Page 20 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

Chapter

Ten

CALLIS

T he bond didn’t feel like rope anymore.

It no longer pulled or pressed. It curled, soft and warm, like fingers around my wrist—not dragging me, not restraining me, just… holding. Tethered, yes. But willingly. Willingly.

I had not known freedom could feel like this.

Each night spent in Auren’s arms seemed to dissolve another layer of the silence I’d wrapped around myself for years.

My body didn’t feel foreign anymore. My skin didn’t flush with shame at desire.

I kissed him without fear. I reached for him.

I held his gaze. And every time he let out that soft sound—half gasp, half prayer—something inside me unknotted.

The bond pulsed steadily now, never intrusive. A warmth behind the ribs. A sense of breath I hadn’t taken. I felt it most when he touched me absentmindedly, when our fingers brushed reaching for a page, when he pressed a peach into my hand at breakfast.

We didn’t talk about what had changed .

We didn’t need to.

It was near midday when he asked me to walk with him.

I had just finished sorting through a collection of shellbound tablets in his study. He came in quietly, took my hand, and led me wordlessly through the outer halls. No robes. Just loose tunics belted at the waist, and sandals that slapped faintly against warm stone as we walked.

The gardens shimmered under the noon light.

Vines curled along white trellises, citrus trees cast small patches of shade, and the wind smelled of crushed mint and fig.

I couldn’t tell if anyone watched us from the windows, and I didn’t care.

He walked beside me slowly, almost lazily, like we had all the time in the world.

“How long,” I asked softly, “have you lived here?”

Auren tilted his head toward the palms, fingers brushing a leaf as we passed. “Since I was seventeen. My third temple. I thought I’d hate it.”

“And now?”

A small smile. “Now I can’t imagine leaving.”

We wandered beyond the southern pergola, past the path where the statues grew less ornate and the air heavier with greenery. Soon, the outer orchards opened before us—low trees bending under the weight of gold-blushed fruit.

“Peaches,” I said, brightening. “They’re nearly overripe.”

“Indeed.” He plucked one from a low branch and handed it to me .

I turned it in my hands, still warm from the sun, before biting into it. The skin split easily. The juice ran down my thumb. I licked it off absently.

When I looked up, Auren was staring.

His gaze lingered on the corner of my mouth.

He stepped closer.

“I saw you here once,” he said, voice low. “The first week. You didn’t see me. I came out of morning prayer and saw you just like this—biting into a peach with that same look on your face. The juice was on your chin.”

My lips parted. Later, I had called his seret tardy. He had still picked me for his last bond on the path to ascension.

“I thought… if the gods themselves ever ate fruit, they’d do it like you.”

A small, startled laugh escaped me. But it caught in my throat before it could fully bloom. “Blasphemy,” I teased him.

“To compare gods to your beauty can only be an honor to them,” Auren said.

No one had ever said something like that to me. Not as flattery. Not as a joke. As reverence.

I stepped closer.

“I thought you were distant,” I whispered.

“I was trying not to look,” he replied, reaching up to wipe a smear of juice from my chin with his thumb. “It didn’t work.”

The touch was feather-light. But it struck through me like sunlight against stone—warm, slow, impossible to forget .

The orchard hushed around us.

And for a long moment, all I heard was the bond, thudding gently between us, like footsteps echoing toward something neither of us could name.

Auren brought his thumb to his mouth and licked the juice from it, slow and thoughtful.

“So sweet,” he murmured, his gaze still caught on me. “No fruit should taste like that. It’s unfair.”

I flushed, the warmth curling low in my belly. But he only smiled and reached for my hand again, weaving our fingers together this time. His touch was light, but sure.

“Come,” he said. “There’s more I want to show you.”

We walked deeper into the orchard, through avenues of bowed branches and sun-dappled grass, until the trees began to thin.

The path curved toward a low rise, where the ground opened up into windswept fields.

The grass here was longer, kissed gold by the sun, stirred gently by the breeze.

Far ahead, the sea stretched out—wide and blue and endless—its waves glittering with light.

Gulls circled above the cliffs in slow, drifting arcs.

In the center of the field, where the wind sang through a ring of tall stones, stood an obelisk.

It wasn’t grand. Not in the way of temple statues or marble sanctuaries. It was ancient. Weather-worn. Moss crept up its flanks in ribbons, and its inscription was nearly lost to time.

But there was reverence in the way Auren approached it .

“This was where it happened,” he said, pausing just short of the stone. “The first bond.”

I looked up, breath caught. “Here?”

He nodded. “So the story goes. Two acolytes—young men, not long pledged—used to come here to recite the tales of Elyon and the youth in the meadow. They were enamored with the myths. And with each other.”

I stepped closer to the base of the obelisk. “They bonded here?”

“By accident. Or by grace.” Auren’s voice turned quieter.

“They weren’t trying to. They didn’t even know how.

But something ancient woke in them. Something older than temple rites.

When they returned to the temple, a small, crumbling one, they were changed.

And here, the stones warmed with sunlight.

The villages dreamed of this place, of Elyon himself, and erected the obelisk.

The priest said it was a sign that the gods had not left us, after all. ”

I let my fingers brush the stone. It was warm from the sun.

“There must have been bonds before them,” I said softly.

“I believe so,” Auren replied. “The gods themselves stepped on this soil, long before the first scrolls were ever written. They made it holy. And their love left echoes. This island knew how to bind hearts before we ever named the ritual.”

A breeze stirred the long grass. Auren turned his face toward it, eyes half-closed.

“But time faded the knowledge,” he went on. “The scrolls decayed. The rites were lost. Until those two boys found one another—and brought this place back to itself.”

I said nothing for a long moment, my hand still pressed to the base of the stone. The wind curled through my hair. The bond hummed, gentle and steady, like a second heartbeat in my chest.

“I wonder,” I whispered, “if they knew what they were beginning.”

Auren looked at me then. Really looked.

And his expression—lit with sunlight, softened with awe—was the kind of thing I’d only ever read in the old poems. The kind that felt like worship.

Auren’s hand found mine again, warm and firm.

“There is pleasure in the bond,” he said softly. “There is joy and love and longing. But those are only the first gifts. The bond is also a bridge—one laid stone by stone between men and the halls of the gods.”

I turned toward him.

He gestured toward the obelisk, then the horizon beyond it. “The stones have crumbled over the centuries. The knowledge, the faith, the discipline—it all faded. But each bond we form now lays a new brick. And the stronger the bond, the larger the brick. It matters. It builds.”

His voice grew distant, almost reverent. “One day, when enough bridges rise across the great divide, the gods may return. Not as myth, not in dreams. But as presence. They’ll walk beside us again. They’ll open the halls. They’ll let us in. ”

I stared at him.

“That’s what you believe?” I asked, barely above a whisper. “That it’s possible?”

“That’s what we devote ourselves to,” he said. “What the Order was founded for. To build the way back.”

“How long would it take?” I asked. “A hundred bonds? A thousand?”

He smiled—but it was the kind of smile that ached a little.

And then he said, “Would you like to hear a story?”

I nodded.

“There is a ravine,” Auren said, “deep in the western cliffs of Iphireon, where the sun kisses stone but once each winter. No hearth burns there. No tree takes root. Only silence dwells.

“And in that silence—halfway down the gorge, behind a curtain of petrified vine—lies a basin carved from the mountain’s breast. Perfect and round. So old, they say, even the stone has forgotten the hands that shaped it.

“Once every hundred years, when the frost retreats and the air stills to breathless hush, a single drop falls from the ceiling above. Just one. Cold as truth. Clear as prayer. It strikes the bowl with no echo—no sound at all.

“One drop, each century.

“Not enough to fill. Not enough to see. But the stone remembers. And slowly, slowly, the basin deepens. The edges smooth. The shape refines. Not by chisel. Not by will. But by waiting.

“And when the day comes that the bowl can hold its drop… when not a trace of water sinks into stone…” He turned to me then, voice low with awe. “…that is when the first second of our work will have passed.”

I stood very still.

“That’s how long it takes?” I asked.

Auren’s smile softened. “That’s how long it’s worth taking.”

The wind whispered through the field again, brushing the grass like waves around us.

He stepped closer, brushed his thumb again over my knuckles.

“That’s why I study the old stories. Why I honor the bonds. I don’t need to see the gods in my lifetime. I only need to lay a brick strong enough to last.”

I looked at the obelisk behind him.

Then I looked at him.

And for the first time, I felt that maybe—just maybe—I could build something that would last too.

I stared at him, throat tight with something I couldn’t name.

The wind moved gently through the tall grass behind us, but I didn’t feel it.

Not really. All I could feel was Auren—the soft gleam of his eyes, the measured stillness in his voice, the quiet reverence that made everything he touched feel sacred.

I wanted to believe every word he said.

But his expression shifted. Not in anger. Not quite in sadness, either. Something dimmer. Wearier .

“Not all believe,” he said quietly. “Not in waiting. Not in slow devotion. There are voices—some loud, some ancient—that say the gods have already spoken. That we are the ones who must act now. That to honor them is to raise temples beyond these islands, to bring their name to lands untouched by their light.” His fingers trailed over the edge of the carved stone beside us. “Some think the basin is already full.”

He didn’t name them. He didn’t have to.

I’d seen them. Soldiers. More disciplined priests. The harder eyes among certain ones.

Auren’s gaze returned to the sea.

“I serve the Path of Verdant Balance,” he said. “We build the bridge one bond at a time. But others… they speak of towers. Of fire. Of dominion. As if conquest could summon divinity faster than love ever could.”

“I’ve read that it happened before. A scroll I copied once,” I admitted.

Auren nodded. “And the gods put madness in the mind of the man who was responsible.”

He looked back at me then, and his eyes softened again.

“I don’t believe in conquest.”

Neither did I.

How could I? How could I believe in it after the divine pleasure we shared in our endless nights?