Page 64 of Golden Bond

I wanted to speak. I wanted to scream. I said nothing.

We reached the edge of the dock.

Callis looked out at the ship, face unreadable, then back at me. The silence stretched.

I slipped the box from my seret and held it out.

“For when you’re underway. Open it once you’ve had a moment to breathe.”

He accepted it without question. His fingers brushed mine. He didn’t look away.

And I thought—just for that heartbeat—that I wouldn’t survive this.

But I did. I let go.

And the distance between us, once so sacred, began to grow.

Callis tucked the box into the satchel slung over his shoulder, fingers lingering just a moment too long on the flap before letting it fall shut. His eyes flicked toward the gangplank. Then to me.

“It’s time,” he said softly.

The words carved something out of me.

I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice. I stepped forward instead, gathering him into my arms—not tightly, not possessively, but wholly. As if my body remembered the shape of him and feared it would forget. His head rested against my shoulder. His breath warmed my throat. My hands pressed against the small of his back, memorizing the lines of muscle under the traveling robes. I didn’t know how long we stood like that.

When we finally broke apart, our arms fell slowly. Like the limbs of tired dancers, refusing to let the final note fade.

Callis looked at me one last time. His lips parted, as though to say something more.

But he didn’t.

He turned toward the ship.

Each step he took away from me struck like a chisel. I didn’t move. I didn’t call out. I had given him my silence, and I would honor it.

And then?—

The bond surged.

It hit me like a blow. A wildfire of heat and ache, not fading but flaring, wild and sharp and close to breaking. It screamed in my chest, no longer quiet or reverent. Not acceptance. Not peace.

Need.

I staggered, a hand going to my heart, to the place where his echo still lived.

He turned. I felt it before I saw it. That samearrest in his breath. The way his body halted like it had heard a prayer.

We moved at once.

No words.

I met him halfway, on the planks that smelled of salt and pitch, the morning sun flashing gold behind him. His arms came around me before mine found him, our mouths colliding in a kiss that had no beginning and no shape—just heat and want and desperate, beautiful panic.

My hands framed his jaw, my thumbs against the arch of his cheeks. His fingers clenched at my sides. The kiss wasn’t tender. It wasn’t soft. It was fire drawn from a dying hearth, a miracle strike of warmth in the cold.

Hope bloomed, terrifying and bright.

And then we parted again.