Page 117 of The Discount Damsel

And that parchment hidden in the center drawer of the desk.

No distractions, he reminded himself. It’d been his mantra all week.

Bradley flicked his gaze to the Heroes as they put the finishing touches on the princess’s suite.

Jax, the most agile of the three, strung the canopy bed with lengths of sunset-orange gauze, occasionally climbing the posts to make adjustments. Fink challenged every spider he encountered, dancing and spitting until someone came to his aid with a boot. Duncan polished every nook and cranny until the furniture gleamed. And Sir Beauregard was on his hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom tiles. Above his head, clothes hung on a makeshift clothesline and dripped dry over the tub, which was filled with the most offensive of the princess’s outfits from the other day in desperate need of another soak.

The princess had caught him by surprise the night after her unpleasant adventure with the laundry detergent, interrupting his after-dinner studies to demand a lesson. Studies being the polite term. He’d been studying the parchment of dark magic again, trying to summon the resolve he’d felt before to commit, and waffling.

Because of her and the possibilities she’d stirred up in his mind. Dirk, too, who had joined them for supper that evening and attacked his grouper almondine with his customary, “Yummy, yummy, yummy.” He couldn’t remember the last time Dirk had been so cheerful, which was strange, and wondered if he would see the dragon so happy again after he used dark magic.

At the interruption, he couldn’t seem to hide the parchment fast enough. He made a mess of things, floundering and knocking over his quill and almost ruining Master Excelsior’s books. He hadn’t been subtle in hiding the parchment, but the princess didn’t comment. She’d decided to keep her nose to herself and doubled down on her sincere request. Whoever heard of a princess volunteering—no, demanding—to perform manual labor?

“I told you,” she said, hands on her hips and her nose lifted in the air. “I’m not selfish.”

Perhaps not. She was still bossy, however, insisting he teach her how to make the scones, too. The threads that connected them allowed him to detect an undertone of mirth in her demand, so he tested those threads by calling her a tula. There was no condescension in his tone, just dry humor. Her brown eyes hadn’t ignited with indignation; they sparkled with something else entirely.

His mood, which had soured some from the parchment, brightened.

As they left the workroom, he noticed she was wearing the thick socks he’d prescribed, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Satisfaction, and, if he was being honest, gratitude. She’d listened to him again.

“I wouldn’t wear any of your finery when you’re doing this,” he said when they were in the bathroom. He shut off the faucet and shuttled the washtub closer to the bathroom floor drain. Bradley dropped the bar soap into the water to soften and rubbed the residue from his fingers. “Or anything else that might cause you to slip.”

“Right.” She shucked her socks and hiked up her skirt.

“The Kraken take me.” Bradley wrenched his gaze upward—he would never get used to her liberal flashing of flesh. Or the unintentional exposure, either, his thoughts turning to the memory he’d tried to suppress: the princess half-naked on his bed with her legs in his lap and his hands rubbing ointment into her skin.

“. . . were wrong about the ointment.”

“What?” Startled and flushing, he chanced a glance below the princess’s raised hemline. Smooth pale skin. She was healed? That wasn’t possible!

Bradley dropped to his knees and grabbed the closest leg for a finer inspection.

“Steady on,” she laughed, grabbing hold of his shoulder when he jerked her leg up to inspect the sole of her foot. “Careful, Mr. Donmarin!”

He couldn’t believe it and ran a hand over the unblemished skin to convince himself it was true. The seaweed from the Crystal Sea was potent, but not this miraculous. The princess had been burned, horribly, yet her flesh held no memory of the event. He rotated her leg, examining the creases at the back of her knee and ankle, wondering if he’d missed a spot and some remained to be healed. No, he’d been very thorough.

No ointment was this powerful, neither was his mother’s song. Something else was at play here, but what?

“But it’s impossible,” he protested. “It’s never worked that fast ever.”

The princess released a one-note chuckle. “I must be incredibly special.”

She very well could be. Amberly might be landlocked, but it wasn’t always so. Once the kingdom had touched the sea, but they had lost that territory in a war centuries ago. It was now the Duchy of Evertea and an ever-present thorn in the peaceful kingdom’s side.

“I mean,” he said, looking up, “you don’t have any merfolk ancestry, do you?”

The world froze with him kneeling in front of her, her foot balancing on the flat of his thigh, her fingers threaded in his hair. Her brown eyes were wide, her mouth slightly parted, the candlelight shining copper in the auburn locks that tumbled loose from her bun. He didn’t know when her fingers had moved from his shoulder into his hair, but the sensation was . . . incredible. And his own fingers, pressing into the soft skin of her calf. He’d felt such softness before—her lips against his neck. An unintentional kiss when she’d been suffering from heat exhaustion.

His life had been hard on the Cut, harder still when he discovered he possessed wild magic and left the only world he knew for the entirely new world of the College. Everything was hierarchy and power and soulless jockeying for position there—sucking the joy of magic right out of your heart, if you weren’t careful—and oftentimes having the right connections was worth more than talent. He wasn’t used to tenderness from either world, but this moment made him ache for it.

Bradley’s throat closed just as a single pang, hard and swift, throbbed in his heart. A second, equally strong pang echoed in his groin.

It would take less than a heartbeat to rise and sweep her into his arms. Cradle the back of her head as he offered the kiss that the hidden part of him was so desperate to bring into the light. Just for her, the woman who saw him at his weakest and didn’t pity him.

The princess jerked away at the same time the apprentice stood, the backs of her knees colliding with the rim of the washtub. She yelped, flailing, and gravity committed to tumbling her boots over britches. Bradley caught her arm and yanked her back before she could fall.

The world froze for a second time as he crushed her body against his, steadying her. Her ear was pressed right over his heart. Could she hear its wild drumming? Its keening for connection that had been denied him, and that which he’d denied himself?