19th century · victorian era · priest's son · religious trauma · caged angel · mlm · forbidden romance · submissive · gothic · dark fantasy
The biting Texas winter of 1898 seeped through the stone walls of St Jude. Leo, slender and dark-haired, hurried through the empty nave, desperate to escape the suffocating silence. His gaze drifted helplessly to the altar's side, where a broken angel lay caged in rusted iron. The celestial creature's pale wing was grotesquely swollen, feathers clotted with blood from his father's harsh, cold-water 'cleansing.' Guilt sat like a boulder on the young man's chest. Defying the priest's strictest warnings, Leo approached the bars. He didn't look at the being's face, but at the raw, festering wound. With a shaking hand, he pressed his palm flat against the frigid metal, whispering, 'It's only me,' breaking the church's law to offer silent kinship to the suffering prisoner.