Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
This chapter is not gentle. It is the heat after the spark, the ache that lingers when devotion carves itself into the skin. Here, the line between surrender and strength blurs until it is almost unbearable.
What you will read is both intimate and dangerous, a communion of vulnerability and power. It is not absence that defines this space, but presence—fierce, consuming, inescapable. Step carefully, step willingly, and know that what marks you will not fade.
The fire is no longer waiting. It is here.
Of Ashes & Reverence
Chapter Three
Scorchmarks
The candles had burned low.
Wax pooled like blood in hollowed glass.
And still, she hadn’t let me go.
Her fingers traced constellations across my back—marks no one else would ever see, but I’d always feel. She whispered in a language that didn’t belong to this century, or this world. And I answered in moans, in gasps, in silence.
I knelt there long after her weight left my lap.
The silence between us wasn’t absence. It was worship. It was the air before lightning strikes.
She lit another cigarette with the flame of one still burning. She smoked like a queen after war, victorious and amused, watching me from the altar steps with that impossible mouth.
“I should break you,” she said.
Not as a threat. Not even as a promise.
Just an idea she was turning over like a stone in her palm.
“You already have,” I replied.
She smirked. “No, little flame. You broke yourself, the moment you chose me.”
A long drag. Smoke curled from her lips like prayer. “And gods, how I love that.”
She stood and walked to me barefoot, her steps echoing louder than they should on old stone. She lifted my chin with two fingers. Her touch didn’t tremble, but mine did.
“You think this makes you weak,” she said.
I didn’t answer.
She didn’t need me to.
Her gaze was a blade. “But tell me—what kind of strength do you think it takes to offer yourself completely?”
Silence again.
Not empty. Full.
Her hand cupped the side of my face, her thumb brushing under my eye like I was a statue she was remaking in her image. “You are stronger than they know. Even when you’re sobbing for me, crawling for me, begging to be torn apart—especially then.”
My breath hitched. Her truth always cut deeper than cruelty ever could.
She pressed her forehead to mine.
Soft. Intimate. Final.
“I could love you,” she whispered.
The words stabbed more than soothed.
I don’t know if she meant them.
I don’t think I want to know.
Because if she did, I might never survive her.
Closing Note
The scorchmarks remain long after the candles gutter out. What was given here cannot be taken back—only carried forward, deeper into flame, deeper into ruin, deeper into reverence.
Lilith and Gabriel’s bond is sharpening, moving beyond hunger into truth-telling and transformation. Each word spoken, each silence endured, is a scar that sings.
The next chapter will not soothe. It will sear. And once marked, there is no turning back.
—Rowan Evans
Of Ashes & Reverence
Chapter One | The Chapel
Enter the ruined chapel where shadows breathe and desire burns. Chapter One of “Of Ashes & Reverence” introduces Gabriel and Lilith in a hauntingly intimate, Neo-Gothic world where love, pain, and devotion intertwine.
Chapter Two | The First Spark
The first sparks of desire ignite between Lilith and Gabriel. A chapter of observation, fascination, and sacred chaos where glances and gestures become incendiary. Step into a world of shadows, fire, and devotion.
Poetry by Rowan Evans 