continued from here @drakuletka
He feels the familiar instinct—to correct, to caution, to draw a clean line and stand firmly behind it. Discipline rises in him like a reflex, scripture assembling itself neatly at the back of his tongue. Rules are safeguards. Vows are shelter. Order is mercy. And yet. Her words linger, unsettling in their ease, in the way they refuse to kneel. “I’m not saying they’re designed to be broken,” he says finally, voice low, careful. Measured the way he measures everything.
His eyes flick, briefly, to the chalice in her hand before returning to her face. There is something about her composure that unsettles him—how little she seems threatened by consequence, how lightly she wears conviction. He cannot name why it troubles him, only that it does. “The Church would argue,” he says calmly, “that exceptions are not indulgences. They are discernments. Made with fear of God, not appetite.” A pause. He folds his hands together, fingers lacing as if to still them.
