Page 3 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

For a moment—only a moment—I let the image surface. The way the golden-haired youth arched against the stone. The sound of breath caught and held. The silk slipping down his leg.

And then I imagined myself there.

My back to the stone. My mouth silenced. My body not mine at all. Someone entering me with swiftness and dominance.

Every muscle in my body locked at once.

No.

I dragged in a breath, sharp and punishing.

Not now. Not yet.

I hadn’t been summoned.

I opened my eyes and walked quickly the rest of the way to my room. I didn’t stop until the door was shut and the evening light had gone pale and blue through the window.

Then I knelt. Not because anyone told me to. Not because it was expected.

I knelt at the foot of the bed and folded my hands tightly together. My knees pressed into the cool stone. My forehead dipped forward until it almost brushed the floor.

And in the quiet, I whispered the only prayer I could remember by heart.

“Elyon, god of beauty, light, and poetry.

Let me walk in shadow until I understand the light.

Let my heart remain clean.

Let my body belong only to itself.

Let me be worthy?—

Or let me be forgotten.”

I sat back slowly. The silence didn’t answer me.

But at least it held me, the way the temple hadn’t.

A knock stirred me from stillness.

I had stayed on the floor long after my prayer had ended, unmoving, eyes fixed on the shadows cast by the window frame. The knock came again, soft and rhythmically polite. I stood quickly and opened the door.

An attendant stood in the hall, arms full. He was older than me, but not by much, his features fine and his smile disarming.

“I’ve brought water,” he said. “And everything else. ”

He entered without needing permission, gliding into the room with the quiet grace they all seemed to have.

He set down the wide basin and poured in fresh water, steam rising faintly from its surface.

A folded towel followed, then a polished stone for the heels, a curved blade for the nails, a comb, a pot of scented oil. Scissors, slender and gleaming.

I didn’t ask. I sat.

I let him kneel at my feet, as though I were someone of worth. He worked without speaking, without rushing, as if this moment mattered.

He cleaned the dust from my soles, smoothed the rough skin from my heels.

He trimmed the edges of my nails and filed them to soft arcs.

He combed my hair with slow, deliberate strokes, then gathered the ends and cut just enough to shape it.

The oil he used smelled of rose and something darker—amber, maybe. It clung to me in the air.

Through it all, I said nothing.

I thought: This is it.

I thought: This is how it begins.

I accepted everything.

When he finished, he stepped back and bowed gently. “There,” he said, as if we had both accomplished something sacred. “You are cared for.”

I sat straighter. My palms had begun to sweat.

“And the summons?” I asked quietly. Too quietly. “The ritual?”

I hated how the words sounded.

The attendant’s smile softened. It wasn’t mocking. It was kind .

“No summons tonight,” he said. “When the moment is right, and the gods favor it, you’ll know.”

He collected the basin and towel and turned to go.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

He bowed again, then disappeared into the corridor.

I waited for a long time after he left. Waiting, again, for something I didn’t want but feared not receiving.

But nothing came.

And for the first time that day, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

I was spared.

One more night.

As the sky deepened into night, the room began to change.

The lanterns on the walls, unlit all day, began to glow—soft at first, then steadier, the stones inside them casting a gentle, silvery light. No flame. No wick. Just the patient radiance of Eletherian moonstone, harvested from the island’s sacred interior, or so I’d been told.

They said such stones held the blessing of the gods. That in places favored by divinity, light did not yield to night.

I stood and walked to one of them, watching the glow shimmer against the inside of the glass like a living thing. I reached up and pulled the thick cover down over it. The light dimmed to a dull gleam.

One by one, I blanketed the lanterns, until the room was touched only by the glow of moonlight filtering through the window, soft, pale, and distant.

I undressed slowly.

Not because I wished to prolong the moment, but because every motion felt strange. The seret slid from my shoulders and pooled at my feet, and for a moment I simply stood there, naked in the semi-darkness, my skin prickling in the air.

I shivered.

The bed welcomed me with impossible softness. Nothing like the temple pallet I had grown up with. Nothing like the narrow cot on the ship, which had smelled of rope and salt and someone else’s sweat. This was… luxury. Silent and absolute.

I lay back, pulled the coverlet to my chest, and stared at the ceiling.

Sleep didn’t come.

The room was too quiet. My mind, too loud.

Faces rose in the dark behind my eyes. Not memories—I had never met them. But I had seen them.

A chestnut-haired young man with a noble’s gold band circling his upper arm, lounging in a sunlit corridor like he owned the island.

A blond youth with piercing blue eyes and a mouth too beautiful for anyone honest. A green-eyed boy with auburn hair and ceremonial soldier’s armor strapped across one shoulder, his skin golden beneath it.

And then—one more. The slender one. Brown hair loose to the jaw, silks clinging low around his hips, revealing far more than they concealed.

He had moved through the palace like smoke, like something half-seen and unforgettable.

Any one of them could summon me.

Any one of them could call my name and claim my body for the ritual.

A tiny tingle stirred deep in my stomach—unwelcome, unfamiliar. I buried it quickly beneath the weight of fear. Of shame. Of not knowing what would happen when the call came. Of not knowing who I would be after it did.

I pulled the covers tighter around my shoulders, turned onto my side, and tried again to sleep.

But the silence pressed in, and the stone beneath the bed stayed warm with light.