Page 41 of Golden Bond


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Not with a divine vision. Not with revelation. But with cruelty, dressed in the language of order.

It echoed, didn’t it? Even now. Even in the way some envoys demanded tribute with less patience than the gods themselves had shown. I thought of Auren then. The set of his jaw when he listened. The flicker in his eyes when someone spoke of law without mercy.

I read on.

“The end of Thorion’s life is recorded not by those who served him, but by those who survived him. No Harmonist scribe ever met him in the flesh, nor did any stand within the citadel he built atop Harkan’s cliffs. But it is said—by his own second steward—that he began speaking to the sea in his final days. That he walked the walls barefoot, hair unbound, muttering of betrayal and bloodlines.”

My fingers froze over the next line.

“He leapt, at dusk, from the Harkan Spire. Whether he fell in madness or defiance, none can say. But the rock below still bears his mark, black-veined and foul-scented when wet with storm.”

I stared at the passage for a long moment.

So even the mighty cracked.

Even the ones who thought they were divine.

The temple light had shifted, the shadows growing longer now along the archways. A scribe at the nextdesk stood and stretched, joints popping softly. I still hadn’t touched the fig.

I dipped my quill again.

Part of me wondered whether Auren had read this same volume. Whether he’d traced the same lines, felt the same quiet rage in the margins.

I wrote until the bell rang, then laid my tools aside and closed the parchment folio with care. The warmth of the bond returned again as I did, closer this time, a brush of presence that hummed behind my sternum.

He was near.

But we were still learning how to reach one another.

The scrolls had blurred by the end of the afternoon, my focus fracturing somewhere between the lines of tribute policy and the cramp in my hand. I stretched my fingers, dipped the quill once more for the closing signature, and carefully set the fresh folio aside. My shoulders ached. The light filtering through the scriptorium’s high windows had grown cooler, slanting silver-blue across the tiled floor. Another hour gone. Maybe more.

I didn’t linger.

From the scriptorium, I crossed to the Gymnasia. The eastern colonnade shimmered in the breeze, and I paused at the edge of the marble ring where pairs practiced under the arches—target throws in silks, spearmen sparring in light leather, and beyond, the ring of sand where naked wrestlers grappled, dusty and glowing.

I wasn’t assigned to any advanced training. Notyet. My routine was simple: strength and form, quarterstaff drills, breathing. I moved through it alone. Nobody spoke. That suited me.

The bathhouse adjoined the Gymnasia’s far wing, steam rising from the heated pools like a second roof. Inside, the scent of cedar and thyme clung to the air. I rinsed the sweat from my skin with water from a sunstone basin and lowered myself into the water.

The men who lounged in the shallows were a little older than me, some broad as temple doors, all cut in sharp relief under the lanterns. I glanced at one in particular, a sun-darkened acolyte with a lazy smirk and a thigh marked by ritual ink. His body was carved, oiled. Easy in its own skin.

Mine felt… unformed, by comparison. Too pale, too soft. Still growing into itself.

I looked away before I could be caught staring.

The sun had dipped below the outer wall by the time I dried off. I dressed quickly, the linen still warm from the stone benches, and made my way uphill, sandals tapping in time with the rush of worry building in my chest.

I hadn’t meant to be this late.

Auren hadn’t said I had to be back by any hour—but still. He might have expected me. Might be waiting. Or worse, he might think I was shirking my role, that I didn’t care.

The palace loomed closer, the top windows catching the last light of day.

I crossed the threshold to the upper wing, heart thudding.

“I’m sorry,” I said before the door had even fully opened, voice tumbling out in a rush. “I didn’t mean to stay so long. The hours got away from me at the baths, and then the path was busier than I expected?—”

“Callis,” came the reply.