Kaelen—
We have not yet met, but I owe you an apology. You will expect a partner worthy of your studies, someone who embodies the ideals you have read about in ancient texts. I fear you will find instead a man who understands war better than love, duty better than desire.
I will try to be what you need. I will follow the forms, maintain the proper roles, give you the experience your research requires. But I cannot promise you the authentic connection that makes such bonds sacred. That capacity was trained out of me long ago, if it ever existed at all.
You deserve better. I am sorry you will not receive it.
I stared at the second letter, the moonstone’s gentle radiance making the ink seem to shimmer on the page. There it was—the truth I’d been avoiding. I was already planning to fail. Already preparing apologies for inadequacies I hadn’t yet demonstrated.
This was what I did. What I’d always done. Built walls before the first stone was thrown, retreated before the first advance, apologized for defeats that existed only in my mind.
No wonder my previous bonds had been hollow exercises. I’d approached them like a man walking to his execution—dutiful, resigned, already grieving what could never be.
But what if...
I set down the quill and leaned back in my chair. What if I didn’t fail this time? What if instead of expecting disappointment, I allowed for the possibility of something else?
The thought scared me, but it also stirred something I’d thought long dead. Hope. Small and fragile as moonstone light, but present.
Kaelen was a scholar. Maybe—maybe he would see past the rigid training to whatever lay beneath. Maybe his academic curiosity would uncover things I’d never known how to access myself.
Or maybe I would surprise us both.
I folded the letters carefully and placed the first in my chest, unsent. Then I covered the moonstone lamp on the wall, dimming its glow to barely a whisper, and lay down on my narrow bed, still clothed.
Sleep came slowly, and when it did, I dreamed of hands gentler than my own, guiding me toward surrender I’d never dared imagine.
I woke near dawn with the second letter still clutched against my chest, parchment wrinkled from the grip of sleeping fingers that had refused to let go.
Chapter
Two
KAELEN
The morning light filtered through the scriptorium's high windows in shafts of gold and amber, illuminating dust motes that danced above rows of curved desks like tiny spirits celebrating the dawn. I loved this hour—when the air still held the coolness of night but promised the warmth of day, when the great hall hummed with quiet industry and the scratch of quills against parchment created its own sacred rhythm.
What I didn't love was the conversation happening three desks over.
"The Tablets of Miren are quite clear," Lysander was saying, his voice carrying that particular tone scholars used when they believed themselves unassailable. "Divine partnership requires complete submission from the lesser to the greater. The texts describe elaborate protocols, specific positions, even prescribed phrases. These aren't metaphors—they're instructions."
I set down my quill with perhaps more force than necessary. Lysander's clinical recitation of "specific positions" sent unwelcome heat racing through my blood, conjuring images I had no business entertaining in a sacred scriptorium—yet couldn't stop myself from savoring. The descriptions of power and surrender, of bodies bent to another's will, of the exquisite moment when resistance finally crumbled into desperate obedience. Around me, other scribes glanced up from their work, sensing the familiar tension that preceded one of my debates with the more orthodox members of our Order.
But this wasn't really about theological disagreement. This was about the way those passages made my pulse quicken in the dark hours before dawn when sleep eluded me, about fantasies I'd never dared voice aloud.
"Instructions for what, exactly?" I asked, not bothering to turn around. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Lysander, have you read the context surrounding those passages? Have you actually imagined what they would feel like in practice?"
What I didn't say was that I'd memorized those passages. Not for scholarly merit, but for the way they made my skin burn with possibility. The descriptions of militants kneeling for scholarly guidance, of strong hands placed carefully behind straight backs, of voices trained to command armies learning to whisper submission. They haunted my supposedly disciplined thoughts with increasing frequency, feeding hungers I was only beginning to understand.
A soft sigh came from the desk beside mine. Priest Myris looked up from the treatise he was reviewing, ink stains decorating his fingers like ritual markings, his expression already wearing that particular combination of patience and worry I'd come to recognize as distinctly mine to inspire.
"Perhaps," he said gently, "we might discuss this more quietly?"
But Lysander had heard the challenge in my voice, and pride—that eternal enemy of scholarly wisdom—had been engaged. He turned in his chair, brown hair catching the light, jaw set with the determination of someone who'd spent too many hours memorizing texts without questioning their deeper implications.
"These are sacred writings, Kaelen. Divinely inspired. The gods don't adapt their truths to accommodate changing fashions in mortal thinking."
I finally turned to face him, abandoning any pretense of continuing my own work. The movement allowed me to scan the scriptorium briefly—catching sight of broad shoulders bent over copying work, the play of muscle beneath scholarly robes, the unconscious grace that marked those who moved their bodies as skillfully as they moved their minds. My throat went dry as I wondered which among them might understand the hunger building in my chest, which might recognize the predatory focus I was struggling to conceal.
