SOUL BOUND HEIR

Chapter 4: What remains

The lamp burned lower.

Donald sat on the edge of the bed and watched the flame lean whenever the draft moved under the door. In every few minutes he reached for the silver band to be sure it was still there. The borrowed body felt heavier than it should have. The heart beat steadily, yet the rhythm differed greatly from the one he had known his entire life

Gaius had not spoken for a long while. He sat on the stool with his hands open on his knees, eyes fixed on the floorboards between his boots. The grief in the room had changed shape. It no longer belonged only to the dead boy on the bed. It had spread and settled over both of them.

Donald broke the silence first. “You said they wiped out the rest of the house.”

Gaius nodded once without looking up. “A co–hunter from the city passed the news to me. Your father first. Then the household and servants. Your two younger sisters were taken to the neighboring court. The rest were left where they fell.”

The words arrived without decoration. Donald waited for the anger to rise the way it used to when he was still in his own skin. It came more quietly than he expected. It felt like a cold weight under the ribs rather than heat in the throat. He kept his face still. The new muscles answered more slowly than his own once had.

“Maya?” he asked.

“The younger one. She was seen being led toward the eastern road with the other girls meant for service. I cannot say more than that.”

Donald looked down at Harvey’s hands. The scholarship token still hung from the leather cord. He closed his fingers around it until the brass edge bit into the palm. The small pain felt useful. It gave the rest of the night something solid to hold onto.

“Four days and some hours,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

“The soul thins. You become less able to hold the body. Then you lose it. After that, there is nothing left that can take another.”

Donald nodded; he had known the rule. Hearing it in this room, with the scent of the dead boy’s fever still in the blankets, made the number sharper.

Gaius rose and crossed to the small table. He poured water from a clay jug into a wooden cup and set it near Donald without comment. The gesture was ordinary. It felt heavier than it should have.

“You will answer to Harvey’s name,” Gaius said. “The palace school does not ask many questions of scholarship boys. They care about the mark on the token and the hours you keep. Stay quiet, do the work, and do well to hide the band. That is all that matters until we know more.”

Donald drank. The water tasted of the forest. He set the cup down carefully. “Why are you helping me?”

Gaius was quiet for a moment. A faint noise of a rodent running across dry leaves rose outside. The older man’s voice, when it came, stayed level.

“While my son is gone, the body remains. You are what is left inside it. If you live long enough to take back the throne that was snatched from you, then something of this night was not wasted. That is the only reason I have.”

Donald accepted the answer the same way he accepted the water. There was no room left for anything cleaner.

They slept in turns. Sleep eluded Donald because he did not yet understand how the new body operated. He sat on the bed, leaning his back against the wall and listened to the forest settle. Every sound that was not the wind made his shoulders tighten. He once thought he heard the hammering foots of horses again, but the sound faded into the distance and did not return.

When Gaius woke him near dawn, the lamp had gone out. Gray light leaked under the door. Donald stood and tested the borrowed legs. They held. The silver band was still in place. He checked it twice more before they left the cottage.

The path toward the city wound down through old trees. Mist clung to the lower ground. Gaius walked ahead with the steady pace of a man who had made the journey many times. Donald followed, measuring each step against the unfamiliar length of Harvey’s stride. The scholarship token tapped lightly against his chest with every movement.

They spoke little. Once Gaius stopped and pointed to a narrow game trail that branched left.

“If the search turns back, that path leads to the deeper woods. There is a cave half a day’s walk in. Remember it.”

Donald nodded. He filed the information the same way he had once filed maps of the palace corridors. Useful. Necessary. Not yet needed.

By mid-morning the trees thinned. The first low farms appeared, then the outer road that led toward the high white towers of the citadel. Donald had seen those towers all his life from the other side of the city. Now they rose ahead of him under a different name and a different face.

Gaius slowed. “From here you are, Harvey. The boy who recovered from fever and still intends to claim his place. Speak only when spoken to. Keep your eyes down when the soldiers pass. The band will do the rest.”

Donald adjusted the strap of the small pack Gaius had given him. Inside were a second shirt, a heel of bread, and nothing else. He felt the absence of the necklace the way a man feels a missing tooth—constant, impossible to ignore.

“Four days,” he said quietly.

“Less,” Gaius answered. “We will use them.”

They joined the road among other travelers—farmers with carts, a pair of merchants arguing over the price of salt, a woman carrying a child on her hip. No one looked twice at the hunter and the quiet young man walking beside him. The borrowed heart kept its steady count.

Ahead, the towers grew clearer. Somewhere inside those walls Barco slept under the same roof Donald would have to enter. Somewhere the empty body was already being prepared for the fire. Somewhere his sister, if she still lived, walked the servant corridors under another man’s orders.

Donald kept his eyes on the road. The grief sat quiet and heavy under his ribs, the same way the pressure had sat there in the days before the mountain. He did not push it aside. He simply carried it forward, step after step, under a name that was not his and a face that still felt like borrowed clothing.

The city gates rose ahead. Soldiers stood watch in the fresh morning light. Gaius walked through without slowing. Donald followed, the scholarship token visible at his throat, the silver band hidden in the dark hair, the five-day limit already thinner than it had been the night before.