Page 68 of Golden Bond

This was the one.

The parting gift he’d given me, which I had left here when I settled in. The one he’d told me to open only once the island was truly behind me.

I reached out—but stopped.

For a moment, I just stared at it. Afraid. Foolishly afraid that opening it would make everything real. That whatever lay inside would be the period at the end of us.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, the wood rough beneath me, the box resting in my lap like something sacred. My fingers trembled as I untied the ribbon. It slid loose with a whisper. The lid creaked when I opened it.

Inside, resting on a bed of folded linen, was a pendant.

Gold. Solid. Shaped like a sunburst, its rays etched in spirals and whorls that caught the dim light like a live flame.

It was beautiful.

It was… too much.

I touched it reverently, then lifted it free. It had weight to it. Not heavy, but present. The kind of weight meant to be felt when worn. The chain slipped through my fingers like water.

I stared at it for a long time. And then the tears came back. Not sharp, not heaving—just a slow, hot spill down my cheeks. Because it wasn’t what I wanted.

Not because it lacked value, or thought, or meaning.

But because it didn’t hold his hands.

Didn’t carry the sound of his breath in the morning, or the smell of mint crushed beneath his heel in the garden paths.

It didn’t remember the feel of his mouth on mine.

It wasn’t him.

It glittered in the lamplight—perfect, eternal—and I sat there like a boy who’d been handed a crown when all he wanted was a kiss.

I curled around it, knees drawn to my chest, pendant still clutched in my hands.

And I wept again.

Not for the gold. But for all the gifts I could no longer hold.

For the skin I’d kissed. The eyes I’d watched fall closed. The voice that had once said my name like a prayer.

I wept because the bond had ended, and because it hadn’t.

Because it still pulsed faintly somewhere in me, like a song just beyond hearing.

And because, even now, it refused to let go.

Chapter

Fifteen

AUREN

Iwoke 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.