My Useless Tamer Skill Tamed the Emperor novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Prints

In the dark of the pen the Emperor gives his terms, reads the two paw prints on her wrist and takes his first kiss in eight months; at dawn he is a panther again and the Regent's captain is at the gate.

Hinata did not scream.

She looked down at the big hand around her wrist, and the burning black paw print under it, and then she looked up.

"You're hurting my arm," she said.

He let go at once.

"Forgive me."

"And you're bleeding on the straw," she added. "Sit down. Let me see that collar."

The man in the cage blinked.

He had a straight nose and a long mouth, and under the dirt he was even more handsome than the painting.

"You are not afraid of me," he said slowly.

"I'm very afraid of you. I'm also a veterinary technician, and you have an infected wound under a metal collar." She took her wet cloth back. "Afraid and busy can happen together. Sit."

For a moment he only stared.

Then he sat in the straw with a long exhale.

"My name is Valdemar Ravenholt," he said. "Twenty-eight years old, by the calendar. Eight months a beast."

"Hinata Koyama. Twenty-four. About three hours a tamer."

"Hee-na-ta."

"Close enough."

She lifted the edge of the collar with two fingers and he hissed through his teeth.

Silver runes ran all the way around it, and the skin underneath was red and swollen.

"Who put this on you?"

"The Duke's priests. At the Dusk Hunt, eight months ago." His gold eyes went to the stone wall. "The collar is bound to this yard. If I cross the line in the stones, it burns me down."

"Is the line around the tower too?"

"The tower stands inside it."

"Good." She glanced at the narrow door in the tower wall that opened right into the pen. "That's where I'm sleeping tonight. Starting now, so are you."

"You would let a stranger into your room."

"You're a bleeding patient. You're not a stranger."

"I am the Emperor."

"You're a patient who is the Emperor," she said. "Hold still."

He held still.

She worked the cloth under the silver edge and he did not make another sound, though the muscle in his jaw leapt each time.

A short silver chain hung from a ring at the front of the collar, and it lay across his bare chest.

She tried not to look at the chest.

It was a very good chest.

"There are some things you need to know," Valdemar said in a low voice. "I turn into the panther at dawn. I turn back at dusk. I remember nothing of the day."

"Nothing?"

"I wake in the straw every evening and I do not know what I did. Only the hunger, and the taste of blood in my mouth."

"Today you ate nothing," Hinata said. "You let me wash your neck and you rubbed your head into my hand."

He went very still.

"I did that?"

"For about ten minutes. It was nice."

"I did not know," he said, and the roughness in his voice took her by surprise. "No one has told me what I did in eight months."

"Then I'll tell you every night."

His gold eyes lifted to hers.

He was close enough now that she could see his lashes, and a small scar in his eyebrow, and the pulse beating hard in his throat.

"There is one more thing," he said. "Show me your wrist."

She held it out.

He took it carefully this time, turning her arm toward the lantern.

His thumb passed over the black print, and then the faint gold one beside it.

The marks warmed under his skin, and a shiver ran from her palm up to her elbow.

"A bond leaves one mark," he said. "This is two."

"Is that bad?"

"I do not know. I have never heard of it." He kept hold of her wrist. "I know only that the tamer's mark is warm when the beast is near, and yours is burning."

"It's burning because I'm touching you."

"Yes."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No," said Valdemar.

The lantern hissed.

Somewhere in the palace a bell rang the hour.

Hinata should have asked what a bonded tamer was supposed to do, or how a dead emperor ended up in a zoo, or what the Regent wanted.

Instead she heard herself say, "When did someone last touch you, before today?"

His mouth moved, almost a smile.

"Eight months ago. A priest, with a knife."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant." His thumb stroked once over the pulse in her wrist. "Longer than eight months. The crown does not make a man easy to touch."

She leaned in.

She told herself later that she'd only meant to check the sore on his neck again.

He met her halfway.

The kiss was slow and careful at first, the kiss of a man who had forgotten the rules.

Then she put her hand flat against his chest, and he made a rough sound against her mouth and pulled her in.

His hand cupped her jaw, and his other arm locked around her back and held on.

She kissed him back with everything she had, with eight months of his hunger and twenty-four hours of her own shock, until the stone wall behind her knees was the only thing keeping her upright.

When they broke apart, they were both breathing hard.

"Is that allowed?" Hinata asked unsteadily. "You're the Emperor."

"I am a prisoner in a zoo," said Valdemar. "I will allow it."

She laughed, and he smiled for the first time, a crooked, startled smile.

He pressed his forehead to hers.

"Stay with me tonight," he said. "I have a great deal to tell you, and I want to say it with your hand in mine."

They sat in the straw while the lantern burned down.

He told her in a steady voice about the Hunt, and the priests, and the uncle by marriage who smiled while they chained him.

She cleaned his neck twice more, and wrapped the sore in a strip of her own tunic.

Toward the end of the night his head came down on her shoulder, heavy and warm.

"The sun is near," he said into her hair. "Listen. If they come, do not give them the key."

"I don't have a key."

"You will."

Grey light slid over the wall.

The skin of his shoulder rippled under her palm.

"Hinata," he said, and then his voice thickened and went out like a candle.

A black panther lay across her lap, enormous and heavy and warm, with its chin on her knee.

He was breathing slowly.

She stroked his ears, and his tail curled around her ankle.

A key rattled in the pen gate.

"Up, tamer!" shouted a man's voice. "The Regent's captain is here, and the Hero with him!"

Daichi's laugh rang across the yard.

"We heard you survived the night," he called. "Great. Now bring the cat out. The court wants to see it perform at noon."

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