We left as two men.
Not bonded.
Not anything.
And yet, something in me ached as though I’d left a piece of myself on that altar.
Auren said nothing, and neither did I.
But I felt it.
A ghost of warmth. A hum below the silence. And I wondered if severance was ever truly clean.
Chapter
Thirteen
AUREN
The city had not yet shaken off its sleep.
We walked side by side through streets still silvered by night, though the first fingers of sun had begun to stretch over the tiled roofs and low walls of Eletheria. The air was damp with morning, tinged with salt and figwood ash. I heard the faint bray of a distant donkey, the clatter of a shutter drawn back. But mostly, there was stillness. A soft breath held between night and day.
I didn’t speak at first.
Callis’s steps were quiet beside mine, measured, graceful in that way he never tried to be. He wore the traveling robes I had left for him—soft, sand-hued linen with a wrap for the wind. I had chosen the color myself. It made his skin look sunlit even in shadow.
In the folds of myseret, I felt the hard corners of the wooden box press against my ribs.
My fingers brushed it once, then again, as if toremind myself it was real. That I would give it to him. That I would let him go.
“This early light…” I said, to break the silence. My voice sounded softer than I expected. “It always makes the temple walls look pink. As if the whole city were blushing.”
Callis gave a faint smile. “I noticed. The first time we went to the baths and I looked down.”
“You stopped at the corner where the two gardens meet.”
He looked over. “You remember that?”
I nodded. “I remember everything.”
There it was again—the temptation to say more. To reach for his hand. To ask,Are you sure?
But I kept walking.
We turned through a narrow passage that opened toward the slope of the harbor road. Below us, the sea glinted, calm and endless. And there, at the far edge of the docks, the ship waited. Its sails were still furled. The hull sat proud in the water, painted in quiet stripes of faded blue. No banners, no fanfare. Just wood and rope and the promise of elsewhere.
I hated it.
“Looks smaller than I remember,” I murmured.
“It’s perfect,” Callis said.
The pain was so clean, so sharp, I had to look away. I watched a pair of dockhands begin to load crates onto the vessel—scroll-chests bound with sun-oiled rope, marked for Callis’s temple. My gift. My consolation prize.
The scent of cedar and sea brine filled my nose. Somewhere, a gull shrieked.
I glanced sideways, catching the set of his jaw, the way the wind played with the fringe of his wrap. The bond fluttered between us—uncertain, flickering, as if it too were caught in some great unmaking. I had thought severing it would bring relief, clarity. But it hadn’t happened yet. And in its last throes, the bond trembled like a body that knew it was about to be cut open.
