The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 108: Volume 4: Chapter 100 – The Princess

Read chapter 108 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 4: Chapter 100 – The Princess The sun had made it above the walls by the time Meredith stepped into the center of the courtyard again. Light slanted across broken stone and dented armor, picking out the gleam on Rosa’s Ember-Palm, the dull shine of wolf-plates, the wet darkness of blood. It touched the faces of the Ferric regulars who still stood, unsure whether to kneel or flee. It pooled in the hollows of the slug-rent fissures under the palace. Work crews had started to move rubble to the sides. Gayle had begun his quiet walk among the dead, murmuring brief blessings over Conclave and Ferric alike. The chaos of battle had shifted into the focused confusion of aftermath. In the middle of it, Meredith Ashcourt walked forward of her own will. She had not asked for chains. She had not tried to bargain for leniency. When Yara finished speaking, she had nodded once, squared her shoulders, and now here she was, cloak torn, hair half out of its braid, crown still on her head. “My turn,” she said. Her voice carried farther than it should have in the open space. Yara studied her. The Queen’s crown was a practical thing, not some ridiculous spiked halo. Gold worked with iron, low and heavy, set with dull stones that held more history than flash—rings glittered on both hands: signets, oath-bands, tokens of treaties. “Sacrifice first,” Yara said. “You know how this works.” She nodded toward Eliza, toward the enhanced, toward all the others who had stood before Yara and given up something that mattered. Meredith lifted both hands. “Very well,” she said. Her fingers shook just a little as she reached up and took the crown from her head. She held it for a moment, looking down at it. “The crown of Eldania,” she said. “Iron and gold. Forged from the gates we took from the Ferric when we threw them out the first time.” A slight, dry amusement crossed her face. “History has teeth.” She lowered the crown into Yara’s waiting hand. Then she pulled off her rings one by one. Some came easily. Others had to be twisted over swollen knuckles, flesh complaining at the removal of old metal. She placed them atop the crown. “Those,” she said. “Are oaths. Some of them kept. Some broken. Some too tangled to name.” The Gem warmed under Yara’s ribs. Yes, it murmured. Authority. Obligation. Regret. Melt them. Thread them through her. Let her carry the city in her bones instead of on her head. Yara looked Meredith in the eyes. “This will hurt,” she said. “All of it.” Meredith’s mouth twitched. “I have buried three children and a husband,” she said. “I have watched a city starve under tariffs written by men who never dirtied their boots. I have heard my people curse my name when I signed the only peace that would keep them alive. Pain and I are acquainted.” She drew in a breath. “I will manage.” Yara nodded once. She pressed the crown and rings to her own palm. The Gem moved. Heat flared, sharp and bright, cutting through the courtyard’s cool dawn like a piece of the sun had dropped into Yara’s hand. Gold softened first, then iron. Stones cracked with tiny, heartless pops. The smell of hot metal and old sweat and incense from a hundred ceremonies rose like a ghost. The crown sagged in Yara’s grip, then oozed, then lifted. Meredith’s eyes widened despite herself as molten authority drew itself up in the air, held on invisible threads. The rings followed, metals and stones losing their shapes, running like tears upward into the floating mass. For a heartbeat, the liquid crown hung there, trembling. Yara reached out with the Gem. Not into Meredith yet, but around the molten metal. She gathered the memories in it: coronations and signings, betrayals, treaties, long night-councils over ration ledgers. She did not erase any of it. She twisted it. This is not a weight on a throne anymore , the Gem murmured. Make it a weight in the spine. Yara stepped closer. “Look at me,” she said. Meredith did. Yara lifted her free hand and set it flat against Meredith’s sternu