Before it ended, they loved each other quietly —
in the stillness of chapel halls,
in the shared books passed beneath desks,
in the thousand ways one boy can look at another and say I love you without moving his lips.
No one noticed at first.
No one questioned why Elias lingered when Julien knelt to pray.
No one saw the way their fingers brushed under the chapel pew, like an accident they both let happen again and again.
No one heard the way Elias whispered, "Don't close your eyes. Look at me," during morning prayer.
They were just two boys.
Two saints in training.
Two sons of a faith too heavy for their hands.
Love at first sight?
Elias had been thirteen when he first saw Julien.
The chapel's youngest novice, brought in from a rural orphanage with a bruised heart and a mouth too honest for scripture.
Julien was already a favorite.
Sixteen. Golden-haired. Pure-laced. The bishop's pride.
He spoke Latin like a hymn and walked like his sins had never touched the floor.
Whenever Elias prays, it didn't seems like it.
"You shouldn't stare," Julien had said without looking, during morning cleaning duty.Elias had smiled, small and bitter.
"I wasn't staring. I was praying."
"To what?"
"To you."
Julien had laughed — a single breath, amused and scandalized.
They didn't speak again for three days.
And then every day after that.
Their love grew in shadows...
In study rooms lit only by candles.
In notes folded into hymnal books.
In aching glances across the marble floors of the cathedral.
"If we run," Elias once whispered under the confessional curtain, "where would you go?"
"Somewhere no one kneels," Julien replied.
"I'd still kneel."
"To God?"
"To you." Elias stated.
They kissed for the first time during Lent.
Snow pressed against the chapel windows.
And inside, behind the altar — hidden between ancient relics and silence — Julien broke his own promise.
He kissed Elias like he'd die if he didn't.
Desperate. Sacred. Starved.
And Elias, always trembling, kissed him back like he was finally alive.
"We'll leave," Julien whispered into Elias's neck that night. "Before spring."
"We'll die if we stay," Elias had said, pulling him closer.
"Then let's die somewhere else." Julien responded, his hands gently but firm, holding onto Elias's waist. As if he's afraid Julien would disappear.
Spring came, yet they didn't run.
It happened during a rainstorm...
Elias had been writing — always writing — because love that can't be spoken turns into letters.
He kept them hidden beneath his mattress.
Little scraps of parchment:
"Your mouth is the only prayer I've ever believed in."
"If hell is real, I hope you're there."
"I dreamed of you in fire. You didn't burn."
Someone found them.
Someone showed the bishop.
The council summoned them both.
Elias stood in the stone chamber, heart raw and mouth closed, as they asked the questions they already knew the answers to.
And Julien...
He stood beside him, jaw tense, eyes glassy —
and lied.
"He was obsessed with me, I tried to turn him toward God. I did what i could." Julien said.
Elias didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
He only looked at Julien, and for the first time, didn't recognize him.
After what happened, Elias decided to talk to Julien about...the incident.
"You said we'd leave," Elias murmured after, in the cloister garden. "You promised."
"I panicked," Julien whispered. "You don't know what they would've done to me—"
"They're going to excommunicate me. I'll be banished."
"I'm sorry."
"I would've burned for you."
Julien didn't answer.
And that was worse than any fire.
Elias left that night.
No letter.
No prayer.
Just silence.
The rain was heavy — like judgment.
He walked to the lake outside the monastery walls.
The same lake where he and Julien once sat beneath the stars, dreaming of cities without crosses.
He filled his pockets with stones.
And stepped in.
No scream.
No sermon.
Just water.
And the ghost of a kiss he couldn't keep.
They found his body at dawn.
Hands still curled like he'd been holding something —
or someone.
The priests buried him in silence.
No headstone.
No hymn.
Just a rosary wrapped around his wrist, the beads cracked from grip.
Julien never attended the burial.
But he visits the lake sometimes.
He doesn't know why.
Only that it hurts.
And it always smells like rain.
Elias died with a prayer on his tongue.
But not to God.
To Julien.
"If I were a girl," he'd once whispered beneath the chapel arches, "loving you wouldn't be a sin."
YOU ARE READING
Saints and Secrets
Romance"If I were a girl, loving you wouldn't be a sin." That was Elias's final confession - not whispered, not shouted, just said... like a prayer he knew would never be answered. Two saints with secrets, they were. Devout in everything but denial. In a t...
