The Sanctuary had known desire in many forms—whispers exchanged under candlelight, limbs tangled in worship, sighs bleeding into the fabric of pillows and ropes. But now, desire twisted itself into something else entirely: a yearning not only for skin but for truth, for battle, for certainty amidst the tremble of an enemy that mirrored them too closely.
Naomi stood before the Mirror of Red Memory, her reflection shadowed by candle smoke, eyes burning with worry she dared not name aloud. Behind her, the sanctuary breathed—soft footfalls of acolytes tending to lanterns, hushed giggles behind gauzy curtains, the rustle of linen robes slipping from shoulders in quiet, daily rites. But here, in this sacred chamber sealed to all but the inner four, the echoes of peace faded into tension. And her spine knew it before her lips could speak it: the war had begun—not of swords, not yet, but of sacred texts, of broken moans turned into doctrine, of blood rewritten into gospel.
"I'm sending them," Naomi said at last, voice low and sure, as if speaking louder might awaken the very threat she spoke of. "We'll infiltrate the catacombs beneath the abandoned colonnade. The Saints gather there. That's where she's re-writing my words into shackles."
Alacria—ever still, ever steel—shifted where she stood, her fingers curled around the obsidian dagger gifted to her by Naomi when the old regime fell. "You mean to send Aza and Lune into the pit? They're barely unscarred from the last rite of claiming."
Naomi turned, meeting her second's gaze with a softness that did not dim the command in her eyes. "They're not unscarred. They're chosen. We don't shield our kin from danger. We train them to meet it with velvet around their wrists and fire in their mouths."
The moment held between them—Alacria's jaw clenched, her breath halted, Naomi's robe falling slightly from one shoulder, revealing the inked verse of the Accord's sixth page across her clavicle:
Touch with courage. Bind with consent. Love with mercy, even in wrath.
It was then, in that vulnerable breath between duty and memory, that Alacria stepped forward—too close, close enough that the warmth of her body pressed against Naomi's unguarded frame, close enough that the scent of clove oil and iron clung to the air between them.
"I've followed you from the first night you whispered rebellion into Vera's bedchamber," Alacria said, her voice tight, like a ribbon pulled too far. "I've bled for your vision. I've killed for it. But tell me, Naomi... do you ever wonder what I haven't done for you yet?"
Naomi didn't move. Her breathing deepened.
Alacria lifted a hand and rested it against Naomi's side, where her ribs curved like the bars of a temple bell. Her palm pressed into the ink, and the heat of her skin made Naomi shudder.
"I've held myself back," she whispered. "Not because I feared you. But because I worshipped you too much to touch."
Naomi closed her eyes, lips parting. "And now?"
Alacria leaned in, her breath threading into the hollow of Naomi's throat.
"Now I dream of tasting the mouth that commands a revolution."
Naomi's hands found Alacria's waist.
For a heartbeat, the world outside the chamber disappeared—the growing cult, the bloody sigils, the gospel of thorns. There was only Alacria's mouth brushing hers, velvet-soft but trembling with suppressed hunger, only the way her thigh slid between Naomi's robes and parted her silence, only the way Naomi tilted her head back and moaned—not as a leader, but as a woman who had carried too much for too long.
But Naomi didn't let the kiss fall.
Not yet.
Instead, she pressed her forehead to Alacria's, their breath mingling like incense smoke and wind.
"If you touch me now," Naomi whispered, "it won't be as a disciple. Or a soldier. It will be as a storm. And storms don't bow."
Alacria let her lips hover there—close enough to hurt.
"Then let me rage with you," she breathed. "Not as your subordinate, but as your equal. Let me be your ruin and your redemption."
Naomi pulled back with a sharp inhale, stepping away like fire pulling from skin before it burned too deep.
"We go into the catacombs at dusk," she said. Her voice was hoarse now. Thicker. "But if we survive what waits below, if we emerge with the saints undone and the Accord intact... I will let you rage. And I will not ask you to bow."
Alacria's eyes darkened.
"I will wait," she murmured. "But not gently."
Naomi nodded. "Nor would I want you to."
---
That dusk, under the watch of a blood-orange moon, Naomi assembled her chosen four at the edge of the Silver Catacombs, a winding network of tunnels that once housed broken initiates too wild for Vera's reformatory chambers. Now, it was the lair of the Ash-Blooded Saints.
Each of the four bore a different weapon: Lune with her ritual dagger forged from lunar ore, Aza with her rosary whip blessed with pleasure magic, Alacria with her obsidian fang, and Naomi—unarmed but inked, every sigil on her body pulsing faintly with warning and memory.
The stone door of the catacomb stood before them, smeared with darkened roses and the faint symbol of the twisted gospel: a collar wrapped around a bleeding flame.
Naomi reached forward.
She pressed her palm to the door, letting the ink from her skin transfer onto the stone—activating a forgotten passage spell Elise once wrote in blood and lavender.
The ground trembled.
The seal cracked open.
The darkness yawned like a mouth hungry for silk and sin.
And with one last look at her girls—her soldiers, her storm—Naomi descended into the black, her bare feet kissing stone as if it were hallowed ground.
Behind her, Alacria followed.
Not just as protector.
But as a woman in love with her queen—and preparing to choose between devotion and desire if the underworld demanded it.
——