Chapter 1
Prologue
“How did this happen, Sister Daphne?”
Daphne tried to escape the gaze looking down at her. Alas, with both wrists held fast, all she could do was bow her head.
What now?
As she bowed her head, she saw her priest’s robes hiked up. The pale legs laid bare beneath them had none of the purity a priest was supposed to have.
What should I do?
Nor was that all. The phallic imitation that had fallen between her wide-open legs was slick and wet from having just been used.
To be caught by him, of all men…!
She wanted to close her legs, at least, but she could not. The knees of the man before her, who, unlike her, was immaculately dressed in his priestly vestments, barred the way.
She had checked again and again that the storage shed was unused. For years, none had sought it out, and she herself had swept and scoured it, using it as her secret hideaway.
Who would have thought that Theodore Valentino would discover such a place!
What am I to do?
It was Theodore Valentino, after all.
The man was said to be loved by God. He had silver hair like melting moonlight, with brilliant golden eyes. Possessing a great deal of holy power, he had become the youngest Cardinal, and was considered a candidate for the next Pope.
To have her implements of self-pleasure discovered by a man like him.
I am finished.
She would now be branded a harlot for daring to commit such obscenely lustful acts on sacred temple grounds, and would be brought before a religious tribunal.
The faithful would whisper that they had always found her suspicious. The priests would slander her, saying that of course a woman born under the Three Stars would be a harlot. And the priests-in-training who had been through thick and thin with her at the prayer house would turn their faces from her to protect themselves.
All she had wanted was to ease the itch down there.
“Answer me, Sister Daphne. I asked you how this came to pass.”
“Hngh…”
Cardinal Theodore glanced toward the phallus that had fallen between Daphne’s legs. Daphne squeezed her eyes shut and chewed on her lip.
“Sister Daphne.”
As he called her name, his low voice rumbled lower in her ears, causing her lower belly to tingle. As she tensed down there, her fully bared sex twitched.
It was mortifying. She wished at the very least to set her rumpled clothes to rights and to banish her little cutie… No, that damned dildo from her sight.
“Y-Your Eminence. Might you… let go of my hands, for now?”
“Why? Do you mean to shove me aside and flee?”
“That is not—!”
Daphne had meant to lift her head and protest, but she shut her mouth the instant their eyes met.
Silver hair gleamed faintly in the moonlight that seeped through a crack in the door, and beneath it, golden eyes burned with a livid light. His expression could not be seen properly with the moonlight at his back, but that much was clear.
They seemed angry, and disappointed too. Yet the heat behind his eyes was no illusion.
Why… Why does he look at me like that…?
Daphne was confounded. To see desire in a Cardinal’s gaze was absurd. Yet it was true that he examined her body with a persistence that bordered on obsession.
She hunched her shoulders. As she tensed her lower body and her hole twitched once more, the grip on her wrists grew stronger.
“Ngh…!”
“…!”
When she let out a moan of pain, the grip on her wrists weakened. Even so, she could not shake him off, not even with the strength she had honed through long years of temple life.
What… What excuse can I give?
What on earth was she supposed to say to get any leniency from Theodore Valentino, whose eyes shone so strangely?
It was then, as Daphne furiously turned the matter over in her mind, that an insinuating voice came from above her head.
“How greatly you must have suffered all this while.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
Daphne blinked her large eyes, wondering if she had misheard.
Suffering, he said. What suffering? When she looked up at him, bewildered, she saw a pretty smile in his eyes.
“To have been cursed by a demon and yet endured it alone. You have truly suffered much.”
“Er…”
“Were it not so, even Sister Daphne, born under the Three Stars though she may be, would never commit so lewd an act. Is that not true?”
As he asked, a smile that looked painted on rose to the man’s lips.
“But you need worry no longer. I shall help you, Sister.”
“What… What do you mean by…”
“For I am prepared to offer this body of mine, if it means lifting a wicked demon’s curse.”
His pretty smile was unfamiliar to her. As Daphne, her mouth hanging open, remained preoccupied with his face, Theodore picked up the phallus that had fallen between her legs. It had looked so large in her hand, but once it was in his, it looked so small it seemed almost cute.
Theodore leaned over, his large body casting a shadow over her head. Her breathing grew louder. He brought the dildo between her trembling legs and spoke, his face still that of a devout priest.
“Let us begin the exorcism.”
The man’s voice came out as a quiet whisper, coiling through the narrow storage shed like a serpent. Daphne’s teal eyes wavered.
Part 1
“Daphne? She is truly an example to us all,” Sister Thalia said proudly.
“Amongst ourselves we have joked about what we’d most like to do first if we left the order. And do you know what she said? That she’d never even thought about leaving! Ah, of course, should we be ordained, we should not speak of leaving the order even in jest. But as we were born under the Three Stars, we have little choice in the matter. And yet Daphne was set only on the monastic path.”
As Sister Thalia showed a visitor around the prayer house’s grounds, he marveled at how truly devout Daphne seemed. Thalia nodded, looking proud herself.
“I personally hold her in the highest esteem as a Sister. Had she not been born under the Three Stars, she would surely have had no difficulty becoming a priest long ago. Had she been able to become a saint, she would perhaps have been called the Saint of Temperance and Devotion… I beg your pardon? What are the Three Stars, you ask?”
The priest-in-training stopped walking, looking puzzled. Her eyes were wide and round, full of disbelief that anyone wouldn’t know such a thing. The visitor replied that, being foreign-born and having no religion, he knew little about the Abba faith.
At that answer, Sister Thalia swallowed her displeasure and cleared her throat.
“A hundred years ago, there was a prophecy concerning a child born on the day three stars rose.”
The one born beneath three stars shall corrupt the saint. Only the most righteous shall bring them to repentance.
She explained that the Grand Temple had been searching for children born under the Three Stars ever since. The visitor asked how one might recognize a child born under the Three Stars. Thalia, the priest-in-training, replied that it was a good point.
“Children born that day have three marks on their bodies that form an inverted triangle. The Grand Temple proclaimed that His Holiness the Pope himself would bestow a blessing upon any household that brought in a child with that mark. Naturally, children born with the mark were sent to the Grand Temple at once. But Daphne had not been sent then. She wandered the secular world until she was ten years old before she joined the temple. And yet she is so devout…”
Sister Thalia continued.
“Even those of us who have lived in the temple from birth are astonished. We all believe her piety to be special. Of course, when she had only just arrived, she seemed adrift… but that did not last long. From then on, she never shirked a task no matter how menial, and if help was needed, she was always the first to help. I cannot tell you how admirable it is to see her offer a prayer of thanks for the smallest things. Ah, you’re asking if she’s younger than us? Ahaha. She is not. We are all the same age. It is just that when we look at her, we would like to shelter her.”