AN: Me, writing another heavy on the religious tones Honest Hearts fanfic? Say it isn't so. Kinda fits in the same universe as Keys and War Doesn't Come to Zion. Content warning for explicit references to temple rituals/ceremonies.
Daniel had been married once. Was still married. It hadn't been anything like his parents' story—his mother swept off her feet by a charming missionary—but it had been a love story nonetheless.
He'd loved Pres. Mordecai, who had called Daniel into his office one evening and reminded Daniel that his own judgment day was not so far off, asked him if he had any plans to marry. At the time, Daniel hadn't fully grasped the significance, though it seemed perfectly obvious in retrospect. The path before him was not one meant to be walked alone.
He'd prayed about Mordecai's calling, turning his heart over to the God who had made him. He'd loved his faith, loved the God who answered his prayers with an overwhelming feeling of rightness and conviction.
He had loved Sarah Josephine immediately; from the very day he met her. He loved her as God had called him to love her, with a certainty in his heart that this was the will of God.
They had been married for only a few days, still near strangers in a sacred covenant, when they were called back to the endowment house.
It was then that Daniel began to understand. No one had told him. No one had prepared him. Yet when the duty was set before him, Daniel loved it too. He felt deeply loved, chosen, known by his God.
President Mordecai struggled through the entire ceremony, his breath labored as he trembled to wash their feet, his arms shaking as he anointed them. Daniel had offered to assist, but Mordecai insisted that this was the right order of things.
The right order for Daniel to be ordained a King and Priest. Bestowed the Keys of the Kingdom. Sealed to come forth on the morning of the First Resurrection. All gifts he could not have been given without a Queen and Priestess by his side.
It had been a brief, brilliant love. It remained a love, didn't it? He still believed in the promises he had made, didn't he?
Yet that belief did not banish the nightmares, the guilt, or the searing pain of losing everything and everyone he cherished—all at once.
Everyone except the man he was still bound to call his brother, the man who had brought this ruin upon them. The bitterness crept into his heart, gnawing at the edges of his faith.
He was left with the hollow certainty that he had been given the keys to a barren kingdom, a throne overlooking desolation.
Joshua still came back to him. Penitent, broken. A living reminder of the ashes of their burned past.
And still, the commandment to love endured, an unyielding duty.
The unwilling king and his divine stewardship.
He will not fail this man.