The Tyrant's Pet novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The First Life

That night I poured the first crate into the Saltgate river wells myself.

Corran carried the buckets and didn't speak.

When the last vial was empty, I sent him to sleep in the stable with the cart horse.

Then I climbed the ladder to the loft.

The Emperor had taken the loft over the old customs office the first day.

Agatha said an emperor should sleep in the best room.

He said the best room had a window onto the ward and the sick should have it.

So he slept under the roof beams on a straw mattress, with his gloves on a crate and a lamp turned low.

He was sitting up when my head came through the hatch.

He'd heard me on the ladder.

"Twelve days," he said.

"Eleven, now."

I didn't sit down.

I stood under the slope of the roof with my hands knotted together.

"I need to tell you something, and you're going to think I've gone mad."

"Half the court already thinks that about both of us."

"I've seen the dam break," I said. "I was in it."

He didn't say anything.

He waited.

The lamp hissed.

The river ran under the shutters.

"Before Tribute Day," he said at last. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Then who got in my carriage, that time?"

"The tanner's daughter."

"Then I read the Alpha's letter twice," he said. "In both lives. And in one of them I believed it."

He looked sick at that.

Not at me. At himself.

"That's why you came down the steps on Tribute Day," he said.

"Yes."

"You weren't brave. You'd already died."

"I was brave," I said. "Dying first just helped."

His mouth moved at the corner.

Then it stopped moving.

"In this first life," he said slowly. "Where was I?"

"I don't know. I never met you."

"Did the black reach Coldharbour?"

"I don't know that either. I never got that far."

He looked at his hands.

The right one was black to the shoulder under his shirt, and we both knew it.

"You believe me," I said.

"Yes."

"Just like that?"

"On Tribute Day you looked at me like you'd already seen the worst thing that could happen to you."

He lifted his eyes.

"And I wasn't it."

Something in my chest came loose.

"Eleven days," he said. "I'll take the guard to Tarrow and drain that pond myself."

"And the Council will say the tyrant marched on a wolf valley."

"Let them."

"No. We'll find another way. We."

I came across the boards to the edge of his mattress. "Not you alone in the river at midnight. Not anymore."

He tipped his head back to look up at me.

"You came up a ladder to tell me that?"

"No."

I knelt on the straw in front of him.

"Do you remember what I said? In your bed, in the Coil?"

"Every word."

"There's no decree in this loft. No crown. It's in a hatbox under Agatha's bed."

I put my hand flat on his chest. "I walked here."

"You climbed," he said.

"Ossian."

It was the first time I'd ever said his name.

His whole body went still under my palm.

Then his hand came up and closed around the back of my neck, and he pulled my mouth down to his.

His mouth was on mine and it wasn't careful.

I made a sound I'd never made before.

His hand stayed on the back of my neck, holding me where he wanted me.

His other hand found my waist and pulled me onto his lap.

The straw shifted under my knees.

I grabbed his shoulders to steady myself.

The shirt was thin and warm over the muscle and the scales.

He bit my lower lip, not hard, just enough to make me open for him.

His tongue pushed into my mouth and I let him.

"Say it again," he said against my lips.

"Ossian."

His fingers tightened in my hair.

"Again."

"Ossian."

He pulled back just far enough to look at me.

His gold eyes had gone dark, the pupils blown wide.

"You have no idea what it does to me when you say that."

"Then I'll say it all night."

His mouth curved.

"You'll be saying a lot more than that before I'm done with you."

I shivered.

He felt it.

He laughed, low and private, and then he was kissing my throat.

I tipped my head back and let him.

His teeth scraped the skin under my jaw and I gasped.

"You said you walked to me," he murmured into my neck.

"I did."

"Then you stay. No running back down that ladder."

"I'm not running anywhere."

He pulled my dress up over my head in one motion.

The linen shift went next.

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