The Tyrant's Pet novel · Chapter 21 of 32
Chapter 21: Frost
The dam groaned again, longer this time.
Down the miners' row, doors banged open.
"Get the children up the ridge," I said. "Everyone who can't work the wheel. Now."
The woman with the baby was already running, a blanket over both of them.
The foreman looked at the mine mouth.
A thin purple haze still leaked out of it, drifting in the cold.
"The tunnel's half smoke," he said. "It'll burn our lungs out."
"Wet cloths," Corran said. "Over the mouth and nose. Father's guards do it when they clear the drying room."
"He'd know," the foreman said, without looking at him.
They soaked their shirts in my cleared barrels and tied them over their faces.
Then twelve men went down into the mine with lanterns, toward the wheel.
I went the other way.
Up the grassed side of the dam, slipping on the frost, with the cup in my pocket and the knife in my fist.
At the top I stopped.
The pond lay below me, black and still, a quarter mile across.
A skin of ice had crept out from the edges.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Tyrant's Pet are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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