Night settled over the mansion like a benediction withheld.

The air was heavy with candle smoke and the faint perfume of incense that Amber had lit herself—an act of contrition, of ritual habit.

The others had left. The new council's echo still clung to the hall: the scrape of chairs, the murmur of disbelief, the scent of ambition.

Aiden stood at the long window, half in shadow, half in the shimmer of moonlight that poured through the glass like melted silver.

He had dismissed them all with that quiet, deliberate tone that promised control, that promised consequence. But when the door shut behind the last of them, when the hush fell fully, he remained still, watching the night beyond the glass.... thinking.

The city below was a sea of sleeping roofs. Lanterns trembled in the wind. Somewhere, a church bell struck the hour—a hollow, mournful note that seemed to ask who among you dares to pray?

Amber was already kneeling by the balcony rail, head bowed, hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles were pale crescents against the dark of her robe.

Her green eyes were closed, her lips moving in silent confession. The words did not carry; they trembled in the air between her and her god.

Aiden did not speak at first. He watched the soft rise and fall of her shoulders, the tremor in her breath. The moonlight made a halo of her hair—gold against the black of night—and he thought, so this is what sanctity looks like when it doubts itself.

He had seen many kneel before gods and men alike. But this kneeling—this trembling—was different. Amber's faith was not a fortress. It was a wound still trying to heal. A wound he knew he inflicted.

He stepped forward once, the floor whispering under his boots. She did not turn. He waited until she finished the prayer, until the last whispered forgive me dissolved into the cold air. Then, softly

"Does He ever answer you, Amber?"

Her eyes opened. Green, wide, uncertain. "No...He always listens," she said, voice small but firm. "That is enough."

"haaaa....Listening is not the same as answering, my love. "

Her lips pressed together. "It is when the answer is silence, Aiden."

Aiden smiled—barely, a ghost of a smile. "You said, my silence towards you was cruelty...Then perhaps silence is His cruelty."

She looked away, back to the night. The wind stirred her hair, lifting strands that brushed his sleeve. "Aiden, I love you, but Love and faith is different....and You do not understand faith."

"ohh...I understand, I understand it well, its just hunger," he scoffed. "And faith is only another name for it."

Arina paused at the foot of the stairway. She had been halfway to the door, her cloak already gathered in one hand, when something in Aiden's stillness caught her attention.

He was not speaking with the tone of command she knew so well, nor the teasing warmth that had often curled around his words. This voice—low, measured, intimate—belonged to another man entirely.

She hesitated, one boot on the first step, listening.

From where she stood she could see the faint glow spilling from the balcony. Amber knelt in prayer. Aiden stood beside her like a shadow grown sentient, his face unreadable in the dim light. The air between them shimmered—tension thick enough to feel on her skin.

'What are you doing, Aiden?' she thought.

' And why can't I look away?'

Amber rose slowly from her knees. The motion was graceful but uncertain, like someone stepping onto a frozen lake, unsure whether it would hold. The wind had turned colder. It brushed against her robe, against her hair, and in its chill she felt the weight of her vows pressing down like a chain of ice.

"You should rest," she said, not meeting his gaze. "Tomorrow the work begins. What you ask of the Church, what you ask of m—"

"What I ask," Aiden interrupted softly, "is nothing more than truth."

"You speak of corruption as if you do not use it." she said, facing his golden eyes.

He chuckled, a sound without joy. "Of course I use it. The world is built on corruption, Amber. Gold, prayer, desire—choose your poison. I merely know mine." he replied, coming closer.

She turned at that, eyes sharp now. "And what is your poison, Lord.....Aiden?"

"You," he said simply, coming ever more closer, his hand whispering around her waist.

The word landed like a spark in dry grass.

Feeling his warm hands around her, Amber flinched—not visibly, but inwardly, where faith and fear met. "Aiden...Do not jest about such things."

"Do I look as if I am jesting?" he murmured, his other hand pulsing her waist.

For a moment they stared at each other—her eyes bright with alarm, his with something , deeper, melting within his golden gaze and heart beating scent.

Arina crept up another step. She told herself it was curiosity, not jealousy. She told herself she only wanted to understand the man she had contracted her life with, binding their soul as one—the one whose plans already tangled half the empire.

But as she reached the landing and caught sight of them through the half-open balcony door, something tightened in her chest.

Aiden's head was bowed close to Amber's. The wind carried only fragments of their voices, like prayers half-forgotten. And in those fragments, Arina heard something dangerous.

She had imagined tonight differently. She had imagined laughter, seduction, the old rhythm of battle-born lust and triumph. Instead, she saw a man standing at the edge of holiness, reaching into its light as if testing whether it would burn him.

Amber took a breath. "You think this is going to be easy? But the Church is not a court of nobles to be bought or turned."

"No," Aiden said, coming closer to her lips, "it is worse. At least nobles know their greed."

"I asked for your help," he continued, "because the Church listens to you. Because they believe you untouched by the world. But we both know the world always touches us, Amber." He voiced, lacing his tone with utter want.

"You speak ...blasphemy." she said, her heart beating tight, her lips itching to taste his.

"I speak truth."

His voice dropped lower. "And the truth, Amber, is that even faith can hunger. Like you do now..."

Arina felt her heart pound. There was no laughter in this. No flirtation. It was something else—something older, heavier. The way he spoke to the priestess was not the way he had ever spoken to her. It was not conquest he sought. It was conversion.

The realization hit her with an ache she did not want to name.

She wanted to step forward, to interrupt—to remind him of who he was, to remind her of who she was, what they were—but she remained rooted, half-hidden, breath held.

Because beneath the ache was fascination. The kind that burns and shames at once.

Arina's nails scraped the archway's stone, grit biting her palms like self-inflicted penance, but she couldn't tear away—feet rooted, breath ragged, the balcony's mist slicking her skin like a lover's sweat.

Aiden's hand passed from her waist as it claimed Amber's arse with brazen ownership, fingers digging into the plump flesh through wool, kneading the curve until the fabric strained, dimpling under his rough squeeze.

"Ahhh...." She moaned, felling his pull.

What? How? Why? Arina's mind fractured, disbelief twisting with a dark, throbbing heat low in her core—Amber, the veiled saint, yielding? A soft, sinful gasp escaped the Abbess—

"Ahh... Aiden... We shouldn't..."—her voice no prayer, but a velvet beg that flooded Arina's thighs with unwelcome slickness, nipples aching against her bodice.

It unfolded slow, deliberate torture: Aiden's grip tightened, pulling Amber flush, his palm sliding lower to trace the cleft's heat, thumb pressing the seam with insistent circles that made her knees buckle, hips canting back instinctively.

Amber's green eyes—fractured emeralds of pious calm—darkened, pupils blowing wide with a hunger that built like embers to inferno, her soft heart not resisting but craving the blaze. She arched into him, plump body quivering, a whimper rising:

" your hand... it's setting me on fire... Aiden, please..." Lust coiled in her gaze, no longer veiled but voracious, lips parting on shaky exhales as her own fingers clawed his doublet, fumbling laces with desperate tugs—exposing scarred chest, her palms gliding over ridges, nails scraping red trails that drew his hiss.

Arina's pulse hammered, core clenching in echoed betrayal, but Amber's surrender escalated—hands bolder, shoving his shirt wide, mouth descending to his collarbone, tongue lapping sweat-salted skin with fervent laps

"Your body... so hard... I confess, I've sinned dreaming of always tasting you....." Her eyes lifted, green depths glazed feral, lust swelling like a tide—cheeks flushing, breaths panting hot against him as she ground her arse back, wool rasping obscenely.

Aiden growled, yanking her habit's ties—fabric tearing with a ripe rip—baring shoulders, the heavy swell of her breasts heaving free, nipples dark and begging under moonlight.

Amber moaned deeper, voice cracking with need: "forgive me oh lord...as I listen to my heart than your wisdom, and leave your garden for a moment..."

After those words, she opened her eyes wide, her heart pumping without guilt but only want.

"Aiden...strip me... expose my shame... I burn for you,... touch my tits, squeeze them until I break..drown me in your love that I forget my faith, show me, shown me sinful ways...."

Aiden smiled patting her hair.

"Gladly..."

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