The morning stretched on with agonizing slowness. I moved through the drills like a man underwater, my reactions dulled, my usual precision replaced by a crushing awareness of time's passage. Each shadow that shifted across the training ground marked another moment lost, another heartbeat closer to the end.
When Captain Thane appeared at the edge of the yard, his expression carefully neutral, I knew my performance had been noted. He gestured for me to approach, and I walked toward him with the heavy steps of someone called to account for failure.
"Walk with me," he said simply, leading me away from the others toward the shade of an ancient olive tree that had probably witnessed a thousand such conversations.
We stood in silence for a moment, the sounds of continued training drifting across the morning air. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the gentle authority of someone who had learned to balance discipline with understanding.
"The waiting is always the hardest part," he said, not looking at me directly. "The knowing that changeapproaches, that the life you've grown accustomed to is about to shift. It makes cowards of us all."
"I'm not afraid," I lied, though we both knew the words for what they were.
"No?" His smile was knowing, touched with the kind of compassion that came from personal experience. "Then perhaps you're simply mourning what you're about to lose. That's natural as well."
The unexpected understanding in his voice nearly undid me. I had expected rebuke, disappointment, perhaps even punishment for my poor performance. Instead, he offered something far more dangerous—sympathy.
"Tomorrow brings new opportunities," he continued, his gaze turning toward the distant palace where ceremonies would reshape lives with ritual precision. "The successful completion of a cross-Order bond opens doors that remain closed to those who haven't proven their emotional discipline. Command positions, diplomatic assignments, the kind of advancement that comes to those who've shown they can form connections without losing themselves."
Advancement. The word should have stirred excitement, anticipation for the future I'd always planned. Instead, it felt like a consolation prize for a contest I'd never wanted to win.
"You'll find your place again," Thane said, placing a hand on my shoulder with fatherly warmth. "Sometimes we must lose ourselves temporarily to discover who we truly are."
"Yes, sir," I managed, though the words felt like stones in my throat.
"Take the rest of the day," he said, his tone allowing no argument. "Rest, prepare yourself for tomorrow's ceremony. Return to us ready to embrace what you've learned."
I nodded and walked away, feeling his eyes on my back until I disappeared beyond the olive grove. But instead of returning to our chambers, where Kaelen would be waiting with gentle concern and careful questions, I found myself walking in the opposite direction.
The path led upward, away from the palace complex and the careful structures of civilized life, toward the wild places where gods might once have walked among mortals. My feet carried me without conscious direction, following ancient tracks that wound between gnarled trees and sun-warmed stones.
I climbed until my lungs burned, until sweat dampened my training garments, until the sounds of daily life faded into the whisper of wind through leaves. Only when I reached the familiar hilltop did I pause, sinking onto the grass beside the weathered obelisk that marked the island's most sacred ground.
The stone rose before me like a prayer made manifest, its surface carved with symbols so old their meaning had been lost to time. But the story remained, passed down through generations of lovers and dreamers who understood that some truths transcended the written word.
Here, two youths had loved so purely that theirbond had opened a bridge between mortal and divine realms. Not through ceremony or ritual, but through the simple recognition of souls finding their perfect complement. The first recorded bond, born not from duty but from desire, not from political necessity but from the kind of love that poets spent lifetimes trying to capture.
I pressed my palm against the warm stone, feeling the weight of history in its ancient surface. How many others had knelt here, as I knelt now, wrestling with the terrible choice between duty and desire? How many had walked away from love in service to expectations that felt increasingly hollow?
The followers of Elyon told stories of their god's great love—how he had walked among mortals in the early days, how he had found a youth sleeping in a sun-warmed meadow and been so moved by mortal beauty that he had knelt beside the sleeping figure like a supplicant. Their love had been immediate, transformative, strong enough to create the first bridge between realms.
No careful negotiation. No twenty-eight-day limitations.
Just recognition, sudden and complete.
I envied them their certainty, their faith in love's power to transcend any obstacle. In their stories, the heart was not something to be disciplined but something to be honored. Desire was not weakness but divinity made manifest. Connection was not temporary arrangement but eternal truth.
How different my path might have been if I hadbeen born to follow the god of love rather than the god of war. How much sweeter the journey toward someone who understood that bonds were not tests to be passed but gifts to be treasured.
The sun climbed higher, marking time with the inexorable patience of eternity. Below me, the palace gleamed white in the afternoon light, its walls containing the life I would soon return to—the narrow bed, the careful routines, the slow climb toward advancement that felt increasingly meaningless.
Somewhere in those walls, Kaelen waited. Perhaps he stood at our window, watching the hills for some sign of my return. Perhaps he had buried himself in texts, seeking solace in scholarship as I sought it in solitude. Perhaps he felt the same desperate ache that had driven me to this hilltop, this communion with stones that had witnessed greater loves than ours.
As the sun began its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of gold and crimson, I finally rose from my vigil. The obelisk stood unchanged, eternal, a monument to the truth that some bonds transcended time itself.
I walked back down the hill with heavy steps, each pace carrying me closer to the end. The palace walls rose before me like the boundaries of a beautiful prison, and I entered them with the resignation of someone who had made his choice long ago.
Our chambers were warm with afternoon light when I opened the door, and Kaelen rose from his reading chair with the fluid grace that had captivated me from the first moment I'd seen him. His storm-grey eyes searched my face with the careful attention of someone who had learned to read every subtle shift in my expression.
"You're troubled," he said, not a question but a statement of fact.
