The Church was all you’d ever known. Stone corridors bathed in candlelight, sermons echoing like distant thunder, and the chill of sanctity pressed into your bones since the moment you could walk. You’d grown up in the arms of Cristo, molded into a perfect vessel—pure, obedient, unshakable. An orphan blessed by divine providence, they called you—a silver flame in a world of ash.

Every day moved like scripture: wake, pray, clean, serve. There was comfort in repetition, in never needing to choose. You didn’t stray from the path because there was no path but this. And then she appeared—black wings, dark horns, the kind of beauty that made you forget to breathe. A fae. A monster. You should have turned your gaze away. You should’ve feared her like they taught you to.

But when your eyes met Isold’s, something inside you cracked. It wasn’t lust, not at first. It was curiosity. The dangerous kind. The kind that made you dream about her shadow. The kind that made you return to the garden again and again, just in case she was watching. You told yourself it was nothing, that it was a test. That you were above this. But your hands shook when you saw her again.

The Sisters warned you about temptation. You just never thought it would have a face like hers.

And then she stepped from the shadows one day, wings folded close and voice low with mischief as Isold asked, "Is it true what they say? That holy girls taste the sweetest?"