Page 148 of The Discount Damsel

Dirk shot into the air. Pocket screeched, a combination of delight and terror, but he felt her thighs clamp around his back and her hands tighten around his horns. Secure. He flew like his tail feathers were on fire, trading the blighted land of Leighton for the barren desert of Ashburnum.

Rage boiled in his gut and spread like a poisonous vine along every vein. Someone had come into his tower, his home, and threatened his princess. His friend. The girl who loved him, blue scales and missing scales all, and whom he loved back with a ferocity that hurt. She saw him. She supported his dreams, assuaged his fears. Like Bradley. He had two friends in this entire world, and he was not willing to give up either of them to this someone. This perfidious infiltrator who had cozied up to them, pretended to be nice and helpful, and played them all for fools.

Duncan.

Luck dragons were peaceful creatures by nature, but if Duncan hurt Millie, Dirk would rip him apart and sacrifice whatever was leftover to his warhammer Alfalas.

Not soon enough, the tower loomed in the distance. A dark spire against orange dunes bleached to cream by the moonlight. Its many window glowed the faintest purple from the crystals, a few yellow from candles or lamps. Sir Eustace’s tent was dark, the Komodo already asleep.

Hurry, hurry, hurry drummed Dirk’s frantic heart. It nearly exploded when he heard a terrified voice plead, “Please! Stop⁠—”

Dirk heard his princess’s blood-curdling scream, but he was still too far away from the tower. A few wretched seconds more, and he finally arrowed out of the sky. His amplio spell burned out just as he shot over the western balcony, spilling Pocket off his back and into the sorcerous clutter of the workroom. She careened into the arms of the suit of armor with a cry as Dirk shot through the trapdoor and into the stairwell.

“Millie!” he bellowed, voice cracking. There was no sign of her. “Millie!”

Caelus, please, he begged. Don’t tell me I’m too late.

CHAPTER 61

TWO BETRAYALS AND A SUBTLE INVITATION

He was drowning.

The depths of sleep pulled him below the surface as sure as a kraken’s tentacle wrapped around his ankle. It was dark here, consciousness a wavering mote like the sun seen from the bottom of the ocean. He should just let go, slip deeper and deeper into this cradling warmth.

Instinct, honed by many days and nights at sea, flared like a stoked coal. He mustn’t succumb to the siren call of the deep. He must always kick, must always rise, must always breach the surface.

Bradley forced his eyes open with a beleaguered groan. Hells of the deep, he was exhausted.

And hog-tied.

Confused, he blinked rapidly to dispel the lingering effects of the chamomile tea and strained forward. Tension at his wrists informed him that he was tied to the headboard, arms stretched wide apart so neither hand could offer assistance to the other.

Upon his bare stomach was a piece of paper, folded in half and propped up like a place-setting card. In the light of moon, he discovered no words upon the page, just a cartoonish sketch of a tiny octopus blowing him a kiss.

Bradley grinned.

The little minx had freed herself, then stolen into his room despite the chair braced under the door, and given him a taste of his own medicine. He’d fully expected her to free herself—she was tenacious like that—but sneaking into his room to exact her revenge? And playfully, too, given the note?

They were definitely in flirtation territory, and Bradley was both thrilled and paralyzed at the notion. It meant all those accidental touches a few days ago had subconscious desire beneath them. And she never would’ve learned his coffee order, nor made it, nor eaten from his hand had her heart not changed towards him. And he never would’ve sought comfort from her in the workroom had his heart not changed towards her. Her embrace had almost undone him—he deserved no such kindness after how badly he’d treated her all this time, and yet she had given it freely. Like a friend. Perhaps more than one.

Should he even hope for that, with his Master’s exam looming ever closer on the horizon? But why couldn’t he have both? Would his life always be choosing This or That? Why did he have to choose anyway?

Bradley glanced back down at the note still balanced on his stomach: the tula, blowing him a kiss. Was it only a snarky gesture, or an invitation to steal one for himself?

His mirth, and arousal, faded at the sounds of distressed sniveling.

He twisted towards his nightstand to discover Fink whining and scratching at his collar. The opal glowed a fierce yellow every time he pawed at it . . . or pushed white powder from a packet abandoned near his mug into the letters S-O-R-R-Y across the nightstand. The Y wasn’t finished yet, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out the remaining half of that letter.

Sorry? What did the little ferret have to be sorry about? And what was that white powder?

Just then, something Miss Penelope had said surged from his memory. “Looks like a few jars are low. Luna moth spots, Morpheum lavender, gecko skin?”

And how had he replied? Sleeping draught.

“Fink?” Bradley whispered, the color draining from his face. “Where’s Dirk?”

The ferret shook his head, cried out as the opal flared angrily. Fink thrashed and fell off the nightstand to the ground with a rubbery thud. Whining, the little creature scampered for the door and disappeared into the stairwell.