Page 16 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

Chapter

Eight

CALLIS

T he ink caught the edge of the vellum like a breath held too long, then spilled in clean, obedient lines across the page.

I worked slowly. Reverently. The scriptorium was quiet but not silent—quills scratching, parchment whispering, sandals shifting against tiled floors.

Light from the high eastern windows poured over the curved desks in golden shafts, illuminating dust and prayer alike.

I sat hunched over the third volume of The Refractions of Order, a thick, cloth-bound tome of compiled records and monastic glosses.

The parchment beneath my hands was a fresh, pale sheet.

The reference lay to my left, a cracked spine propped open with carved stone weights.

To my right: my inkpot, half-full, and a slice of fig I hadn’t touched.

I wasn’t hungry.

Somewhere in this same temple—perhaps a floor above, perhaps across the cloister—Auren walked.

I hadn’t seen him since morning, but the bond tugged lightly every now and then, like the slack pull of a silken thread tied between us.

It wasn’t strong. Not yet. But it came in pulses: a warmth behind the ribs, a gentle buzz at the base of my throat.

Sometimes it quieted. Sometimes it flared.

Once, when I caught the scent of sandalwood as a priest passed me, it spiked hard and sudden enough that I nearly dipped my quill too deep.

I shook it off.

Focus.

The passage I was copying pulled me deeper into its current with each line:

“…and in the fourth century of unbroken devotion, the palace at Eletheria faced dissolution not from without but from within. The Ascendant Order, having claimed the allegiance of the fleet, the garrisons of Halvar, and even the remote mountain towers of Cindros, moved to eclipse the Harmonist Councils. Under Thorion’s banner, the virtues of dominion, discipline, and divine conquest were elevated above the older tenets of balance. ”

Thorion. I’d read his name before. A knight-turned-priest-turned-strategist. The historian—Enric of Calethis—clearly hated him.

“His decrees demanded an escalation of tribute from the outer islands. His lieutenants interpreted this with brutal fidelity. Three minor shrines were burned for delay. Entire trade fleets were seized. What followed was a century of philosophical fragmentation—some islands lifting war as a sacred virtue, others retreating into the preservation of peace. Even now, their customs bear the stamp of those years.”

I paused, brushing excess ink from the corner of the line, and sat back slightly.

So that was how the rift began.

Not with a divine vision. Not with revelation. But with cruelty, dressed in the language of order.

It echoed, didn’t it? Even now. Even in the way some envoys demanded tribute with less patience than the gods themselves had shown. I thought of Auren then. The set of his jaw when he listened. The flicker in his eyes when someone spoke of law without mercy.

I read on.

“The end of Thorion’s life is recorded not by those who served him, but by those who survived him.

No Harmonist scribe ever met him in the flesh, nor did any stand within the citadel he built atop Harkan’s cliffs.

But it is said—by his own second steward—that he began speaking to the sea in his final days.

That he walked the walls barefoot, hair unbound, muttering of betrayal and bloodlines. ”

My fingers froze over the next line.

“He leapt, at dusk, from the Harkan Spire. Whether he fell in madness or defiance, none can say. But the rock below still bears his mark, black-veined and foul-scented when wet with storm.”

I stared at the passage for a long moment.

So even the mighty cracked.

Even the ones who thought they were divine.

The temple light had shifted, the shadows growing longer now along the archways. A scribe at the next desk stood and stretched, joints popping softly. I still hadn’t touched the fig.

I dipped my quill again.

Part of me wondered whether Auren had read this same volume. Whether he’d traced the same lines, felt the same quiet rage in the margins.

I wrote until the bell rang, then laid my tools aside and closed the parchment folio with care. The warmth of the bond returned again as I did, closer this time, a brush of presence that hummed behind my sternum.

He was near.

But we were still learning how to reach one another.

The scrolls had blurred by the end of the afternoon, my focus fracturing somewhere between the lines of tribute policy and the cramp in my hand.

I stretched my fingers, dipped the quill once more for the closing signature, and carefully set the fresh folio aside.

My shoulders ached. The light filtering through the scriptorium’s high windows had grown cooler, slanting silver-blue across the tiled floor. Another hour gone. Maybe more.

I didn’t linger.

From the scriptorium, I crossed to the Gymnasia.

The eastern colonnade shimmered in the breeze, and I paused at the edge of the marble ring where pairs practiced under the arches—target throws in silks, spearmen sparring in light leather, and beyond, the ring of sand where naked wrestlers grappled, dusty and glowing.

I wasn’t assigned to any advanced training. Not yet. My routine was simple: strength and form, quarterstaff drills, breathing. I moved through it alone. Nobody spoke. That suited me.

The bathhouse adjoined the Gymnasia’s far wing, steam rising from the heated pools like a second roof. Inside, the scent of cedar and thyme clung to the air. I rinsed the sweat from my skin with water from a sunstone basin and lowered myself into the water.

The men who lounged in the shallows were a little older than me, some broad as temple doors, all cut in sharp relief under the lanterns. I glanced at one in particular, a sun-darkened acolyte with a lazy smirk and a thigh marked by ritual ink. His body was carved, oiled. Easy in its own skin.

Mine felt… unformed, by comparison. Too pale, too soft. Still growing into itself.

I looked away before I could be caught staring.

The sun had dipped below the outer wall by the time I dried off. I dressed quickly, the linen still warm from the stone benches, and made my way uphill, sandals tapping in time with the rush of worry building in my chest.

I hadn’t meant to be this late.

Auren hadn’t said I had to be back by any hour—but still. He might have expected me. Might be waiting. Or worse, he might think I was shirking my role, that I didn’t care.

The palace loomed closer, the top windows catching the last light of day.

I crossed the threshold to the upper wing, heart thudding .

“I’m sorry,” I said before the door had even fully opened, voice tumbling out in a rush. “I didn’t mean to stay so long. The hours got away from me at the baths, and then the path was busier than I expected?—”

“Callis,” came the reply.

It wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t cold.

I looked up.

Auren stood by the long table that curved along the windows. His seret was half-loosened, sleeve pushed to the elbow, silk sash around his waist barely holding itself in place. In the golden light, he looked taller, somehow softer, the edge of a smile barely tugging at his lips.

“It’s alright,” he said simply. “You’re home.”

The word struck deeper than I wanted to admit. Home. My heart longed for it in that instant.

And then I saw what lay spread across the table.

Scrolls—aged and curling. A trio of bound codices with velvet ties. Even a shard of stone with glyphs etched in old ink. My breath caught. I stepped forward, forgetting the apology I’d rehearsed on the stairs.

“These are?—?”

“The Old Cycle,” Auren said. “Most of them. A few glosses. A parable-fragment from Myrrien’s tomb. This one”—he tapped a thick volume bound in red hide—“is a personal copy of the Heliant Treatises. There’s only a handful left in circulation.”

I stared. My fingertips ached to touch them. “I’ve never seen this many in one place. ”

“My temple had more,” he said, “but I took these when I joined the Order. I… kept them close.”

“You never said.”

His smile lifted a little more. “I didn’t want to push. You said you enjoyed the myths. I thought we might read some together. If you like.”

I nodded too quickly. “Yes. Yes, I’d like that.”

I didn’t say how much it meant.

Didn’t say how rarely anyone had noticed what I cared about, let alone shared it.

I only moved closer to the table and let the scent of aged parchment fill my lungs, my fingers hovering just shy of the spine of the red volume.

And for the first time that day, the bond hummed through me like wind chimes.

He had waited.

Not with anger. Not with punishment.

But with books.

We sat together at the wide table, side by side on a single long wooden bench, the sun still lingering at the edge of the windows. Auren left space between us—deliberate, I thought—but not cold. The kind of space one left open for someone to fill if they wished.

My fingers hovered over the closest codex, the red one bound in hide. I didn’t touch it at first. I didn’t want to seem greedy or too eager.

But then Auren reached over and gently laid his hand on mine. Warm. Steady. A little rough at the knuckles, calloused faintly at the fingertips.

“You have the hands of a scribe,” he murmured, thumb tracing lightly along the edge of my fingers. “But new to this place.”

I tried to breathe through the pulse that sparked between our skin. I hadn’t expected him to touch me like this. Not with such ease. Not so soon.

“Only a few days,” I said quietly.

“A few days,” he echoed. “And you already speak of the myths as if you’ve lived them.”

I gave a small, nervous laugh. “I only read too much.”

He looked at me then—not just glanced, but looked. His gaze settled on me like a held breath. “That’s the only way to know anything worth knowing.”

I blinked down at our hands. He hadn’t let go.

“I don’t want to be nosy,” I said. “About your books. Or your… collection.”

“They’re not locked away,” he replied. “They’re here. For both of us.”

He slowly withdrew his hand, and I missed its warmth the moment it was gone. He unrolled a slender scroll near the edge of the table, smoothing it flat, though his eyes never dropped to the text.

“There’s one I thought of today,” he said. “When I saw those flowers blooming near the bathhouse steps. You know the ones—golden petals with pale tips, like they’ve been kissed by ash.”

I nodded. “They bloom in the warm seasons.”

“They’re called elyanthros,” he said. “After Elyon.”

I glanced at the scroll, expecting him to read, but he didn’t. He spoke from memory. His voice quiet but sure, like a prayer not meant for the gods, but for me alone.

“Elyon once walked the earth in full form,” Auren said, “in the height of summer, when the days burned bright and the winds were lazy with heat. He wandered alone, radiant and terrible, wearing the light of the sky like a garment. And on one of those days, he came upon a youth sleeping in a field.”

His voice was slow. Hypnotic. I could see it as he said it—the field, the god, the grass shimmering with sun.

“The young man had no temple name. No station. Just a body lit by sweat and sky. He’d stripped to the waist to sleep in the breeze, one hand behind his head, the other curled over his stomach.”

Auren’s voice dropped a little.

“And Elyon—immortal, endless—was undone. He knelt beside the youth, leaned close, and whispered his name into the air.”

“Did he wake?” I asked.

Auren turned to me, smile glinting soft at the edges. “He did. Slowly. And when he saw Elyon as he truly was, it nearly blinded him. But he didn’t run.”

“What did he do?”

“He smiled. And he said: ‘I didn’t know beauty had a voice.’”

The words sank into me like honey through cloth.

“For such a fine remark, Elyon offered the young man anything his heart desired, yet the youth simply said: ‘What can my heart desire if not your fiery touch?’” Auren paused, his gaze moving over my parted lips and returning to my eyes.

“They made love there, in the high summer grass,” he continued, his eyes never again leaving mine.

“With the god’s radiance pressed into the young man’s skin and the earth drinking in their heat.

And when they were finished, when the young man’s breath was slow and sweet again, a flower rose from the spot where they’d lain.

That flower—the elyanthros—only grows in soil touched by joy. ”

A long silence followed.

The story lingered in the air between us like incense.

I felt breathless.

Not only from the myth. But from the way he’d told it. The way he’d looked at me as he spoke. As if he weren’t just retelling something sacred. As if he were… offering something.

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

My eyes had fallen to his lips. They were close. Closer than they’d been all day. A sliver of heat bridged the space between us.

And still… he didn’t move.

He didn’t close the distance.

And I didn’t dare.

The hush that followed felt too fragile to break. As if one wrong word might shatter it. As if even a breath might betray that I’d hoped he would kiss me.

I looked down at the scroll. At the way his fingers still lightly touched the edge .

Maybe he hadn’t meant it like that. Maybe the story was just a story.

Maybe I was reading too much into the heat I felt in my chest.

So I said nothing.

And waited for the bond to steady.

The bond settled between us like the sea retreating from shore—still warm, still present, but no longer cresting.

The ache in my chest dulled to a quiet fullness, as if the tide had reached its peak and drawn gently back, leaving behind the shimmer of salt on sand.

I breathed in, slow and careful, and felt him there—not touching, not speaking, just there.

Steady. Like a thread pulled taut but not fraying.

I didn’t reach for him.

But I didn’t move away, either.