She wassolemn.
Emmaleen didn't break character. Didn't smirk. Didn't spiral. Didn't compare lighting seventeen candles to some pop culture reference I wouldn't get.
She just knelt in that prayer position, forehead pressed to the desk, whispering Lorcan's name like it was actually sacred.
Saint Lorcan, deliver me. Saint Lorcan, guide me.
I kept waiting for her to laugh. To recognize the theatre for what it was—a man cosplaying as spiritual authority while sporting a visible erection under monastic robes.
She didn't laugh.
Sheprayed.
And Lorcan's punishment was… challenging.
I didn't expect that.
Our entire phone call was Lorcan insisting he'd walked away from the lifestyle, wasn't that person anymore. Then he shows up with a fucking sex chapel complete with prie-dieu and discipline cords like he's been running scenes every Sunday?
He delivered her punishment with exquisite technique.
The way he made her count strikeswhilemaintaining the prayer is cognitive load theory in action—overload the prefrontal cortex with competing tasks until conscious resistance collapses and you're operating purely on trained response.
It's the same principle they used at St. Augustine's. Recite Latin conjugations while holding stress positions. Sing hymns while being beaten.
Your brain can't process rebellion when it's drowning in conflicting inputs.
Jino thinks he's the master of psychological conditioning—and I will allow that, he's far more into the theory than I am. But I'm not ignorant of what I'm doing in the dungeon.
I know exactly what happens when you drown the mind in competing demands until obedience becomes the only relief.
Religion, honor, family, brotherhood… whatever.
It'sallthe same.
I grew up steeped in this brand of mental manipulation.
But so did Lorcan.
The problem here isn't that he's better at this than me. I would never concede that. The problem is… he'sdifferentthan me.
Jino, Lorcan, and I all look at the same goal—be her Master, teach her how to obey, make her mine—and each of us sees three very different ways to get there.
Jino and his drills. His structure. His boundaries.
Lorcan and his reverence. His symbolism. His romanticism.
And me with my planning. My precision. Mygravitas.
Emmaleen orbits me like a planet.
I am her sun.
But even planets drift. The orbit isn't a perfect circle, it's an ellipse.
And last night, Lorcan's gravity pulled harder than I expected.
When she lost count, he didn't let it slide. He reset to zero. Made her start over. No shortcuts, no mercy, just patient insistence that she could complete the task if she focused.
