My Useless Tamer Skill Tamed the Emperor novel · Chapter 12 of 24
Chapter 12: Dawn in the Ice Cellar
She sat up fast, with straw in her hair and his coat sliding off her shoulders.
The grey stripe on the floor was thin, but it was already turning pink at the edge.
"How long?" she asked.
"A few minutes. Less." Valdemar stood and pulled on his trousers, quick and steady. "Listen to me. I need to tell you how to handle the beast."
She blinked.
"The beast."
"Ambrose will come to the north drain at first light with a cart. He knows this cellar. Put the beast in the back, under the sacking, and keep him quiet until you are out of the lower palace."
"Valdemar..."
"He bites when he is startled. Watch the left haunch, I think there was an old arrow wound, I cannot be certain. He will not know you when he wakes, he will not know anything. Do not trust him to follow you. Hold his chain."
"I know how to handle him."
"You do not know what he does when he panics."
"I do. I took the poison out of his throat." She tried to keep her voice level. "You said 'the beast' four times."
"It is what he is."
"No, it isn't. It's you."
"It is the part of me the Duke left behind," said Valdemar. He said it quietly, and a little bitterly, as if it was something he had thought about alone for a long time. "It has no mind. It has no memory. It is hunger with teeth. If I let myself think otherwise, I will go mad waiting to be rid of it."
She got up, took his face in both hands, and made him look at her.
"He covered for my mistake with his own body," Hinata said. "Nobody taught him that. Hunger doesn't do that."
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