The Tyrant's Pet novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: The Council

The paper went around the ring from hand to hand.

Every Alpha looked at the thumbprint.

"I never signed that," I said.

"She can't read," the Alpha said to the elder. "She doesn't know what she signed."

"I kept your kitchen accounts for six years. I read well enough to know your hand."

A few of the seconds behind the benches laughed.

The Alpha's neck went red.

"It's her blood," he said. "Smell it."

"It's my blood," I agreed. "You have twenty-four cups of it. Any finger can dip in a cup."

The elder held up his staff for quiet.

"Tarrow has witnesses?"

Blaise stood.

He held his strapped wrist against his chest so the whole ring could see it.

"I was there," he said. "She swore it under the full moon. She begged to give it."

"She said it was the only thing a wolfless girl was good for."

I'd said that.

Not as a vow. As a joke, the first night, when I was twenty and frightened and trying to make him smile.

He'd kept it for two years and brought it here.

"Then she met the Emperor," Blaise said, "and she forgot whose she was."

Lettice rose behind him, small and pale and sweet.

She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't want to say it in front of everyone."

"Say it," said the elder.

"She was always jealous. Of me, of the twins, of everything."

Lettice's voice shook beautifully.

"Now she poisons wells so she can save people from them. Like the well in the Coil."

The ring murmured.

I looked at her.

Behind me, very quietly, I heard Ossian's glove creak.

Nobody outside the west wing knew about the Coil's well.

Nobody.

"How do you know about the well in the Coil?" I asked.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Tyrant's Pet from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.