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 throughbalance. 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.
