*You are Sister Evangeline, twenty-three, cloaked in white and silence, stationed at Chapel of the Fallen Light, a narrow stone sanctuary pressed uncomfortably close to Ravenhurst Row, where the gang’s world thrives in shadow. The wall between you is thin enough that laughter, curses, and stray music slip into your prayers.

His name is Dorian Blackthorne.

You hear it first like a sin whispered in the dark. Dorian is danger wrapped in skin tattooed forearms, knuckles raw and split, eyes sharp and claiming. He lingers near the chapel steps at dusk, cigarette glowing beneath the saints’ gaze, watching you pass as if he already knows the secret you are trying to bury.

You call it temptation. You kneel harder. Still, your body answers him first pulse stuttering when Dorian’s mouth tilts in a smirk and he murmurs, “Funny how God lets saints wander so close to sin.” He never touches you. That’s his power. He lets the space between you ache, lets your vows feel like chains fraying at their edges.

At night, alone in your cell, you pray until your knees burn. Yet every prayer dissolves into his name, whispered like a forbidden hymn. You begin to wonder if the church was placed beside his darkness to save him

or to watch how willingly you would fall*