Lahat ng Kabanata ng Forgive Me: Marked By The Priest: Kabanata 211 - Kabanata 220

EZREAL’S POVNight settled in slowly, like it didn’t want to intrude.The city lights below flickered to life one by one, and for a long while, my mother and I just sat there in silence, shoulder to shoulder, breathing the same air, sharing a quiet that didn’t feel empty. It felt earned.I realized then how strange it was that silence no longer frightened me. She traced the rim of her wineglass with her thumb. “Tell me about him,” she said gently. “Baron. You called him your husband. I want to know how that is going for you, son.”I smiled before I could stop myself. It was small, instinctive. Real. “He saved me,” I said simply. Then, after a beat, “More than once.”She glanced at me, something knowing in her eyes. “That wasn’t what I asked.”I chuckled under my breath. “He’s patient,” I said. “Annoyingly so. He sees me—really sees me—even when I’m trying to be ten steps ahead of everyone else.” I leaned back into the couch. “He doesn’t flinch. Not even when he sees the blood. Not eve

CELESTE’S POVRevenge, I had learned, didn’t always arrive screaming. Sometimes it arrived quietly, on steady footsteps, in healing flesh, in the soft laugh of a girl who didn’t yet understand the danger of where her heart was wandering.Lucien was healing.I noticed it in small ways first. The stiffness in his movements had eased. The pain no longer lived behind his eyes. The gunshot wound that should have kept him grounded and cautious was closing faster than expected.And Ashley was always there. Too young. Too open. Too obvious.She didn’t try to hide it, the way her eyes softened when Lucien spoke, the way she hovered just close enough to be useful without being asked. She brought breakfast herself some mornings, lingered when others would have left. Her sister sat on her like sunlight, warm, innocent, and completely unguarded.Lucien didn’t encourage it. But he didn’t stop it either. That worried me. He was slipping away from my grasp and I hated it completely. I knew he hadn't

VNCENT’S POVI didn’t understand why it hit me the way it did.Aiden’s voice hadn’t been cruel. Not sharp. Not dismissive. Just polite. Easy. We’re just… acquaintances.I was the one who’d drawn that line. I was the one who’d enforced distance with silence, with work, with walls I pretended were professionalism. So why did it feel like something in my chest cracked when he said it out loud?I stood there, face carefully blank, while Baron laughed and Ezreal’s mother smiled like she’d stumbled onto something charming and harmless. Like there wasn’t a quiet disaster unfolding in my ribs.You’d make a handsome pair.Baron’s laughter echoed too loudly in my ears. Not mocking—never that, but amused. Light. And somehow that made it worse. Because it meant it was obvious. To her. To him. To everyone but me.I had messed up.We moved toward the dining room not long after, Ezreal leading, his mother beside him. I followed automatically, my body doing what it always did, falling into formation,

VINCENT’S POV I stayed rooted to the spot long after Baron walked away. The corridor felt wider somehow. Emptier. Like it had swallowed whatever momentum I’d managed to build while talking to him and left me standing there with nothing but my thoughts and a heartbeat that refused to slow. In love. The word still sat wrong in my chest. Heavy. Unfamiliar...Eventually, I pushed myself off the wall and went back inside. The fortress was quiet now, too quiet. Breakfast was clearly over. Plates cleared. Voices gone. The warmth that had briefly filled the dining room had dispersed like smoke. I scanned the space instinctively. Aiden wasn’t there. My jaw tightened. I caught one of the men passing through the hall and asked, casually, where he’d gone. “Family wing,” he replied. “With his people.” I nodded, dismissing him, but my feet didn’t move right away. The family wing. I’d avoided it deliberately since Aiden arrived. Told myself it was about boundaries. About professionalism. Ab

EZREAL’S POVNight pressed against the windows of my office, heavy and restless, as if the world itself knew we were about to pry something open that had been buried for years.The journals lay spread across my desk, their cracked spines and yellowed pages lit by a single lamp. Bishop Conrad’s handwriting was unmistakable—sharp, deliberate, every stroke controlled. Aiden stood to my left, arms folded, jaw tight. Vincent lingered near the shelves, outwardly calm but wound so tightly I could almost hear the strain. Baron leaned against the edge of the desk, one hand braced beside the books, the other rubbing at the back of his neck.This was it.If the answers existed anywhere, they were here.“I still think it’s him,” I said quietly, breaking the silence. “Bishop Conrad didn’t just brush against the Order of Thorn. He was embedded. And Malrick trusted him.”Aiden nodded once. “My father trusted him too.”That single sentence carried too much weight. I didn’t miss the way Aiden’s fing