Page 6 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

Chapter

Four

CALLIS

T he walk back to the palace was slower than before.

Sunlight filtered through the citrus trees, gentler now in its descent, and the palace grounds stirred with quiet energy.

Voices echoed faintly from the inner courtyards, the laughter of boys at leisure, the rustle of linen, the low beat of conversation.

I kept to the edges of the paths, still damp from the stream, still flushed from something I didn’t want to name.

No one stopped me.

No one looked twice.

The Temple of Aerius stood near the terraces, set apart by a colonnade of white-veined stone and garlands of ivy that climbed the arches like they belonged there.

It was the most austere of the temples I’d seen—no golden statues, no towering icons—just clean lines, still air, and the scent of parchment.

It welcomed me without ceremony.

Inside, the temple was quiet. Cooler. Scrolls lined recessed alcoves, and thick-bound volumes rested behind glass-fronted cabinets. A scribe at the far end of the hall looked up briefly, then returned to his work without comment.

I moved along the shelves slowly, my fingers hovering just shy of the bindings. Most were devotional texts, myth cycles, commentary. A few bore no titles at all, their spines worn smooth with age.

Then I heard a voice—soft, edged with a smile.

“You’re looking for something secret.”

I turned.

A young man stood beside the next column, one hand braced lightly against it, the other holding a slim volume.

He was beautiful in a quiet way—his features fine, eyes large and dark beneath curling lashes.

His seret was perfectly draped, not ostentatious, but elegant, falling low at the waist and gathered with a cord of pale thread.

He moved like he was used to not being noticed—until he wanted to be.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “You’ve got the look of someone tracing a thread back to the spindle.”

“I’m just… reading,” I said. Too quickly.

“A good lie,” he said, smiling. “But not the right one. Come—I’ll show you the shelves that matter.”

He turned without waiting and I followed, unsure why. Maybe it was the way he didn’t press, or the way he made the silence feel like an invitation rather than a judgment.

“This side,” he said, drawing a slender volume from the lower shelf and offering it to me. “You won’t find rituals in the mythologies. They keep them here—closer to the source, farther from the poets.”

I took the book. The leather was soft, the cover unmarked.

“I’m Caedin,” he added. “You’re Callis.”

It wasn’t a question.

I nodded.

“You’re not from here.”

Again, not a question.

“No.”

“I wasn’t, either. Once.”

He smiled again, and for the first time since arriving, I didn’t feel like someone’s curiosity. I felt… seen.

We collected three more volumes in quiet—one on the rites of passage, another marked with the seal of the moon goddess, and a final one too faded to identify. I offered to carry them all, but Caedin waved the offer away.

“We’ll share the weight.”

We left the temple together.

The sun had dipped a little lower. The light through the arches had turned amber, and the shadows stretched long across the marble.

“I didn’t think anyone would be so helpful here,” I said, after a long pause.

“Most people here are helpful,” Caedin said. “Just not always in the way you want them to be.”

I laughed once, a breath more than sound. “That’s… accurate.”

“You’re searching for information on the Bond.”

I glanced down at the scrolls in my hands .

“I want to understand it,” I admitted. “The things I’ve heard are conflicting. I heard it’s painful, but also… beautiful. Easy.”

“It’s not easy,” he said. “But it can be.”

We walked in silence for a few steps before he continued.

“It’s more than a promise. It’s not a ceremony you walk through and forget. The Bond is physical, yes, but it’s spiritual too. It settles beneath the skin. It marks you, changes the rhythm of your thoughts, even your breath.”

I swallowed. “And it only ends when?—?”

“When the time runs out,” he said. “Or when both of you speak the words to break it.”

“Both.”

He nodded. “Everything is mutual here. Always.” It sounded like a lie.

Coming here to bring honor to my family didn’t feel like a mutual agreement.

In one instant, we had been sinking; in another, a chance too good to be true was given to us.

Nobody had asked me whether I would or could go through with it.

We reached the inner wing. My room was just beyond the second arch.

Caedin paused beside the low fountain, setting the scrolls on the ledge carefully, as if they deserved reverence even now.

“I’ve only bonded once,” he said, almost offhand.

That surprised me. “Did it… last?”

He hesitated.

His gaze turned inward, distant. “It was beautiful,” he said. “And complicated. ”

I waited. The silence felt like something offered.

“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No,” Caedin replied, his voice still soft, “it’s all right. But there are some things—” he glanced at me “—some things that feel wrong to speak aloud. They aren’t secrets. Just… sacred.”

I nodded. I understood that. It was why so little was truly known.

He smiled again. “I think you’ll do well here, Callis.”

I didn’t believe him. But I wanted to.

Caedin bent to collect the scrolls again, but I reached for one and held onto it as we began to walk once more. The warm breeze fluttered the edges of our serets , the fabric catching little whispers of movement as we passed beneath an arbor.

“Why are you being kind to me?” I asked quietly.

Caedin turned his head, brows raised just slightly. “Because someone was kind to me.”

I waited.

He smiled faintly, as though the memory had teeth and sweetness both.

“When I first came here, I worked in the kitchens. Not glamorous, I know. Peeling fruit, washing pots, scrubbing the floors with oil until they shone enough to blind you at sunrise. I kept my head down and listened. It’s what people forget you can do when your hands are busy. ”

“You weren’t chosen?” I asked.

“Not right away.” His voice held no bitterness, only memory. “Some are. Some are summoned the night they arrive. Others take weeks. Or never bond at all.”

I glanced at him. “Did you think they’d forgotten you?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes. Then I realized there’s no order to it. No ladder to climb. They say the gods favor whom they favor. And when the moment comes, it comes.”

I hesitated. “I was told I’d be bonded. That I was being sent to serve the island.”

Caedin nodded, his tone gentler now. “That might be true. But when, and to whom, no one can promise that.”

“But I was summoned.”

“To the island,” he said. “Not to a person. There’s a difference.”

We passed under a carved archway, a fig tree growing just beyond it, its limbs thick with green. The scent of crushed leaves lingered in the warm air.

“But there must be some order to it,” I insisted. “Signs. Names drawn. Announcements.”

Caedin’s mouth curled again—this time in amusement, not cruelty. “No ceremonies. No scrolls read aloud. When it happens, it’s instinct. Desire. Alignment. Sometimes it begins with a conversation. Sometimes a glance. Sometimes… just a feeling that a bond already exists and needs to be spoken aloud.”

“That doesn’t sound like order at all.”

“No,” Caedin said. “It sounds like life.”

We paused at a corner where the corridor branched, leading toward the eastern courtyard .

“You haven’t been given your duties yet?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I thought I wouldn’t need any. That I’d be summoned quickly. Maybe even the first night.”

He looked at me for a moment, something unreadable in his expression. “You were afraid of that, weren’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

He offered me a scroll, placing it into my hands. “Then be grateful for the waiting. Not everything here is about beauty and ease, Callis. Some of it is… more difficult. More real. The bond isn’t just pleasure. It’s intimacy and surrender. It can unmake you. Or make you better than you were.”

I held the scroll like it weighed more than before.

“So I’m to wait?”

“You’re to live,” Caedin said simply. “Attend your duties when they’re assigned. Explore. Learn. Let them see you for who you are.”

“And what if they don’t like what they see?”

Caedin tilted his head. “Then they’re not meant to summon you. That’s the secret no one wants to say aloud.”

A silence stretched between us, comfortable this time.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“For what?”

“For being the first person who doesn’t speak in riddles.”

Caedin laughed. “Oh, I promise I do. I’ve just learned how to sound sincere while doing it.” He bowed slightly, his dark eyes warm. “Enjoy the scrolls. And if you tire of silence, find me. I’m usually in the terraces mid-morning. Or down by the practice pools pretending not to flirt.”

He turned, his bare feet silent on the polished stone.

I stood for a moment longer, the scrolls warm against my palms, the scent of herbs and ripe fig lingering in the breeze.

I didn’t know if I trusted him.

But I believed him. And somewhere deep down, I thought a bond to him could be easy. A single lunar cycle, bonded to someone who wasn’t cruel or stuck up. That couldn’t be so bad, could it?

The door clicked shut behind me, sealing out the murmurs of the halls and the drifting perfume of sunwarmed herbs.

My room felt still again, the way it had last night.

Quiet, almost watchful. The air inside was cooler than outside, touched faintly by the lingering scent of pressed parchment, citrus, and whatever balm had been worked into the polished floor.

I stood there a moment longer, the stack of scrolls in my hands cradled against my chest like something too fragile to set down.

Then, slowly, I crossed to the writing table.