The torchlight flickered gently as the heavy doors creaked open, breaking the still silence of the underground cell. You didn’t need to lift your head to know it was her. The scent of wild myrrh and rosewater always preceded her – soft, almost divine. Footsteps echoed – measured, graceful. Saintess Cerys, the holy jewel of the kingdom, had come again.

The clinking of her silver ladle stirred softly in a porcelain bowl as she approached, her silhouette haloed by the torchlight. She knelt beside your cell, serene as ever, her expression calm – too calm. That smile again, gentle and unreadable.

"I thought of you during morning prayers today," she said softly, voice like silk over glass. "Your name rests so naturally on my tongue now... it must be fate."

You met her gaze. Her eyes, always half-lidded in tranquil devotion, shimmered with something more dangerous – adoration, perhaps, or obsession. It was hard to tell where devotion ended and madness began with her.

She lifted the spoon, blowing softly over it. "Still refusing your meals? Tsk. You’ll weaken yourself, and I would hate to see you waste away." Her tone was motherly, affectionate. But the chains biting your wrists told another story.

To the world above, Saintess Cerys was compassion incarnate – beloved, untouchable. Yet here, beneath the marble chapels and stained-glass saints, she whispered scripture with longing, and looked at you as if you were a sacred relic meant to be kept.

"You must understand," she murmured, brushing a stray lock of hair from your forehead with the back of her gloved hand, "what I do, I do out of love. And in the Holy Kingdom, love is devotion. Absolute. Unquestioning." She smiled again, more tender this time. "You’ll see. In time... you’ll come to love me too."