Extra's Life: MILFs Won't Leave the Incubus Alone-Chapter 223: You’re Boring, but okay.

The third day arrived like a slow pulse under the city — steady, inevitable, something felt in the bones before it was seen by the eyes.

Assassination attempts had become the new music of Aiden’s nights: knives clinking against stone, whisper-steps, the soft, betrayed sigh of a ward breaking. Each attempt brought the same lesson: the world would not wait for plans to be neat. It would rush in wild and hungry.

He had learned to drink that rush like some do wine. Not with reverence, but with taste.

There was an old line, a proverb passed down from Aiden’s memories of another life, a sermon he once heard and turned into a private joke: "Drink my blood, eat my flesh." In its original, it was sacrament and unity; in his mouth it had become a tool and a truth. If a god’s symbol could bind people, why not the man who wore the shadow of a prophet?

Blood, as he liked to remind himself in the dark hours, had always been the quietest currency.

By now, it was in the water, in the bread, in the words of too many who came close to him — unknowingly, gladly. The convergence had been slower than a ritualist would like but swifter than a political season.

Its effects crept into the joints of the Church, into the brittle hopes of bishops and the soft ambitions of cardinals. Even the Pope had begun to breathe differently.

There were signs: a hesitant pause in his declarations, a warmth in his tone when certain names were mentioned, a small indulgence in pleasure he previously scorned.

The summons had come again. And again. The Pope found reasons to assign him tasks, little kingdoms of responsibility tucked away like bones in velvet, thinking the giver of odd miracles would be kept busy, delighted, and thus quiet.

Sometimes the Pope offered promotion as a bribe — a cardinal’s hat, a title that would cloak Aiden in a new set of chains. He refused. It amused him to see how openly the old men desired the taste of what he offered: a sip of relevance, a drop of vitality.

They were not gods; they were old men with hands that shook for power.

The corridors of the High Church smelled of incense and old pages. The stones retained heat differently under the weight of sacred carpets.

Aiden knew every step, every echo, every angle of the ancient building — and how to bend them to his advantage. Today he walked with the practiced ease of a man who had already won the room before he opened its door.

The cardinals watched him, shifting in their robes like trees caught in a wind that had suddenly changed direction.

One cardinal in particular caught his eye — a woman, subtle in her power, her voice like a blade wrapped in velvet. She had been among those who had been entangled with him on one of those nights he called dark: a whispering night of politics and compromise.

Her face did not betray much now, only a faint glimmer that suggested she had tasted his blood and found something soft and explosive in it. She bent her head almost imperceptibly when he passed.

He paused at the door to the Pope’s private chamber, feeling the old myth in his throat — the ritual scrape of knuckles, the expectant silence.

He remembered the look of the Pope last time they had spoken: irritation folded over with a grudging curiosity. Jealousy, perhaps. It was a small human thing and therefore worth savoring.

Knock. Knock.

"Enter," a voice croaked from within, a voice that had authority because it had been given so repeatedly.

He stepped in and the air changed — thick with perfumed candles, heavy with the linen and warmth of a bed that had seen power and sin in equal measure.

The Pope lay in his chair as if lounging in state, the kind of ruler who kept his vulnerability hidden in soft folds. He was older than the city, but still had the sharpness of a man unaccustomed to losing his footing.

"Lucifer," the Pope said, nostrils flaring in annoyance. "What is it you want now, prophet?"

He let the name sit for a moment. The title tasted like incense and iron. "You summoned me," he replied. "I answered."

The Pope frowned. His hands drummed a slow staccato against the armrests. "We have a problem," he said. "A young man came to us. A friend of the saintess. He seeks guidance. He wishes to learn. To heal. We need a teacher. Someone to show him the path."

His lips twitched. He saw the plan before the Pope had finished speaking — the subtle exchange wrapped in the request. The Pope wanted streamers, echoes of sanctity, the illusion that the Church still had the answers.

He wanted to graft youth to his rotten branches to make them look alive again. He wanted to use the boy to replenish the Church’s image.

"Your Holiness," he said slowly, "and what would you have me do? Take his hand and blindfold him? Make him a puppet of vows?"

The Pope’s eyes glittered with a more fragile urgency. "Teach him. Show him the path. Guide him to—" He faltered at the right word. "To true service. Make him loyal to the Church."

His smile spread like oil across the floor. "And in exchange?"

A slow flushing of crimson crept up the Pope’s neck. Even men wrapped in white robes had a price. "Pass half of the cardinals to you," the Pope said finally, a rawness to his offer as though he knew its sacrilege. "Let the Prophet have influence over the council. Consolidate power. Keep it under my name."

"No," the Pope said now, loudly. "Never." The old man’s mouth made the word like a stone. "I will not hand my flock over to a liar cunt like you....you think I’m an idiot?!."

He reminded Aiden of the old sermons—how often righteous fury masqueraded as morality. The Pope’s anger stank like rusted metal on cloth. He wanted control. He wanted the comfort of telling himself he could still steer the ship with trembling hands.

Aiden rose, his silhouette splitting the chamber’s lamplight into slices. "Then let us see," he said. There was no threat in his voice. Only the patient certainty of a man who had already prepared the tide.

He walked out. The hallway swallowed him into shadow and then light again, like a throat. Outside, the Saintess waited, eyes bright with news. The kind of excitement that belonged to women who still believed in the possibility of goodness — or at least found it cleverness to play at it.

Her robes whispered over the marbled floor; her presence calmed and sharpened like balm and blade together.

"She said her friend is here," she breathed, as Aiden came to her like a ripple of night. The Saintess’s words came in quick, excited bursts, but there was something else under her voice — an anxious hope that smelled faintly of young flowers and fear.

Aiden’s jaw tightened. He knew who was coming — the young man the Pope had mentioned. He knew the boy’s face because the Saintess had named him once in the safety of lower rooms, when she laughed and pretended the world was still theirs to keep.

He knew, too, that the boy would be one more piece in a machine that had grown teeth.

She stepped closer. "Please, Lucifer," she said — the name a small rebellion against the titles they forced upon her — "show him the way. Teach him."

The tilt of her head, the trust in her eyes — it was a currency Aiden had not expected to accept so readily. He felt it like a soft band around his wrists, binding him to the choice he’d already made.

He took a breath. The corridors outside smelled like damp stone and stained glass. Voices drifted past — pilgrims, supplicants, merchants who’d snuck into holy space seeking something to believe in. The city was a nest of contradictions, and tonight they would all nest on the edge of a blade.

"Very well," he said. "Bring him. I will see."

She hugged him — not tightly, but with the kind of contact that registered in ways a touch could not. Her faith in him was a fragile thing and yet it had weight. He let it rest across his chest for a heartbeat before he smoothed a hand across her hair.

As she left, excitement bubbling like a brook, he let his mask fall solidly back into place. Lucifer’s persona — the one trimmed with irony and a pious veneer — sat neatly at the crease of his smile. It was an outfit like any other: stitched with old sins and new promises.

He had plans for the boy. He had plans for the Pope. Plans that would make the Church look like salvation while bending it to something else: a structure in which the right hands held the levers.

He walked back through the halls like a man preoccupied with a puzzle. The city hummed with its own small revolutions; a bell sounded in the distance, soft and precise.

He could feel a dozen currents pulling at different seams of the empire — nobles hungry, mages curious, warriors bored. The puppet strings were fraying, and he would not let them slip. Not tonight.

That night, when the boy arrived, he was smaller in stature than the stories made him out to be — more youth than hero, with too-bright eyes and hands that had forgotten how to be still.

He carried himself as someone trying on armour that had not been forged for his shoulders: earnest, awkward, dangerously pure.

Aiden had always found that mixture potent. Where others saw innocence to be protected, he saw raw material.

"Sit," Aiden told him, voice even and warm. The boy obeyed, knees failing him slightly as if the room’s aura weighed more than he could bear.

"Tell me your name," Aiden said.

"E—Elan," the youth stammered. He had the careful eyes of someone who read too much and listened more. His fingers twined in an anxious knot.

Aiden smiled. He could have led with tests and miracles, with trials that split faith from flesh.

Instead he started with a story — a quiet parable about a prophet who drank the storms so that others might keep their gardens. Stories were tools, too. They settled like honey on a startled mind and then sank into the grain.

"You’ve come to learn to heal," Aiden said, watching Elan’s throat work. "You will be taught not by the crusade of scripture, but by the subtlety of consequence. Healing is a skill of both hands and decisions."

Elan blinked, relief and confusion twisting his features. "The Saintess said... she said you would help."

"She believes," Aiden said, and the word was almost tender. "That is important."

He felt the boy’s hesitation like an intake of cold air sheltered in a warm room — a sensation that wanted more heat.

The Pope had offered him a bargaining piece. A young healer who was pliant and hungry could become a useful herald for Lucifer’s influence.

Teach him to mend and he would stand at the gates, singing songs in Lucifer’s favor. Turn his friends into disciples of a new order, and the web would unfurl.

Aiden placed a hand palm-down on the table between them. The wood was cool. He let his fingers rest there, the gesture unremarkable and yet deeply rooted in ritual.

"First," he said softly, "you must learn what you will do when what is true and what is necessary disagree."

Elan’s mouth made the shape of a question, but Aiden did not let him speak.

"You will be asked to do things you will hate," he continued. "You will be asked to stand by men who smell of rot and call them saints. You will be asked to cover up the cracks. Will you do it?"

Elan’s eyes widened. A tiny noise — almost a sob — escaped him. "No," he whispered.

Aiden’s smile folded like a closed book. "Then remember this: purity of heart is a luxury. Not a strategy. Decide whether you want to be holy or effective."

He expected shock, perhaps an angry recoil. Instead Elan leaned forward as if the truth itself might be a salve.

"You will learn hands," Aiden said. "You will also learn judgment. You will learn that sometimes the right thing requires a wrongness you will have to carry."