Page 5 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)
I told myself I had come for solitude. For silence. But what I found instead was the echo of laughter I couldn’t forget, the taste of fruit I hadn’t earned, and the heat of imagined eyes following me.
I dipped my hand back into the stream and held it there until the cold reached the bone.
I rose from the bank and followed the stream a little farther, walking carefully along the mossy edge where stone met root. The forest here was denser, but the trees parted just enough ahead to let sunlight spill in.
A clearing opened before me.
The stream widened here into a natural basin, a shallow pool where the water slowed and stilled. Smooth stones lined the bed beneath the surface, catching light in their polished backs. The sun poured down from above, unfiltered and strong, turning the surface to shifting gold.
I stepped to the edge and stood there for a moment, the seret clinging to my legs, damp at the hem from where the water had splashed earlier. The warmth of the light touched my face, my throat, my chest. It radiated across my skin and made my hair glow at the edges.
Elyon , I thought.
God of light. God of beauty.
Wasn’t this his domain?
The pool felt like a shrine without walls.
I undid the pin at my hip and let the seret fall. It slid down my body and whispered into the grass at my feet.
Naked again.
This time, I didn’t shiver .
The sun held me in its arms.
I stepped into the water.
It was cold. A sharp breath escaped me as it closed around my ankles, then my calves. The stones beneath my feet were slick but solid. I walked slowly, letting the water climb inch by inch until it reached my thighs.
Then I paused, steadying myself.
The sunlight met the chill halfway. The warmth of it on my shoulders, my back, my face—against the cold clarity of the stream—it was like being caught between breath and prayer.
I went deeper.
The water rose to my hips, then my waist, and I let my hands trail beneath the surface. The chill wrapped around me, but it was clean. Bracing. Like something meant to wake me.
The sun lit the ripples around my body. Gold dancing on silver.
I closed my eyes and let it hold me.
There were no temple bells here. No quills, no scrolls, no watchful eyes. Just water and sky. The whisper of wind. The hush of trees.
I wasn’t praying.
But it felt close to it.
I drifted a little farther into the pool, the water now brushing the bottom of my ribs. My fingertips traced the surface, stirring ripples across the reflection of the trees above.
It should have been peaceful.
But thoughts rose anyway, unbidden.
My family’s debts had stained everything .
There had been whispers, sharp as reed tips, the kind that slipped through closed shutters and found you in the temple courtyard.
Whispers of my father’s failures. Of trades gone wrong.
Of silver promised and never paid. It wasn’t enough for them to bear the burden.
The shame trickled outward, slow and certain, until it touched even me.
Until the scroll came.
The priests had called it an honor. A rare chance to repay what could never be repaid.
To be chosen, they’d said, is to lift the stain from your name.
And maybe that was true. Maybe one lunar cycle of service—of obedience, of beauty, of whatever this place required—could unmake the weight they carried.
I didn’t know if I could bear it.
But I would try.
I would endure this. Be good. Be wanted. Be useful.
I let the water lap against my chest and closed my eyes.
I heard it before I saw anything—a soft footfall on grass, another crunch on scattered stone. I turned, the water shifting around my legs as I moved. Someone was coming, not running, not hiding, just approaching with quiet determination.
A figure stepped into the clearing—barefoot, silent, utterly at ease in his body.
He was slender, but not slight. Every line of him was defined, sculpted not through force but through balance.
He moved like someone who had never tripped over a loose stone in his life.
His hair was a tousled crown of white-gold, bright as sunlit ash, catching the light in soft, luminous strands.
And his eyes—gods above, those eyes—were a blue so vivid they seemed carved from lapis and fire.
They found me in an instant.
Saw me.
Read me.
And then, without introduction, he said: “The debtor.”
The word landed like a slap.
I froze, my fingers curling beneath the surface of the water.
Of course. Another boy with too-perfect features and too-loose clothes, roaming the woods to gloat over his unearned place here. Another golden god with nothing better to do than remind me that I didn’t belong. That I was summoned, not selected.
“That’s what they call me, is it?” I said, voice low.
He didn’t answer. Just stood there at the edge of the pool, the dappled sunlight tracing gold across his bare shoulder.
His seret was undone—barely held at the hip, the top half hanging loose and open across his torso.
His skin glistened faintly with sweat or water or both.
I didn’t want to notice. Didn’t want to see the way the fabric swayed, the way the breeze lifted his hair.
Didn’t want to wonder what it would feel like to run a hand down that line of exposed skin .
But I saw all of it. And I hated him for it. I hated him instantly.
I squared my shoulders, forcing my voice level. “If you’re going to mock someone, you might want to tie your own seret first. Yours looks like it’s halfway to the ground.”
His lips curled—not into a frown, but something more amused. A smirk, deliberate and slow.
“Do you always greet strangers by inspecting their hems?”
“Only the ones who forget to wear them properly.”
He stepped forward.
Not into the water, but just to the edge—where the light hit him fully. “And yet you’re the one bathing naked in a sacred stream.”
I felt the heat rise to my face. “I came here for solitude. Not whatever game you think this is.”
“Solitude,” he echoed. “Is that what the peach was for?”
My mouth opened. Closed. I looked down at the water.
“That was for me.”
His head tilted, studying me the way one might examine a painting from a distance. “And do you always moan after fruit, or is that new?”
My spine snapped straight.
“You were watching?”
“Not intentionally,” he said, not even pretending to sound guilty. “But I wasn’t about to interrupt something that honest. ”
I moved toward the bank, the water sloshing gently around me. I didn’t care that I was naked now. That was his game. His arena. I wouldn’t flinch.
“You must get bored easily,” I said. “Roaming around the woods, spying on strangers like it’s a pastime.”
“And you must be used to going unnoticed.”
The words stung harder than they should have. Because they weren’t entirely untrue.
I climbed out of the pool with slow, deliberate control. I didn’t cover myself. I didn’t run for the seret . If he wanted to look, let him.
He didn’t look away.
And that made it worse.
“I see what you’re doing,” I said quietly, walking toward my clothes. “You think I’ll trip over my own shame and fall at your feet. You think I’m like the others.”
“I don’t think that at all,” he replied, voice even. “The others wouldn’t have dared speak to me like you just did.”
I stopped.
Half-dressed now, wrapping the seret back around my waist. I faced him again, still burning, still fuming.
“And why is that?” I snapped. “Because you’re more important? Because you’re pretty and mysterious and can call people debtor without introducing yourself?”
For the first time, something like surprise flickered in his eyes.
Then amusement .
“I like you.”
I scowled. “I don’t care.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
He turned, just like that, and began walking away—no name, no explanation. His undone seret drifted behind him like a banner. He didn’t look back.
I stood there in the clearing, skin still wet, heart still pounding, jaw clenched tight.
I hated how easily he disarmed me. How beautiful he was. How much I wanted to win a fight I hadn’t even agreed to start.
I tied my seret at the hip and sat hard on the grass, facing the stream, not trusting myself to do anything else.
Whoever he was?—
I hoped I’d never see him again.
And I knew, with sickening certainty, that I absolutely would.