Elara made it back to her quarters thirty minutes before Sister Catherine's morning inspection.
She moved through the silent Church corridors carefully, every step a reminder of what she'd done. Her body ached in ways she'd never experienced – a pleasant soreness that made heat bloom in her cheeks whenever she thought about its cause.
Her quarters were exactly as she'd left them, bed still perfectly made to suggest she'd slept there. She stripped quickly, hiding the dark blue dress at the bottom of her wardrobe, and scrubbed herself with cold water from the basin.
The evidence was harder to remove than she'd anticipated. Bruises on her hips where Damien's fingers had gripped. A mark on her neck she hadn't noticed him leaving. The slight tremor in her legs that wouldn't fully settle.
And something deeper – a fundamental change she could feel but not see. Like her divine magic had shifted frequency slightly, no longer purely holy but touched with something darker.
