I lean back, chest rising and falling, my jaw clenched. I run a hand through my hair, trying to calm the fury still curling in my gut.
“Still not enough?” Cassiel asks softly, his voice hoarse.
I don’t answer right away. I just stare at the fire, the taste of obsession still thick on my tongue. “No.”
Bastion chuckles from the couch, voice low and lazy. “Maybe your little church girl can fix that.”
I glare at him. But the thought has already taken root. And it’s not going anywhere.
FOUR
The air inside the church is wrong.
Thick. Dense. It clings to my skin like a second layer of flesh, too hot and too cold all at once. I don’t remember the doors. I don’t remember walking inside. But I’m here. And the walls breathe like they’ve been waiting for me.
Candles burn along the altar, but their flames are too still—unnaturally steady, like glass captured mid-flicker. The light they cast is harsh, not soft. Every shadow it touches stretches far too long, warping into shapes that feel carved from fever dreams—teeth where there should be pillars. Horns where there should be arches. Eyes where there should be none at all.
And him.
He stands at the front of the church, waiting for me.
He wears black. The collar at his throat is crisp, white, pure. But nothing else about him is. That smirk curled across his mouth is blasphemy, like sin carved into the shape of lips. His eyes catch the candlelight, violet and glowing. Hungry.
I don’t know how I got to my knees, only that I’m there.
Kneeling.
My thighs ache. My palms rest awkwardly on the tops of them, trembling. The stone beneath me is too smooth—eerily smooth—until a jagged splinter jabs into my skin and I flinch. Pain blooms sharp and immediate, grounding. Real. And somehow… not.
He doesn’t move. He just watches.
And when his eyes land on me, it isn’t passive. It isn’t polite. He consumes. As if the very act of seeing me is a form of possession.
"You came to confess, didn’t you, little lamb?"
The nickname wraps tight around my throat, coiled like barbed wire dipped in honey. A shudder crawls down my spine and settles low, coiling hot in my belly.
I should run. I should stand. I should pray.
But I don’t. Because I’m still kneeling.
And when he moves toward me, fingers outstretched, I don’t flinch.
His touch grazes my shoulder, then slips lower, trailing across my collarbone. His fingertips are impossibly warm, as if dipped in flame. And the moment they brush my skin?—
The church shatters.
Not cracks. Not shakes.Ruptures.
The altar peels back like flesh stripped from bone. The pews crumble, splinter, reforge—wood groaning into unnatural shapes. The walls shrink in. The candles vanish. Darkness swallows light, and silence rushes in with a scream played in reverse.
And I’m no longer kneeling at the altar.
I’m in a box. Tight. Wooden. Breathing.
A confessional.
The shift is seamless, seamless and impossible. I never stood, never walked. But the space is different. Smaller. Closer. Every edge presses against me. The walls creak with breath.
