I have indulged too much, adding more chapters. Hope you won't mind, my pretty.
Also thanks to those who read me and leaving the trail of kudo(s)
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After The Shared Secret
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Ares has shown Saga the bitter truth of being a Gemini saint from the highest rank of Athena's soldier.
And Aiolos kept his promise to keep Saga's secret from anyone, especially Kanon.
Aiolos understood Saga's fear completely, and so he became a supporter for Saga's strong ambition to become the next Patriarch. The Gemini saints was always more ambitious than he was anyway.
After that night, Aiolos always justified Saga's growing desire for power as a normal thing. As natural as those attractive smiles on his face.
For his part, Saga never forgot to assure Aiolos, his closest rival for throne, that he wanted to be a Patriarch only because that position would allow him to be very close to Athena. He made Aiolos believe that all he wanted was to ask their goddess to reveal more of the hidden story behind the joke of the gods. That if he were lucky, perhaps even to ask her to bestow him with divine power that rivaled the god's. A divine power to undo the curse when it was first cast in the before-time era, that was all he would ask.
Saga never forgot to assure Aiolos that all he wanted was to save his Kanon and those other suffering Geminis from before or after his era.
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Little did Aiolos know that Saga had more to hear from Ares during the battle; about how the god of war had a liking for a particular Gemini saint as a perfect vessel to destroy Athena.
Saga never told Aiolos what he really felt when Ares had collided into his body, half way on the escaping route from the bent dimension.
Saga never told Aiolos how it felt to be a vessel of the god, be it for just a fraction of time. He never told Aiolos how it felt when his body contained the immense and unlimited power of Ares, when he tasted a god's immortality and the vast greatness of an ultimate ruler above all.
Just like a tainted eye that stayed with him, the taste of a divine power has never really left him. From time to time behind a closed door, Saga indulged into those feeling as his guilty pleasure.
For his part, Saga was smart enough to cover it from everyone including the Great Patriarch Shion. Although he was not smart enough to escape Kanon's eagle eyes.
