The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 1: PROLOGUE — THE THING THAT LIVED

Read chapter 1 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

PROLOGUE — THE THING THAT LIVED I was trying to save him when he started laughing. His laughter was silent, his face drowning on dry stone. His whole body clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing, face down in the dirt, going nowhere. The square around us stank of lime and blood and the peel of burned oranges from a market cart that had overturned and cooked itself to jam. The green light gave everything that river-water quality: the flagstones, the walls, and even my hands. "Hold still," I told him. "I can make this better." The Gem vibrated inside my chest; it was a part of me, and it exerted a pressure that strove to make me feed it. I didn't know the Gem's rules. I only knew I was tired of taking life. I needed to fix something. I'd already used most of my tricks. What used to be a shield was now only a push; the tether that pulled knives from hands was now just a tangled thread in my fingers. This had to work. He had been a man before the green: dark beard, city badge on a frayed sash, broad shoulders, the sort that makes people step behind them without thinking. Now he was a pile of uniform and heat, eyes rimmed raw from the chalky dust the monsters left when they came apart, the residue of them settling into lungs and throats. He struggled to catch his breath, the rattle inside him growing weaker and more desperate with each pull. "Name?" I asked because names hold better than skin. He blinked slowly. "Harry." "Think of the thing you won't drop even if you're dying," I said. "An oath. A face. A something." "The Gate," he rasped, and the word had weight; you could hang a lock on it. "We hold the Gate." "Good," I said, because it was. Anchors matter. I felt it was needed. "Hold it." I pressed my palm to the wound under his ribs. The Gem pushed into my hand, hungry the way cats are: ready to bite while begging. Light came from me: not bright or holy, just the color of cool steel. I kept it small, a thread, focusing on the damage, not overwhelming him. The first touch was clean. I felt the hook of his oath catch, felt the filament tie to it. —Hold the Gate— The gem connected us as a bond; his will was subjected to mine. His breath steadied. The green light thinned at the edges of my sight, and for one selfish heartbeat, I believed this would be the time I fixed something without breaking anything else. The second touch wasn't clean. The Gem and our connection surged. "Hold," I told Harry, and the word came out wrong, deeper, heavier, Gem-thick. "Hold the Gate." He shuddered. The oath wasn't enough. Panic chewed through it. The thread skittered for purchase, hooked bone, marrow, anything. The Gem needed more; it started to eat his shape, his thoughts, and his being. "No," I said, making the light small as a hair. But small wasn't gentle. The light always found a shape anyway. His back arched, fingers scraping the stone. His eyes clouded and cleared over and over. "Harry," I said, but I don't think he could hear me. I don't think I could hear myself. He didn't change all at once. It happened bit by bit. Heat slicked his skin. New scales grew, slow as calluses, as steady as scars. His eyes turned the color of wet slate. When he opened his mouth, I saw both old and new teeth. He tested them together, tasting the blood in his mouth. The laughing started then, small at first, then wider, wetter, his shoulders shaking with it. He wasn't laughing at anything. There was nothing funny. He couldn't stop. He sat up on joints that didn't agree with the old angles of his bones. His eyes found me and stayed. There was hunger in them, but beneath that, deeper, something worse. Devotion. "Back," I said. My voice carried the Gem's weight. "Stay." The obedience settled into me, warm and immediate, and I hated how good it felt. I hadn't meant to make a command. I had made a command. My knees went soft with relief and something uglier. If I could make him stay, if I could make him guard, then the square would be safer for the next hour,