Page 26 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

Chapter

Fifteen

AUREN

I woke to silence.

The bedsheets beside me were still tangled from the night before. I stared at them a while, at the soft hollow where Callis’s weight had been, now grown cold. I didn’t reach for it. I knew what I’d find.

The severing had happened.

The rite was spoken, the wine consumed, and still—I lay there waiting for the weight in my chest to lift. For a feeling of lightness, of clarity. Completion.

But there was none. Only the unbearable stillness of an empty chamber and the certainty that something had been peeled from me.

As though I had left one of my own limbs behind.

Eventually I sat up. My joints ached. My skin felt tight.

I moved like someone not used to moving. As if the bond, now unbraided, had taken with it the ease of being in my body. Even my breath felt unfamiliar. A thing to measure and tame .

At the basin, I splashed water on my face and braced myself against the sunstone rim. My reflection blinked back at me—drained, colorless, mouth slightly parted as if expecting someone to speak my name.

Then it happened.

The bond flared.

It didn’t burn. Not at first. It ignited—a burst of gold in my chest so sudden, so startling, I gasped aloud and staggered back.

Callis.

I felt him. Not a memory. Not a longing. A presence.

Pain.

Grief.

And something more fragile beneath it. A question. A trembling thread.

My knees almost buckled. The basin caught me.

The bond wasn’t gone.

It was fighting.

Wounded, yes—frayed and unsteady—but alive. It pulsed between us like something terrified of vanishing, and I could do nothing but feel it as it howled across the space between our hearts.

And then—it dulled. Slowly. Receding like a tide. Leaving salt in its wake.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t speak.

I wiped my face dry and moved through my day.

Or tried to.

I dressed without care, left my hair unbound. In the scriptorium, I sat before a folio of hymns and tried to transcribe the sacred stanzas I had once known by heart.

But the ink bled into the page. My hand shook. Lines of verse blurred. I read them five, six, seven times. Still they said nothing. My mind circled like a dying flame.

Why does it still feel like he’s here?

Why does it still hurt like this?

The ache wasn’t lessening. It was learning me. Nesting in my ribs. Taking up residence in the part of me I used to call devotion.

A soft knock came at the door, then the creak of hinges.

“Leave it,” I called, barely above a whisper.

But it was Corin.

He entered with a quiet tread, bearing a tray of flatbread and tea, and something heavier tucked under his arm—a leather-bound text I’d loaned him months ago. He set it down on my desk, glanced at my half-smudged scroll, and said nothing at first.

“I thought you might need food,” he said at last. “And something to read that isn’t falling apart in your hands.”

I offered him a smile. It wavered.

“I’m not mourning,” I said.

Corin didn’t answer immediately. Just sat across from me, eyes searching mine.

“No?” he said. “Then why do you look like the sun forgot to rise?”

I looked down .

He didn’t press. Corin never did.

“I remember when my bond ended,” he went on, voice gentled. “It wasn’t like I expected. I woke up alone, just like you did, and it was still…there.”

That surprised me. He’d never spoken of his bond. Not in all our years.

“I found peace,” he added, softly. “Eventually. But I don’t think anyone ever truly prepares for the silence.”

I nodded. But I didn’t speak of Callis. Couldn’t.

The bond still stirred faintly beneath my skin, but I wrapped myself around it like it was a wound only I was allowed to touch. I didn’t want Corin to share it. Didn’t want him to understand.

Because if I gave this ache a name—if I spoke it aloud—I feared it might vanish altogether.

And it was all I had left of him.

Corin stood. Gave my shoulder a quiet squeeze. “You should walk,” he said. “The palace is too small for mourning.”

He left the room, door clicking softly behind him.

I sat in stillness. The light had shifted—full gold now, slanting in through the tall windows, gilding the rugs, the scrolls, the dust on the air.

It meant nothing.

Not without him in it.

I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving.

The palace faded behind me as I passed beneath the shaded porticoes, sandals forgotten, robes unbelted and open at the chest. I needed the air. The wind. The ache of my soles against stone to remind me I still lived.

The path narrowed beyond the temple wall, curling like a ribbon between terraces of wild thyme and fennel. Bees floated lazily between the blossoms. Insects hummed in the heat.

When I reached the orchard, the light had turned soft, dappled. Each leaf shimmered like stained glass, sun-bleached and trembling. The peaches were heavy on the boughs, some already fallen into the grass, bruised with their own ripeness.

I reached up and plucked one. I didn’t bite into it.

Just held it, thumb brushing the fine fuzz as I passed beneath the trees where he once walked beside me.

Where the scent of fruit had clung to his lips.

Where I had seen him the first time, juice glistening on his chin—and I’d wanted him more than I’d ever wanted truth.

That memory hollowed me out.

I left the orchard behind.

Beyond it, the hills rose gently, golden and wide, wind rippling through the grasses like fingers through hair. The obelisk stood ahead, dark and tall, catching the low sun on its worn edges. It looked older than time. Older than gods.

Older than grief.

I climbed to its base and sat. The grass sighed beneath me, releasing the scent of earth. I leaned forward and ran my hand along the stone’s lower edge, fingers tracing the faded carvings that circled it like a prayer half-forgotten .

“They put the first stone into the foundation of the bridge,” I whispered.

The two acolytes. Their love had been the first sacred bond. So the stories said. They lay in this very field, hearts naked, hands clasped, and made a promise no one had dared before.

A bridge between the divine and the mortal.

“But did they stay together?”

My voice broke on the last word.

I didn’t expect an answer. The wind was my only reply, tugging at the loose hem of my robe, scattering dry petals across the grass.

I curled my knees to my chest.

The bond pulsed. Faint, steady. It hadn’t left me. It had dulled, dimmed, but it remained like a thread wrapped through my ribs. Sometimes I feared it would vanish. Sometimes I feared it never would.

What if the ritual had been wrong?

What if some bonds didn’t want to die?

I had done everything the Order taught me. The rites. The words. The wine. And still—he was here, not just in memory, but in motion. In breath. In me.

A shift.

I felt it first.

The bond pulled—not like grief this time. Not like a memory torn open. No. This was different.

Alive.

Present.

I held still.

The wind stilled with me.

Then—I heard it. Footsteps .

Not imagined. Not distant.

Slow. Real.

I didn’t move. My heart beat once. Then again. My body remembered hope before my mind dared to.

I turned.

And he was there.

Callis.

Standing at the edge of the hill, framed by the low, amber sun. His cheeks were wet. His satchel hung off one shoulder. He was breathless, as though he’d run all the way here from the sea, and maybe he had.

The light made his hair shine. His eyes found mine.

Neither of us spoke.

The wind picked up and scattered wildflowers between us.

I rose slowly.

We just breathed.

And in that breath?—

The bond surged again.

Not entirely broken.

Not quite dying.

Beckoning .

The light struck the obelisk at a slant, gilding its runes in fire.

The tall grass around me danced in the breeze, golden tips catching the last breath of the sun.

I stood motionless, arms folded around my knees, as though stillness might hold the ache at bay.

My back was stiff like the stone behind me.

I had come with no reason but grief, and grief had welcomed me like an old companion .

For one impossible moment, I thought the gods were teasing me with memory. I blinked. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. The world narrowed to the figure on that slope.

My chest collapsed. I took the first step slowly, blood roaring in my ears.

Callis took a step toward me. His eyes—those eyes I’d dreamed of all night —were rimmed red, not with pain, but with choice. Deliberate. Defiant. Alive.

“You knew,” he said, voice low, barely reaching me through the wind, “that the pendant could turn the ship around. That it would buy my passage back.”

My throat tightened. “Or make you rich when you returned home.”

He shook his head. That same, small, lopsided smile that had undone me a dozen times broke free of his solemnity. “What are riches,” he asked, voice catching, “compared to you?”

And I couldn’t wait anymore.

I moved.

Down the slope. Through the grass. Every stride felt like falling forward into something eternal. Callis didn’t wait—he ran to meet me, cloak flaring behind him. We collided like prayer and answer, arms tangled, faces buried in shoulders, breath shared in desperate gasps.

The bond didn’t flare.

It roared. Not with fire. Not with grief. But with recognition. With light. With something so whole and ancient I felt the very ground shift beneath us. I clung to him—not to keep him here, but to let myself believe that he truly was.

“You came back,” I whispered.

“I couldn’t not,” he said, hands threading into my hair.

The obelisk behind us pulsed with shadow. I felt its pull like a third soul in our embrace, bearing witness.

This was what the ancients meant when they said the gods drew nearer with each true bond. When they said the first bridge had been laid not in stone, but in surrender. It wasn’t about permanence. It was about return.

“I couldn’t stop thinking of you,” Callis said. “Even when I closed myself off. Even when I tried to forget. The bond wouldn’t let me. You wouldn’t let me.”

“No,” I murmured, and kissed the corner of his mouth, then his cheek, then his brow. “I didn’t know how.”

We held each other for what felt like seasons.

Then, softly, Callis pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. “Can we renew the bond?”

The words trembled between us.

He searched my face, vulnerable, scared. “Do you want to?”

I touched his cheek. My hand fit there like it always had. “Yes.”

His breath shuddered.

“But how?” he asked, voice still hesitant. “Isn’t it too late?”

I took his hand. Pressed it gently to my chest, over the thrum of my heart. His pulse matched mine, a quiet percussion beneath the skin. The bond had always known the truth. It was we who needed reminding.

“The bond was not destroyed,” I said. “Only released. The days between parting and forgetting have only just begun. If hearts remain willing, the path may be walked again.”

I drew him with me, back to the foot of the obelisk. The grass parted as we moved, as though the land remembered too.

He looked up at the towering stone. The glyphs etched into its surface seemed to shimmer now, kissed by dusk.

I stepped behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “This field,” I whispered into his ear, “has known a thousand beginnings. It can hold one more.”

Callis leaned back into me. “Will you?”

I turned him gently. Took his face in my hands.

He wasn’t the boy who’d arrived in shame and uncertainty. He was a man now—fierce in his longing, certain in his desire, tempered by absence and ache.

I kissed him. Slow and sacred.

Our bond surged between us like a sun reborn.

When I pulled away, he was breathless. His hands shook where they gripped my arms. Mine weren’t steadier.

“For as long,” I said, voice low, “as the sun and the moon favor us.”

His eyes welled again, but he didn’t look away .

“Then I am yours,” he said. “Again. Always.”

We stood there in the amber light, wrapped in each other, the wind bending the grass like bowed heads in prayer.

And when the bond settled—not heavy or demanding, but whole—I knew.

This wasn’t a return.

It was a beginning.