Oops, I Tamed the Commander Everyone Dreaded novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Thumb

Held in his tent, Lyra pricks her thumb and the Commander jerks; the Marshal arrives and has her arrested.

They put me in his tent, and they put Finola out of it.

She went swearing, loud enough that two guards flinched. I liked her for it.

The tent was bare. A cot, a table with maps, a basin, a black coat on a hook.

The Commander sat on a stool across from me with his hand in a basin of water.

The water was going pink.

"Does it still hurt?" he asked.

"My hand stopped hurting an hour ago." I flexed my fingers. "Yours should be the one hurting."

"It isn't."

"You have a hole in it."

"I have a hole in it," he agreed.

He lifted the hand out of the water and turned it over. Both sides were cut clean through.

He looked at it.

"Do you understand what happened in the yard?" I asked.

"No."

"Neither do I. But I felt that knife go through me, and you didn't."

"Yes."

"You didn't make a sound."

"I haven't made a sound in a long time," he said.

That was a strange thing to say, and he said it as if it were simple.

I got up and walked around the table. He tracked me with his eyes, and not once did he stand.

"I'm going to try something," I said. "Don't move."

"I am rarely asked to."

I picked up the pin from his map table, the long brass one, and I pricked the ball of my own thumb.

A red bead came up.

The Commander jerked.

It was a small movement, a flinch.

His good hand shot to his own thumb and gripped it.

His mouth came open.

"That is," he said slowly, "extremely unpleasant."

"You felt that."

"I felt that."

"Where?"

"Here." He turned his thumb over. It was clean and whole.

"It is sharp and it is hot. It is like a stranger speaking in my ear."

He was staring at his thumb. There was something almost young in his face, an astonished, open look I would not have believed.

"What is the matter with you?" I asked. "Why does that surprise you?"

"Because it is the first thing I have felt in nine years."

I put the pin down very carefully.

I had no idea what to say, so I said the thing I always say when I'm frightened.

"Then you owe me forty crowns."

He blinked. "I what?"

"The grain. Forty crowns a wagon, six wagons, and two more for the hole in my knife."

"Your knife has no hole."

"It has your blood on it. That's a stain, and stains cost money."

There was a pause.

Then the corner of his mouth moved. It was only a twitch. I think it was the first time in nine years that it had.

"Orrin," he called, without raising his voice.

A lean man in a green coat came in. He had a crooked nose and a face that had seen worse days than this one.

"Commander."

"Draw up a payment for the hauler. Forty crowns a wagon."

Orrin looked at me. He looked at the Commander. He looked at the basin.

"Six wagons, sir?"

"Six."

"And the rest?"

"Whatever she says."

"Sir, the Marshal has capped the price of grain at..."

"I know what the Marshal has capped."

Orrin said nothing else. He went out, and the tent flap fell shut behind him.

"You're not what they say," I said.

"I am exactly what they say."

"Then what's the matter with your thumb?"

He looked at it for a long moment.

"I do not know," he said. "But I would like you to stop pricking yours."

I laughed. It came out of me before I could catch it.

His grey eyes came up at the sound, and something in them settled.

"You will stay inside the fort until I understand this," he said.

"I will not."

"Hauler..."

"My name is Lyra Wakefield, and I have mules to feed, and I don't take orders from a man who's holding my thumb."

"I am not holding your thumb."

"You were."

He looked down and found he still was. His own thumb, in his own fist.

He let go.

Outside, a horn blew, three long notes. Every voice in the yard stopped.

Orrin came back in, pale this time.

"Commander. The High Marshal's coach is at the gate. He brought his niece."

Aldric Eisenhart stood. For the first time, his hand shook, and I felt that tremor in my own fingers.

"Stay here," he said.

I did not stay there.

I followed him out and stood behind him at the gate while a gold-trimmed coach rolled in.

The man who stepped out was fifty-five and silver-haired, with a grey coat and eyes like a frozen pond.

High Marshal Hadrian Crane looked at the blood on the Commander's sleeve.

Then he looked at me.

"Seize that woman," he said pleasantly. "She struck an officer of the Crown."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend