The Tyrant's Pet novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: Terms

I didn't say yes.

Not yet.

I looked down at him on one knee, and felt every eye in the room on my neck.

"I have terms," I said.

The corner of his mouth moved.

"Of course you do."

"Get up, then. I'm not saying them to the top of your head."

He got up.

Somebody on the lords' wall coughed to cover a laugh.

I turned around so the room could see my face.

The clerk in the corner had his pen up already.

"The Pet's law ends today," I said. "Not for me. For every woman after me."

"No Emperor keeps a pet again. Nobody gets to be owned by a chair."

Ossian didn't look at his ministers.

He looked at the clerk.

"Write it," he said.

The pen squeaked.

"No more tribute," I said. "No pack sends a daughter down this river to be eaten, or kept, or anything else."

"The women of the west wing go home if they want to, with an escort and their wages."

"Their real wages," Agatha said from beside the pillar.

"Their real wages," I said.

"Write it," Ossian said. "Double the wages."

The woman with flour on her arms said, "Finally," loud enough for the doors.

"My clinic at Saltgate is mine. Not the crown's. My blood is mine."

"No physician draws it. No treasury keeps it. If I give it, I give it."

"Write it."

"And if I do something wrong," I said, "I want a court to try me. A real one. Not you."

That one made him pause.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"You want to be judged."

"I want to be allowed to be."

"Write it," he said quietly.

The clerk wrote it.

I turned back to him.

The court had gone so silent I could hear the river through the high windows.

"That's all of them," I said.

"That's all?"

"For now."

"Then ask me," I said.

"I did."

"Ask me again. I like the sound of it."

He laughed, out loud, in his own throne room, and half the lords on the wall flinched.

"Ione Thistle. Will you marry me?"

"Yes."

He kissed me in front of all of them.

Not the polite kind.

Behind me the newest tribute shrieked, and Agatha said, "Oh, for pity's sake," and the gray-bearded Alpha started to clap.

After a moment, the whole wolves' bench did too.

The lords followed, because the wolves had.

That night the Coil was so loud with the west wing's celebrating that I couldn't hear myself think.

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