Page 126 of The Discount Damsel

The apprentice froze on his stair. Every muscle, every ligament, every bone turned to stone. “What did you just say?”

“Viscount Saltreave, the lord of the Cut? Figures his subjects would be just like him.”

Bradley whirled. “We’re nothing like that coward. He and his armada stay tucked away safe in the harbor while we fishermen defend our homes from pirates and sea monsters and worse with nothing more than harpoons. How dare you equate us.”

“What am I supposed to think?” she fired back. “Anytime there’s an inkling of cordiality between us, a chance for us to coexist in this place in peace, you scuttle back like one of those hermit crabs into your shell. Like you prefer to increase that chip on your shoulder instead of heal it and be happy or something. So, yes, you’re just like him.”

“Oye, what’s going on up there?” Jax gave the rope a little shake. “You stuck or something?”

Sir Roger stood in the sand next to the deckhand, a hand shading his eyes against the slant of a sunbeam. “Miss Millie? You good?”

“Yeah, I⁠—”

She’d lingered in one place too long. The rope was damp beneath her hands, and the moment she reached to untie the ribbon, her anchoring hand slipped.

Millie screamed as she slid six feet before every muscle tightened. First there was heat, blooming in between her thighs and across her hands, then pain. It was so raw, so visceral, and Millie sank her teeth into her bottom lip to keep from bawling.

The lantern clattered to the stone step, the glass shattering and the flame guttering out.

“Millie,” Jax shouted.

“Piss and plagues,” she cursed, forcing the pain into anger. It was the only thing that could save her now suspended thirty feet above the ground with shredded hands.

“There will be none of that,” Bradley said sharply. He stood precariously close to the edge of the abyss, arm half-outstretched, their spat forgotten. “How bad is it?”

As much as it hurt to maintain her grip on the rope, she didn’t dare unclench even a finger to show him. Millie shook her head. “Stew meat,” she forced out. Her stomach roiled at the imagery. “I c-can’t move.”

She cursed again, shut her eyes, and sucked in a deep breath. It is not skill that often wins the day, came Sir Roger’s phantom voice, but endurance. Nine times out of ten, it is the fighter who can move that survives the fight.

Her fight wasn’t against a living opponent, but a rope and a thirty-foot drop. She had to move, despite the pain, despite the fear, or she would surely fall. Could she survive? Maybe. Could she die? Also maybe. She wasn’t a juggernaut barbarian like Ivar the Bane who could walk off a hundred-foot fall. Injury was definitely certain, and with no healer, death might eventually claim her in the end.

Crone’s Crooked Tits it will.

While she was no acrobat like Jax, she had watched his rope antics with as much discernment as enjoyment. And what she had learned between all the cheering and clapping, was that you didn’t need your hands to descend a rope.

Mutineer Millie gritted her teeth and clamped down with her right hand, the one that least resembled stew meat. With a sob, she forced the fingers of her left hand to unclench, unstick, and, quick as a blink, she wrapped her arm around the rope. Tucked it up into her armpit. She wouldn’t be inverting herself and trusting only her legs to slow her descent to the sand like Jax often did. She would slide slowly, the rope snaking around her body. And she would make it. Whimpering the whole way, but transformation was an ugly business.

Just as she was about to begin what promised to be an agonizing experience akin to a bikini wax from a novice with shaky hands, the tower shook.

“Millie!” Dirk shoved a yellow eye against the nearest porthole window. “Bradley!”

The nearby masonry cracked and groaned as the dragon’s claws anchored him to the tower. Crumbs of stone and grains of sand sprinkled against his scales as he cocked his head this way and that in an attempt to see more than a sliver of the tower’s insides. Sunlight striped the rope that dangled in the center of the open stairwell, and that rope swayed from side to side with far more gusto than the wind whispering through the windows could ever achieve.

“Mildred Angelique Tisane,” he barked.

“I’m alright,” Millie said. “Stop your fussing. You’re shaking the whole tower and me along with it! Crone’s Crooked Tits, the rope wasn’t spinning before.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. What are you doing?”

“Trying not to fall. Or vomit. Now stop distracting me!”

“Hold on. I think I can buffet you with a wind.”

“You think?”

“I’m not exactly in the best position to be manipulating wind or rain right now,” he whisper-hissed. “But maybe if I can stick a claw in through here . . . Yes! Rats, now I can’t see⁠—”

“I’ve got it,” Bradley said brusquely.