SOUL BOUND HEIR

Chapter 5: Palace white tower

The gates of Horem rose higher than Donald recalled.

He had seen them all his life from the Gallagher side of the city, white stone catching the morning light, the royal banners moving slowly in the wind. Now he walked beneath them under another name, the scholarship token resting against a chest that still did not feel like his own. He touched it once as they passed the guards, a small private check that had already become a habit.

Gaius kept a half-step ahead. He carried himself like any other hunter, bringing his son to claim a place that had been earned. No one stopped them. The soldiers at the gate glanced at the brass disk and waved them through without questions. Donald watched the way their eyes moved past him and felt the first thin relief of the day. The band was doing its work.

Inside the outer walls, the city opened in layers. Market stalls lined the lower streets. The smell of baking bread and horse sweat mixed with the sharper scent of wet stone after the night’s rain. People moved with the careful pace of those who had learned not to draw attention. Twice Donald saw small groups of soldiers questioning a man near a doorway. Once he heard the c***k of a whip somewhere farther down a side street, and then silence. Barco’s rule had already settled into the bones of the place.

They climbed the long slope toward the citadel. The white towers grew clearer with every single, careful step. Donald kept his eyes forward. The borrowed legs answered more readily now, but the stride still felt half a beat off from the one he had known. He measured it the way he once measured the length of a sparring bout—quietly, without comment.

At the scholar’s gate, a clerk in a plain gray robe sat behind a narrow table. A ledger lay open in front of him. He looked up immediately when Gaius stopped.

“Name.”

“Harvey Gaius. Won a scholarship to study in the palace.”

The clerk ran a finger down the page, found the entry, and made a small mark. He barely glanced at Donald. “Room twelve in the lower scholars’ wing. Classes begin at the second bell. Miss more than two and the place is given to the next on the list.” He pushed a thin iron key across the table. “Keep the token visible during the day.”

Donald took the key. The metal was cold and slightly rough. He closed his fingers around it and nodded once. The clerk had already looked past him to the next person in line.

Gaius led the way through a side courtyard and into a long stone corridor that smelled of dust and old lamp oil. The lower scholars’ wing sat against the outer wall of the citadel, far from the royal apartments. The rooms were small and identical. Number twelve held two narrow beds, a single wooden chest, and a high window that looked out over the lower roofs of the city. Someone had already claimed the bed nearer the door; Donald knew about it the moment he sighted the blankets folded with military neatness, with another second scholarship token hanging from a peg.

Donald set his small pack on the empty bed. The room felt temporary in a way that went beyond the sparse furniture. He sat on the edge of the mattress and rested his elbows on his knees, the way he had in the cottage the night before. The posture was becoming familiar. That unsettled him more than it should have.

Gaius stood near the window. “I will be housed with the other guardians in the outer buildings. We are allowed to see each other at the evening meal and on the rest day. Beyond that, you are on your own inside these walls.”

Donald looked up. “And if the band slips?”

“Then we both die. Keep it in place. Check it when you wake and before you sleep. Do not take it off for any reason.”

The older man’s voice stayed level, but the words carried the same weight they had carried in the forest. Donald nodded. He reached back and touched the silver band again. Still there. Still cold.

Gaius left without further ceremony. The door closed behind him with a soft, final click. Donald remained seated for a long while after the footsteps faded. The city noise rose faintly through the high window—cart wheels, a distant shout, the cry of a bird circling the towers. None of it belonged to him. He was inside the place that had ordered his death, wearing the face of a boy who should have been here in his own right, and the five days limit had already become four.

He rose and crossed to the window. From this height, he could see the central courtyard where the higher scholars and the royal household crossed paths during the day. Figures moved across the pale stone in ones and twos. A group of young men in training leathers practiced forms under the eye of an instructor. Two women in plain dresses carried baskets toward the kitchen. And then, near the far colonnade, a figure he would have known in any light — even if he was half asleep.

Leah.

She walked with the same measured pace she had always used when she wanted no one to notice her thoughts. Dark hair bound simply at the nape. A plain gray scholar’s robe over her own clothes. She carried a thin portfolio under one arm. They seemed like the sketches he knew, though he could not see them from this distance. She did not look up. She turned the corner and disappeared into the shadow of the next arch.

Donald’s borrowed hand tightened on the stone sill until the knuckles whitened. The urge to call out rose and died in the same breath. He had no name she would answer to. He had no face she would recognize. The token at his throat belonged to a dead boy, and the band in his hair was the only thing keeping him alive long enough to decide what came next.

He stepped back from the window and sat again on the edge of the bed. The room was quiet. The second bed remained empty for now. Somewhere beyond these walls his own body was already ash or would soon be—and his sister, if she were still alive, walked the servant corridors under another man’s roof. Four days remained before the soul itself thinned.

Donald reached up and checked the silver band one more time. Then he lay back on the narrow mattress, eyes open, and waited for the second bell that would call the scholars to their first class.

The city continued its careful morning transactions. The white towers stood silent above him. Inside the same stone maze the princess who had shared a mutual love with him moved through her day with no idea that the prince she had lost, the one her father think he’d destroyed because of jealousy, was already inside the walls, breathing with borrowed lungs and counting the hours that still belonged to him.