The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 43: Volume 2: Chapter 41 – The Small Voices

Read chapter 43 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 2: Chapter 41 – The Small Voices Yara went to the cages of animals and pulled out a corvid, a raven with black shiny feathers. The bird cocked its head to Yara, trying to understand what she was going to do. Softly under her breath, she whispered to the Gem, “Do it.” The bird gave a startled caw as its wings began to melt and liquify. The whole body disappeared into the Gem. I have the pattern if you would like to use it on them. The gem hummed to Yara. Yara let her hand fall. Her arm trembled like a bridge after a strong wind. She didn’t hide it. She turned to the two girl-Horrors at the wall. They had been with her since she broke them, trying to fix them, failed transformations that wore her mistake like a second skin. One plaited nothing, fingers weaving silk that wasn’t there. The other arranged dust into neat spirals and kicked them crooked again so she could arrange them once more. They looked up together when Yara moved, like birds remembering being girls. Yara went to her knees so their ruined eyes didn’t have to climb to meet hers. “I need you for something different,” she said. “Something that will let you fly.” The first tilted her head, the invisible braid stilling. “Fly?” “Yes,” Yara said. “Birds. Small, fast, able to go anywhere. But you won’t be… you. Not the way you are now.” The second’s toes smudged the spiral, then fixed it. “Will it hurt?” “Yes,” Yara said, and the honesty made a floor beneath them. “But differently than you hurt now.” A long, thin silence. The first girl’s hands hovered, lost above the absence of thread. “Will we remember?” she asked. “Pieces,” Yara said. “Enough to know you’re serving something important.” Give me their names first. True names. I need anchors to keep them aware. Without names, they’ll be only birds. Yara swallowed. She had never asked. That was the sin that woke her at night, their faces without names, her work without witness. “Your names,” she said, voice low. “The ones you had before I hurt you. I need them. I should have asked you long ago.” The first girl’s fingers resumed their phantom braid as if courage could be twined. “Mira,” she said. The second brushed dust from her toes and made a straighter line. “Cass.” Mira. The name hit Yara like a thumb pressed to a bruise, Elior’s daughter’s name, the word that had broken him. Fate, cruelty, the Gem’s private joke, none of it belonged in her mouth now. She made her face a place where thanks could live. “Thank you,” Yara said. “Mira. Cass.” She reached and took both their hands, small, wrong-boned, too warm, she tied a small piece of yarn around one of their fingers and then drew those hands to the seam under her bandage. Anchor them where you want them kept, the Gem breathed, hungry and careful at once. The change came like a door slamming and opening in the same heartbeat. Bones hollowed; mass slid inward; screams tore the air clean and ended not because mercy came but because throats had reshaped. Feathers erupted like a thousand soft words. Fingers fused to primaries; arms remembered they had always been wings. For an instant, too many eyes watched from the same face; then two remained, sharp and black and bright. They were not girls. Two corvids stood where two broken children had been. One ruffled and unruffled in precise patterns, preening as if braiding could be taught to feathers. The other hopped twice and arranged three bits of grit into a line that pleased her. “Mira,” Yara said, touching the first. “Cass,” the second. Names closed around them like rings; the air clicked when they shut. They took the rafters as if the ceiling had saved them a place. When Eliza said, soft and testing, “Girls,” both birds cocked their heads and turned until Weaver sat squarely in their gaze, ready to be the eyes she would be made to hold. “Good,” Yara said, and the part of her that had chosen to do this did not apologize to the part of her that wanted to. “Animals,” she said, and the chamber moved. Marcus brought a rat