The Tyrant's Pet novel · Chapter 2 of 32
Chapter 2: The Decree
Ossian makes the Alpha read his lie to the pack, Ione leaves with only the silver cup, and he learns from her scars why the Tarrow wells run clean.
Nobody in the square breathed.
The Alpha looked at the paper in the Emperor's hand.
"There must be some mistake, Your Majesty."
"There is," the Emperor said. "You made it."
He took a second paper from inside his coat.
This one was clean and flat, sealed in black wax with a gold serpent pressed into it.
"My clerks keep a copy of every decree. You burned yours. Read this one to your pack."
"Your Majesty, this is a pack matter."
"It's a tribute matter. Read it. Loud enough for the back."
The Alpha broke the seal with his thumb.
His hands weren't steady.
"By order of the Emperor," he read. "The Tarrow tribute this autumn shall be Ione Thistle, foundling, of the Alpha's household."
A murmur went through the crowd.
"Now the other one," the Emperor said.
He held out the broken-sealed letter.
The Alpha's own hand. I knew it from the kitchen accounts.
"I regret," the Alpha read, and stopped.
"Go on."
"I regret to tell Your Majesty that the girl Ione Thistle died of fever in the summer."
The tanner's daughter started to cry.
Her mother sat down on the stones and held her and rocked.
I stood there with my palm still bleeding and looked at the man who'd raised me on scraps.
He'd been ready to send a girl of twenty to be eaten so he could keep me.
Not because he loved me.
Because of the cup.
"Why did you want her?" the Alpha asked. "She's wolfless. She's nothing."
"Your wells are the only clean water on that river," the Emperor said. "My people asked why. The only odd thing anyone could tell them was a wolfless girl your sons take up to the long hall every full moon."
The Alpha's mouth opened and closed.
Blaise came off his knees.
He crossed the steps in three strides and caught my arm above the elbow.
His fingers dug in the way they always had.
"She's not going anywhere. She's still ours."
The Emperor didn't shout.
He didn't even look angry.
He took Blaise's wrist in one gloved hand and turned it.
Something cracked.
Blaise went down to the stones with a howl that set every dog in the valley barking.
"She's the Emperor's pet," Ossian said. "The law is old and short. Nobody touches her, claims her or judges her but me."
He let go.
Blaise cradled his wrist against his chest and stared up at me.
For the first time in two years, he looked scared of something.
It wasn't me. But it was a start.
"Do you need anything from the house?" the Emperor asked me.
I thought about my cot, my thin blanket and my one other dress.
None of it was mine. The pack had given it, and the pack never let me forget it.
"One thing."
I went to the high table and picked up the silver cup from where it had rolled.
It was cold and heavy and polished bright for tonight.
Twenty-four times I'd watched it fill.
"That's pack silver," the Alpha said.
"Then send the Emperor a bill," I said.
I walked down the steps with the cup in my bleeding hand.
The crowd parted for me.
Corran was still kneeling in the dirt.
"Ione," he said, very quietly. "Please."
I kept walking.
The carriage was black lacquer inside, with gold serpents coiled along the ceiling.
The Emperor climbed in after me and rapped on the wall.
We started down the valley road.
I watched the long hall get smaller through the back window until the hill took it.
Then I looked at the man across from me.
He was looking at the cup in my lap.
"You took a cup," he said. "Not a coat. Not shoes."
"I have shoes."
He looked at my shoes.
They were tied on with string.
"I'll get you shoes," he said.
"Is that what happens before you eat me? New shoes?"
"I prefer them barefoot."
I stared at him.
His face didn't move, but something at the corner of his mouth did.
"That was a joke," I said.
"Was it?"
"Your Tyranny is very funny."
"Your Tyranny," he repeated slowly, like he was tasting it. "Nobody's called me that to my face."
"What do they call you to your face?"
"Nothing. They mostly look at the floor."
I didn't look at the floor.
He held my gaze for a long moment, gold eyes steady.
"Give me your hand," he said.
"Why?"
"Because you're dripping on my carriage."
I held out my right hand.
He took a black handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to the cut across my palm.
His gloves were soft. His grip was careful, nothing like Blaise's.
He wrapped the cloth twice and tied it.
Then his thumb brushed the inside of my left wrist where my sleeve had ridden up.
He went still.
He turned my wrist to the window light.
The scars lay across it in neat white rows like lines in a ledger.
"What are these?"
"The bond had to be fed," I said. "Every full moon. That's what they told me."
"Fed into what?"
I lifted the silver cup an inch off my lap.
He looked at the cup, then back at my wrist.
"How many cups?"
"Twenty-four."
His shoulders came down.
He didn't let go of my wrist.
"Then you're why the Tarrow wells run clean."
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