The late morning sunlight filtered through the ancient oak trees lining Magnolia Street, casting dappled shadows that danced across Eden Rae Harrow's porcelain skin as she climbed the weathered stone steps of Saint Lillian's Chapel. The heat was already oppressive despite the early hour, typical of a Georgia summer that clung to everything like a desperate prayer. Her pristine white dress—hand-sewn by her mother with pearl buttons and delicate lace trim—trailed behind her, the hem whispering against the rusty red dust that perpetually coated the cracked sidewalk. The fabric was cotton, modest and pure, with sleeves that reached her wrists and a neckline that revealed nothing but the hollow of her throat.
Her hair, the warm golden color of wheat at dusk, had been carefully arranged that morning into soft waves that cascaded past her shoulders. The front pieces were tucked behind her ears with practiced precision, framing a face still soft with the remnants of childhood—high cheekbones that would sharpen with age, full lips that rarely spoke out of turn, and eyes the color of summer honey that had learned to hide their curiosity behind a veil of practiced innocence.
Eden paused on the chapel's threshold, her hand resting on the heavy oak door that had welcomed sinners and saints for over a century. She tilted her face toward the sun, drinking in its warmth, letting the golden rays seep into her bones like a benediction. For just a moment, she allowed herself to exist outside the fishbowl of expectations, outside the weight of being Pastor Emmett Harrow's only daughter.
The moment shattered as she pushed open the door.
The crowded church—every pew packed with the faithful and the fearful—swiveled in unison to watch her enter. Being the pastor's daughter meant living under a microscope where every gesture was dissected, every silence weighed and measured against an impossible standard of perfection. The familiar scent of old wood, melting candle wax, and her grandmother's rose perfume enveloped her as dozens of eyes tracked her movement down the center aisle.
Eden swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry, and offered her practiced smile to the sea of familiar faces. Mrs. Henderson from the flower shop, her arthritic hands clutching a worn Bible. The Caldwell family, all seven children scrubbed clean and sitting in perfect silence. Some were lifelong congregants who had watched Eden take her first steps in these very aisles; others were wide-eyed newcomers drawn by her father's reputation as a fire-and-brimstone preacher who could save souls and fill collection plates with equal fervor.
The weight of their collective gaze pressed against her shoulders like invisible hands. She quickened her pace, her white Mary Jane shoes clicking against the polished hardwood floors.
In Saint Lillian, a town where salvation was treated like a business transaction and judgment served as the primary currency, Eden had learned early that appearances were everything. She slid into the front pew beside her mother, the familiar creak of old wood announcing her arrival to anyone who might have missed her entrance.
Marsha Harrow was a woman who spoke rarely but commanded effortlessly. At forty-two, she possessed an ethereal beauty that seemed untouched by time or worry—jade eyes that could freeze a man's soul or warm it depending on her mood, and straw-colored hair that she wore in an elegant chignon secured with her grandmother's pearl pins. She had been the town beauty before marriage tethered her to the pulpit, and Pastor Emmett Harrow had been utterly, completely hers from the moment they'd met at a church social twenty years ago.
Marsha's perfectly manicured hand settled on Eden's shoulder, her touch light but possessive. She leaned close, her breath warm against her daughter's ear, carrying the faint scent of mint and the lavender soap she made herself.
"Perfect," she whispered, the single word carrying the weight of a benediction and a warning. It was praise and pressure wrapped in silk, a reminder that perfection wasn't just expected—it was required.
When the time came for the youth choir to perform, Eden rose with fluid grace, her movements choreographed by years of practice. Her voice, clear and pure as mountain spring water, cut through the chapel's humid air like a blade through silk. As the Youth Choir's lead soprano, she understood that every note was a performance—not for God, despite what the hymnal claimed, but for them. For the congregation that watched her with hungry eyes, waiting for her to stumble, to prove she was human after all.
The crowd murmured their approval, a low hum of appreciation that she pretended not to hear. But their whispers clung to her like spider webs—sweet tea compliments laced with honeysuckle piety, each word designed to keep her trapped in their vision of what a pastor's daughter should be.
Then she saw him.
Rowan "Ro" Thorne lounged in the back pew like a shadow that had somehow gained substance inside a confession box. His ice-blue eyes—the color of winter mornings and broken promises—burned into hers across the crowded chapel. He was the town's cautionary tale made flesh, dressed in fresh knuckle bruises and the lingering aura of last night's sins. His dark hair, nearly black as coal tar, hung low across his forehead as if he were trying to hide a face that mothers crossed themselves to avoid.
At eighteen, Rowan Thorne was everything mothers warned their daughters about—sharp-jawed, sharp-tongued, and born under what the old women called "a bad sign." He looked like he'd been carved from shadows and cigarette smoke, assembled from spare parts of rebellion and wrapped in a leather jacket that had seen better decades. His hair was perpetually messy, as if he'd just rolled out of someone else's bed, and his jaw was always clenched like he was holding something back—anger, laughter, maybe a confession that would burn the chapel down.
In Saint Lillian, where holiness served as the town's primary currency, Rowan Thorne was spiritually bankrupt. His family name carried more curse than heritage, tied to whispered sins and blood-soaked rumors that stretched back three generations. The Thornes were drinkers, fighters, and heartbreakers—a family tree that bore only bitter fruit.
He skipped Mass more often than he attended, cut classes like he was paid for it, and seemed to always be lurking somewhere he shouldn't be—behind the school gymnasium with a cigarette between his lips, outside Murphy's Bar despite being underage, or in the cemetery at midnight doing God only knew what.
Everyone in town held the same opinion about Rowan Thorne, and they'd share it freely if you asked: He drank too much, fought too hard, and smiled like sin itself had learned to walk upright. He was trouble in worn denim and scuffed boots, a walking disaster that somehow managed to look like a fallen angel.
Eden was puzzled to see him there, considering the last she'd heard, he'd skipped town entirely. For weeks, he'd been like a ghost—no one had seen or heard from him, and the rumors had grown wild in his absence. Some said he'd finally gone too far and was hiding from the law. Others whispered he'd been found dead in a ditch somewhere outside county lines. A few optimists hoped he'd simply had the good sense to disappear forever.
That was until he'd stepped late into today's service, materializing like smoke through the chapel's back doors.
His split knuckles, raw and angry-looking, hinted at last night's brawl—a fight she'd heard whispered about in the church bathroom before service. Rumor claimed he'd put Tommy Brennan in the hospital, sent him there with a broken nose and a concussion that would keep him seeing double for weeks. She'd assumed it was all lies and exaggeration, considering Rowan was supposed to be dead, missing, or just another disappearing act in a long line of Thorne family vanishing tricks.
But there he sat, very much alive and radiating menace. His arms were folded across his chest, his broad shoulders slouched in a posture that screamed defiance. Most shocking of all, a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth—an unlit Marlboro Red that he rolled between his lips like a threat. The audacity of bringing tobacco into God's house made Eden's nose wrinkle in disgust.
She hated him. Hated everything he represented, everything he was, everything he wasn't. He was chaos where she was order, darkness where she was light. His life was flooded with cheap whiskey and senseless violence, while hers was built on prayer and purpose.
There was something fundamentally rotten about Rowan Thorne—something festering just beneath his smugly handsome face like fruit left too long in the sun. His dark hair framed his features like he was auditioning for the role of tragic hero, but Eden knew better. He wasn't tragic. He was trouble. Pure, undiluted trouble.
Born into a family of drunks and petty criminals, raised on a steady diet of violence and spite, Rowan moved through Saint Lillian like a devil dressed for detention. He never looked sorry for the chaos he caused. Never looked scared of the consequences. Just perpetually bored, bitter, and always seconds away from lighting a match and watching the world burn.
He was a parasite, Eden decided, feeding off the fear and gossip he generated. Everyone else tiptoed around him like he was a loaded gun, but not her. She saw straight through his carefully constructed facade. His charm was counterfeit, mass-produced and hollow. His trademark smirk was a weapon designed to disarm and destroy. And the way he looked at her—lazy, amused, like he knew she'd rather be anywhere else—made her want to claw his eyes out with her perfectly manicured nails.
He didn't belong in her town. Not in her church. Not breathing her air.
God help her, because she'd rather die than ever need anything from Rowan Thorne.
Rowan Thorne was a wildfire in a town of pressed Sunday suits and starched moral fiber. Born to drunkards and thieves, he moved through Saint Lillian like a living blasphemy—smirking at hymns, sneering at prayers, treating the sacred like a joke only he understood. Rumors followed him like stray dogs: hospitalized boys, mysterious disappearances, a mouth full of matches and a heart full of gasoline.
Yet here he was, bold as brass and twice as tarnished, that unlit cigarette dangling from his lips like a challenge to God himself. Eden's throat tightened with a mixture of disgust and something else she refused to name. He didn't belong—not in her church, not in her carefully ordered world, not in her line of sight.
God keep her from ever needing him.
"My daughter's voice is truly a gift from the Almighty," her father boomed from the pulpit, his pride serving as a spotlight that made Eden want to disappear into the floorboards. Pastor Emmett Harrow was a man who commanded attention—six feet tall with silver-streaked hair and a voice that could shake the rafters when he preached about hellfire and damnation.
Eden retreated into herself, clutching the leather-bound hymnal until her knuckles bleached white as bone. She could feel the congregation's eyes on her, their expectations pressing down like a physical weight.
Her father's sermon began to drone—something about time's passage, Eden's journey from childhood to young womanhood, the Lord's mysterious intentions for his faithful servants. She smiled on cue, a porcelain doll perched on a pedestal, beautiful and breakable.
The rules that governed her life had become her bones, the framework that held her together:
Curfew at 8:30 on weeknights, 10:00 on weekends if Lila begged hard enough and her father was feeling generous. No alcohol, no boys, no secrets that couldn't be shared in confession. White dresses, lowered eyes, and a soul scrubbed spotless as fresh snow. Church every Sunday, youth group every Wednesday, Bible study every Friday night.
Then—like an answer to prayers she'd been too afraid to voice—Micah Sutton approached.
The pastor's golden acolyte moved with quiet grace, taking the hymnal from her hands with fingers that brushed hers like communion wafers—sacred, reverent, electric. At seventeen, Micah was Saint Lillian's stained-glass saint: flawless, untouchable, and seemingly carved from marble by angels themselves.
Eden's crush on him ached like a bruise that wouldn't heal, a constant throb beneath her ribs that she carried everywhere. She'd been harboring these feelings for as long as she could remember, watching him from afar like he was something holy she wasn't worthy to touch.
Micah Sutton was the golden boy of Saint Lillian—clean-cut, soft-spoken, and painfully, impossibly good. With his wheat-blond hair always neatly combed, his spotless choir robe pressed to perfection, and a voice that sounded like forgiveness itself, he moved through the world like a living hymn. He attended youth group every Tuesday without fail, helped elderly parishioners to their cars after service, and had never been seen without a smile that could warm the coldest heart.
To Eden Rae, he represented everything she was supposed to want in a future husband. Gentle hands that passed out communion wafers with reverent care. A steady, golden smile that made even the hardest pews feel comfortable. He was kind to everyone—even Rowan Thorne, which was more Christian charity than most could manage.
But there was something about Micah that felt untouchable, like a stained-glass window: beautiful, holy, inspiring... and impossible to reach without shattering something precious in the attempt.
She smiled at him as she handed over the hymnal, their fingers lingering for just a moment longer than necessary, before turning to sit down with heat blooming in her cheeks.
"As the school year comes to a close and summer stretches before us like an open book," her father continued, his rich Southern accent making even the mundane sound profound, "it's time we start thinking about the things that truly matter in this life and the next. My daughter—" He gestured toward Eden with obvious pride, "will be preparing to start her junior year of high school come fall. I'm sure you all remember when she was just a little thing, no higher than my knee, running around these very pews during fellowship hour."
Eden sank deeper into her seat, her cheeks burning with embarrassment as gentle laughter rippled through the congregation. Her father certainly knew how to capture everyone's attention, how to make her feel simultaneously cherished and exposed.
He finished his sermon with reflections on setting daily intentions with the Lord in mind, on living each moment as if Christ himself were watching. Eden kept her smile wide and her eyes soft, just as she had been taught since childhood. It made her feel good to please her father, to see that look of pride and satisfaction in his eyes.
Their family life was built on routine and ritual. They shared supper together every evening at precisely six o'clock, and breakfast every morning at seven. Each day began and ended with a prayer of thanksgiving, and Eden read her devotional before drifting off to sleep each night, her mother's handwritten prayers tucked between the pages like pressed flowers.
Eden knew right from wrong with the certainty of someone who had never been allowed to explore the gray areas between. She was about as innocent as a newborn doe, having spent the school year focused entirely on her studies and her church duties. She planned to spend the summer assisting her father with his chapel responsibilities—organizing the church library, helping with vacation Bible school, visiting shut-ins with her mother.
Being an only child meant she'd spent most of her seventeen years as the apple of her parents' eyes, their golden child who could do no wrong. She understood with crystal clarity that if she ever broke any of the rules her father had established, she would be damned to eternal disappointment—both his and the Lord's.
Pastor Emmett Harrow was one of the most influential men in Saint Lillian, a town small enough that everyone knew everything about everybody, where skipping church on Sunday was practically a criminal offense. There were no secrets here, no sins that stayed buried, no lies that didn't eventually surface. Just a community of people who loved the Lord and weren't shy about making sure their neighbors did the same.
Eden's father had established his strict boundaries for her the moment she'd begun blossoming into womanhood, when her body started changing and boys began looking at her differently. The rules were non-negotiable: She was never to consume alcohol, for that would only lead to rash and unruly decisions that could destroy her reputation and her soul. She was to save herself for marriage—no man wanted a soiled woman for a wife, and purity was a gift that could only be given once. She would arrive at church on time every Sunday, dressed in appropriate attire that honored God and respected herself. No cleavage, no short skirts, no makeup that made her look like she was advertising something she shouldn't be selling.
Eden had never dared to break those rules. She'd never even had a boyfriend, though there were times when she longed for the idea that a godly man might love her, and together they could dedicate their lives to Christ and raise children in the faith.
Her best friend Lila James was a different story entirely.
Lila was the kind of girl Saint Lillian liked to pretend didn't exist—a walking contradiction in a town that preferred its morality black and white. With her chipped black nail polish, skirts that were always an inch too short for church, and an attitude that could cut glass, Lila was rebellion wrapped in red lipstick and tied with a bow made of pure defiance.
Her dark curls were a permanent mess that somehow looked intentional, and her eyes were sharp and knowing, like she'd already read the ending of everyone's story and hadn't liked what she'd found. Raised by her eccentric aunt above the florist shop after her parents died in a car accident when she was twelve, Lila had been sneaking out of windows and into trouble for as long as Eden had known her.
She had an uncanny ability to climb through Eden's bedroom window like a ghost, always smelling of cigarette smoke, stolen whiskey, and half-finished confessions. Lila talked fast, sinned faster, and made every room feel like it might spontaneously combust if she laughed too hard. She didn't pray unless someone was dying, didn't cry unless she was drunk, and possessed an almost supernatural ability to sniff out secrets that others tried to keep buried.
Where Eden was restraint and careful consideration, Lila was pure recklessness and impulse. She was fiercely loyal in a way that bordered on violence—would help Eden bury a body without asking questions, though she'd complain about getting dirt under her nails the entire time.
In a town full of ghosts and judgment, Lila James was the girl who lit matches and dared the world to watch her burn.
Suddenly, a scream cut through the prayers like a knife through silk, sharp and terrible and wrong. The sound came from outside, piercing the chapel's stained-glass serenity and turning every head toward the windows. One by one, the congregation began to flood toward the doors, their Sunday composure cracking as they pushed and stumbled over each other to see what had caused such a sound.
Eden watched in confusion as people fell to their knees on the chapel steps, their faces twisted in anguish and horror. She could hear sobbing, someone retching, the sound of Mrs. Henderson's rosary beads clicking frantically as she prayed in rapid-fire Spanish.
"Daddy, what's going on?" Eden asked, trying to peer over her father's broad shoulder as he moved toward the door with the rest of the congregation.
Pastor Harrow's face had gone pale as communion wafers, his usual commanding presence shaken. He turned and placed both hands on Eden's shoulders, his grip firm enough to bruise.
"Don't look, sweetheart," he said, and there was something in his voice she'd never heard before—fear, raw and undisguised. "Stay here with your mother."
But Eden had never been good at following orders when her curiosity was aroused. She brushed past him, ignoring his protests, and pushed through the crowd of horrified parishioners until she could see what had reduced her father to a frightened man.
Her jaw dropped open, and the hymnal she'd been clutching fell from nerveless fingers to clatter on the stone steps.
Beneath the weathered angel statue that had watched over Saint Lillian's cemetery for over a century, a girl lay sprawled like a broken doll. She couldn't have been more than sixteen, with long blonde hair that spilled down the sides of the concrete base like liquid gold. Her mouth was open wide as if she'd died screaming, and her eyes—dear God, her eyes—were a glossy, milky white that reflected the morning sun like marbles.
But it wasn't the blood that Eden noticed first, though there was plenty of it, dark and thick and still wet in the summer heat. It wasn't even the way the girl was positioned, arms spread wide like she was embracing death itself.
It was the words.
Carved into her pale stomach with something cruel and jagged, the flesh peeled open like parchment, letters gouged deep enough to expose the white of bone beneath:
"Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin."
Psalm 51:2—every letter meticulously carved, every word a testament to someone's twisted devotion. The biblical verse was etched into her skin with the precision of a master craftsman, each line perfectly straight, each curve deliberate and purposeful.
This wasn't the work of a madman in the grip of sudden rage. This wasn't panic or passion or a moment of lost control.
This was scripture made flesh.
This was ritual.
This was a sermon written in blood and delivered with surgical precision.
The angel statue above the girl seemed to weep tears of rust and rainwater, its stone face turned toward heaven in eternal supplication. White lilies—the symbol of purity and resurrection—had been carefully arranged around the body like some sick offering to a god that demanded blood sacrifice.
Eden's stomach lurched, bile rising in her throat as the full horror of the scene sank in. Someone had turned murder into worship, had made this girl's death into a twisted communion with the divine.
As her mother's hands found her shoulders and dragged her away from the nightmare tableau, Eden caught sight of Rowan Thorne standing at the edge of the crowd. While everyone else wept and prayed and crossed themselves, he simply watched with those ice-blue eyes, that unlit cigarette still dangling from his lips.
For just a moment, their gazes met across the chaos, and Eden saw something flicker in his expression—not shock or horror like everyone else, but something that looked almost like recognition.
Then her mother was pulling her toward their car, away from the yellow tape that was already being strung around the cemetery, away from the sirens that were beginning to wail in the distance, away from the angel that would never look innocent again.
As they drove home in stunned silence, Eden pressed her face to the window and watched the chapel grow smaller behind them. The morning sun that had felt so warm and welcoming just an hour ago now seemed harsh and unforgiving, casting everything in sharp relief.
Her world of rules and rituals, of Sunday dresses and evening prayers, had cracked wide open like an egg dropped on stone.
And somewhere in the shadows between the sacred and the profane, the devil was laughing.
The girl beneath the angel had been Jenny Morrison, Eden would learn later. Sixteen years old, a junior at Saint Lillian High, a girl who sang in the youth choir and helped her grandmother with the church flowers every Saturday.
A girl who had been as pure and innocent as Eden herself.
Until someone decided to wash her sins away with blood and scripture, turning her body into a message that the whole town would be forced to read.
As Eden lay in her bed that night, staring at the ceiling while her parents whispered frantically in the kitchen below, she couldn't shake the image of those milky white eyes, couldn't stop thinking about the careful precision of those carved words.
Someone in Saint Lillian—someone who knew scripture well enough to quote it from memory—had decided to play God.