Twenty-Two

Chapter 1: 

Elias POV 

The Republic of Vespera did not forgive certain kinds of wanting.

In the coastal state of Saint-Mireille, the law and the Church spoke with the same voice. 

Homosexuality was a criminal offense. Discovery meant more than prison. It meant the quiet social death that followed a family name once it had been stained. 

People smiled in public and destroyed lives in private. 

Families who had stood respectable for generations could be erased in a single season of whispers. The stone churches watched everything. St. Augustine, on the edge of the old quarter, watched more carefully than most.

I had lived inside that watching all my life.

Tonight I was twenty-two. My mum said my brain was fully developed this morning lol.

The small celebration my parents arranged had ended an hour ago—neighbors, a few parish families, polite laughter, and more wine than I should have drunk. 

My mother poured with her usual precision, never spilling a drop, never allowing the evening to slip beyond her control. 

My father rested a proud hand on my shoulder and called me a man. I smiled when required. I accepted the gifts. 

I let the alcohol settle warm in my blood until the careful locks I kept on myself loosened just enough to become dangerous. 

Then I waited until the house grew quiet, took my bicycle from the side wall, and left without telling anyone.

It was just after nine. The air was heavy and warm, the kind of humid coastal heat that never fully left Saint-Mireille even at night.

 A light rain had started, fine and steady, beading on my hair and slowly soaking through my shirt until the fabric clung to my shoulders, my chest, the small of my back. 

The road to the church was quiet. Flickering streetlights threw broken yellow pools across the wet asphalt. 

Salt from the sea mixed with the smell of damp stone and the old incense that always seemed to live in this part of the city. 

My tires hissed over the pavement. Each push of the pedals felt too loud in the dark.

I already knew where I was going.

St. Augustine.

Four years earlier I had stood on those same steps with a stack of hymnals in my arms, eighteen years old and already tired of performing.

 The rectory door had opened and the new priest had walked into the light. 

In the single moment our eyes met, something in me recognized him with a force that still frightened me. It was not only beauty. 

It was the sudden, impossible feeling of being seen. In a life spent playing the perfect deacon’s son—smiling at the right times, answering the right questions, never allowing the wrong kind of wanting to show on my face—that recognition had taken root deeper than simple desire.

 I had looked at him and felt, for the first time, that I was not entirely alone inside my own skin.

A week later it happened again.

I was putting away the hymnals after evening Mass. 

Father Cassian passed behind me to lock the side door. I felt his gaze land on the back of my neck, then lower. When I turned, his eyes were on my mouth. They stayed there a second too long—not fatherly, not neutral—before he looked away and continued as if nothing had occurred. 

That second was enough signal. He had looked at me once as if he wanted something he refused to name. I never forgot it. 

After that night every cold dismissal, every shortened confession, every time he removed me from a duty felt like resistance rather than true disinterest.

 He had shown me a crack. I had spent four years trying to widen it.

Father Cassian Riven. Thirty-five when he arrived. Tall. Broad-shouldered.

 The black cassock fit him like it had been cut for no one else. Dark hair already silvered at the temples. 

Storm-grey eyes that looked as if they had seen too much and refused to look away. A mouth kept under strict control. Even then I could sense the weight he carried—something heavier than the usual burdens of the collar.

 I only knew that when he looked at me, the careful performance of my life felt suddenly thin.

I had spent the years since then trying to get closer. He had spent them trying to keep me away.

He removed me from the volunteer group that cleaned his private quarters.

 He took me off the altar-server schedule without explanation. He shortened my confessions to the bare minimum of prayer and dismissal. 

He assigned me duties on the far side of the parish, asked my father to redirect me toward the youth choir, used the back entrance, locked the garden gate, kept his voice cold and formal whenever I found a new excuse to stand too close. Every barrier only made me more precise.

 I arrived early for parish records. I waited after Mass with carefully chosen questions about doctrine. 

I learned the exact timing of his evening lock-up and adjusted my route home to cross his. I memorized the sound of his footsteps on stone. I learned the particular way he said my name when he was trying to keep his voice neutral—Elias—as if the two syllables themselves were a warning. The more he pushed me away, the more deliberate I became.

Tonight the wine had simply made the need louder than caution.

The rain thickened slightly as I turned onto the final street. 

 I had almost reached the side gate when a voice called my name.

Old Mrs. Hanley from three houses down stood under her porch light, squinting through the rain. “Oh no!” I whispered, as my heart slammed once against my ribs. I forced a polite smile, the same one I used at every parish gathering, and told her I was only going to return a book to the rectory for my father. She nodded, already losing interest, and went back inside her house. I waited until her door closed before I let out the breath I had been holding and pushed the bicycle into the dark.

Ahead, the dark bulk of St. Augustine rose against the low clouds, its stone face familiar and oppressive.

 A few lights still burned in the rectory windows. My heart was beating too hard. 

The law of Vespera, the eyes of the parish, the weight of my parents’ house—all of it pressed against my back like a physical thing. I knew what would happen if anyone discovered the truth of what I felt. I had seen it happen to others: the quiet conversations, the sudden absence from parish life, the way a family name could become something people avoided saying aloud. I had spent years calculating the risk and deciding it was worth it.

I left the bicycle against the low wall, wiped rain from my face with the back of one hand, and walked toward the side door of the church. 

My shirt clung to my skin. The alcohol still moved warmly through my blood, softening the edges of fear without removing it.

 Part of me wanted to turn around even now. The larger part of me had stopped listening to that voice years ago.

I opened the door anyway and stepped inside.

The familiar scent of incense, old wood, and wax met me like a hand at the back of my neck. Rainwater dripped from my hair onto the stone floor.

 I stood still for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dim red glow of the sanctuary lamp. 

The nave felt larger in the dark, the high ceiling lost in shadow. My pulse was already too loud in my ears.

Then I saw him.

Father Cassian stood near the altar, alone, extinguishing the last of the candles. 

The cassock was dark and precise. One sleeve was slightly pushed back, showing the strong line of a forearm and the faint ridge of a vein.

 The candlelight caught the silver at his temples and the controlled set of his mouth. Even from this distance I could see the faint shadow of fatigue under those grey eyes—the same fatigue that had lived there since the day he arrived.

 He looked like a man who had never put something down.

I swallowed hard.

Four years of careful hunger rose in my throat. I should leave. 

I should turn around, get back on the bicycle, ride home through the rain, and pretend the wine was the only reason I had come. 

I should remember the laws of Vespera, the way my father’s mouth would tighten, the way my mother’s eyes would go cold and calculating if they ever knew.

 I should remember that wanting this man was a crime and a damnation and a kind of slow suicide.

Instead I stepped farther into the church, damp clothes clinging to my skin, and let the door close softly behind me.

Cassian looked up.

For a moment neither of us spoke. The rain whispered against the high windows. 

My pulse was a thick drum in my ears. I could still taste the wine from the party on my tongue. I could still feel the four years of near-touches and denied glances stacked behind my teeth.

Then he set the candle snuffer down with deliberate care, and his voice—low, controlled, and colder than I had heard it in months—cut across the nave.

“You shouldn’t be here, Elias.”

The way he said my name made it clear he already knew this was not an accident.

I met his eyes and did not move.

“I know,” I answered.

Something shifted in his expression—too fast to name, but sharp enough that I felt it like a hand closing around my wrist. 

He looked at me for a long second longer, as if weighing a decision he did not want to make.

Then he said, quieter than before:

“Come