”
She freezes. Breath caught. Eyes wide and locked on mine, reflecting the madness I’ve been carrying since I was fifteen.
“Your knees bled that day,” I whisper, the memory rising up like a tide of oil.
“And you didn’t cry. Not once. You sat there, holding your fucking breath like that could protect you from the sound of his footsteps.
But I was already there. I’d already picked the lock. Already told him—take me instead.”
Silence.
A heavy, agonising stretch of time where the forest seems to lean in to hear. And then—the tiniest gasp.
She stumbles back like I’ve struck her, her heels catching on the roots of an ancient oak. Hands clutched to her stomach like she’s been gutted.
“Oh my god.”
One step. Two. Her back hits the rough bark of the tree. Her breath comes ragged, coming out in white puffs against the cold night air. And I follow. Slowly. Gently. Like a predator who doesn’t want to spook the prey before the final blow. I don’t touch her again. But I say what needs to be said.
“He picked me,” I murmur, the reality of it settling between us like a corpse. “And I let him. And I’d do it again.”
“No.” Her voice cracks, a high, thin sound of despair. “No, I—I never knew—”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides, my nails biting into the calloused skin of my palms.
“He said he wanted you next. I couldn’t let him. So I made him need me more. I let him… do things. I played the part. I let him believe I liked it. And when he tried to hurt you again—I fucking burned him.”
She makes a choked sound. Half sob. Half scream. The sound of a girl breaking under the weight of a debt she never asked for. She sinks down the wall—the tree—her knees folding under her like her body can’t hold up the weight of the truth.
And I follow her to the floor. To the dirt.
No distance now. No air. Just us, two broken things in the middle of a dark wood. Us and a truth we’ve both been bleeding from for years.
“I didn’t come back for closure, Raven,” I say, my voice low and raw and bloody. “I came back because I’m not done. Not with you. Not with him. And not with River.”
She lifts her head at the name. Eyes burning with a sudden, sharp lucidity that makes me flinch.
And I know, in that moment—she remembers more than she’s saying.
Good. Let it come. Let it break her. Because I’ll be here when it does. I’ll be the one to gather the splinters.