Life settled into a new, terrifying rhythm. Outwardly, everything was the same. Ilia performed her duties with flawless grace. She blessed the endless lines of pilgrims, her smile serene, her gestures perfect. She attended the solemn councils of the Holy See, a silent, beautiful symbol of their divine authority. No one saw the cracks in the facade. No one saw the shadow lurking behind her eyes.
But inwardly, she was living a double life. Zephar was a constant presence, a low hum in the back of her mind, a silent observer to her every waking moment. He rarely spoke during the day, content to watch, to feel, to experience the world through her senses. She would be tasting a piece of fruit, and she would feel a phantom echo of his approval—a starved appreciation for a simple pleasure he had been denied for millennia. She would feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, and she would sense his faint, nostalgic longing.
It was the nights that were the worst.
When she was alone in her vast, silent chamber, his presence grew stronger, the humming cord between them more vibrant. He would speak to her then, his voice a clear, resonant whisper in the darkness of her mind.
He was not always cruel. Sometimes, he was simply… bored. He would ask her to describe things to him—the color of the sky at dawn, the taste of wine, the sound of a child's laughter. He was a god in exile, and she was his only connection to the world he had lost. In these moments, she almost felt a flicker of pity for him, a dangerous, heretical compassion.
Other times, he was a tormentor. He would replay her most painful memories, her moments of doubt and loneliness, forcing her to confront the hollowness of her life. He would mock her faith, dissecting her prayers with a surgeon's cold precision, pointing out their hypocrisy and futility.
"You pray for the poor," he murmured one night, as she knelt at her altar. "Yet you are draped in silks that could feed a family for a year. You pray for the sick, but you have never known a day of true illness. Your prayers are empty words, little dove. Polished stones dropped into a bottomless well."
"They are all I have," she retorted in a hushed whisper, her hands clenched on the cold marble.
"No," he replied, a silken threat in his voice. "Now, you have me."
This strange, forced intimacy was eroding her sanity. She felt like a prisoner in her own mind, with no privacy, no escape. The line between her thoughts and his whispers was beginning to blur.
The breaking point came during a private audience with a nobleman, Duke Valerius, the High Cardinal's own brother. He was a pompous, arrogant man who had come to offer a "donation" to the church in thanks for the Saintess's miracle. As he knelt to kiss her ring—a gesture of fealty—his eyes, full of a greedy, possessive light, lingered on her far too long. His thumb brushed against her skin in a way that was meant to feel like an accident but was a clear, slimy transgression.
Ilia froze, a wave of revulsion washing over her. It was a minor, unpleasant moment, the kind she had been trained to endure with serene indifference.
But Zephar felt it.
A jolt of pure, incandescent rage, not her own, surged through the bond. It was so powerful it made her gasp, her vision momentarily whiting out. It was the fury of a king who had just seen one of his possessions touched by an unworthy hand.
How dare he, Zephar's voice was not a whisper but a low, guttural snarl in her mind, the sound of a predator waking from a long slumber. He puts his filthy hands on what is MINE.
Before Ilia could comprehend what was happening, she felt a cold, alien power surge from the cord in her chest, flowing down her arm. It was Zephar's power, and he was trying to wield it through her. She fought against it, a desperate, silent battle of wills in the space of a single heartbeat. She was the Saintess; she could not harm another.
She managed to suppress the worst of the surge, but a sliver of it escaped. As the Duke rose, a smug look on his face, the ornate silver goblet on the table beside him suddenly frosted over, the wine within it freezing solid with an audible crack.
The Duke stared at the goblet, his eyes wide with shock and fear. He looked at Ilia, whose face was pale, her expression a mask of horror. He saw not a serene Saintess, but a woman radiating an aura of terrifying, barely contained power. He stammered a hasty farewell and practically fled the room.
Ilia collapsed into her chair, trembling. The echo of Zephar's rage still vibrated through her, leaving her feeling sick and shaken. He had just tried to use her as a weapon.
You are weak, he snarled in her mind, his voice laced with frustrated fury. He insulted you. He insulted ME. He deserved to have his heart frozen in his chest.
"I am not your assassin," she whispered, her voice shaking.
"No," he replied, the anger receding, replaced by a cold, possessive certainty. "You are not. You are my Saintess. And I will not suffer another to lay a hand on you. Remember that, little dove. There is only one monster allowed in your life. And it is me."
She sat there for a long time, the frozen goblet a testament to the terrifying truth of her situation. She was bound to a being of immense power and even more immense jealousy. Her cage had just grown teeth. And they were pointed not at her, but at the world outside.