Page 149 of The Discount Damsel

Something was very wrong.

Adrenaline shot through his veins and something much hotter that burned away the remnants of the sleeping drug. Bradley wrenched from side to side, eyeing the constrictor knots that bound his wrists. Amateurish, but effective. He’d have to break the headboard, which was solid oak. Or he’d have to break his wrist.

He’d try the headboard first.

The apprentice flung his legs up and rolled backwards into a crouch. It was difficult to maintain his balance, but he managed to ease first one foot up against the wall, then the other. With a mighty shove of his legs, he lurched the bed away from the wall and dropped down into the newly created gap between it and the headboard. Standing now, he was able to balance on one foot and kick at the rung that anchored his right wrist.

His leg was starting to go numb from all the kicking, the headboard not even fractured, when his bedroom door creaked open. Fink had returned with Duchess. The fluffy white cat, who had never pushed her legs faster than a stately trot, bolted across the floor and leapt onto the bed. Fink climbed up the quilt a moment later, but the second he diverted course to Bradley’s hands, the opal flashed.

The poor ferret fell back, sniveling. Duchess pounced and tore the infernal collar from his neck. The little creature squealed once, then his round ears perked and relief danced in his beady black eyes. Together, the cat and the ferret attacked the ropes that bound his wrists.

“Hurry,” he urged them.

The cat gave him a judgmental look—she was well aware of the urgency required here, thank you very much—and returned to her chewing. Her pointy teeth weren’t made for much more than ripping, so she resorted to shredding the ropes with her claws. These bindings weren’t much different than her hemp-cord scratching post back at home, so why not?

“Ouch! Be careful. That’s my arm!”

Another judgmental look.

Bradley suddenly felt the tension against his left wrist slacken. The ferret had proven himself a voracious nibbler, chewing through two of the three braided strands. The apprentice wrenched back, muscles straining, and the rope snapped free.

He shooed the scratching cat away and quickly freed himself from the second constrictor knot before vaulting over the bed. Bradley’s greatest fears were realized when he heard Millie’s frightened voice echoing up the stairwell.

“. . . are you doing? No, stop! Please!”

Bradley ripped open his door and dashed onto the landing.

It was dark inside the tower, night fully fallen and the purple glow of the crystals soft and soothing. It took a precious second for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, but when they did, he discovered a horrifying sight: Jaxson Sloop and the princess hanging over a hundred feet above the ground on their training rope, and the deckhand sawing that rope with a stolen serrated bread knife.

“Jax, you don’t have to do this,” the princess pleaded, desperately trying to scuttle down the rope. “Please! Stop⁠—”

Bradley had only taken a single breath before the rope snapped.

“Millie!” He flung out his hand.

The princess screamed as she plummeted towards the sand. She flailed to catch anything—the edge of a stair, a seam in the stone wall, Crone’s Crooked Tits, even a hermit crab if she thought it would help—but there was nothing but air all around her. Her stomach pressed tight against her ribs, choking her lungs. Unable to find breath, her vision blurred and the light of the crystals and the hermit crabs’ shells muddled into streaks of purple and pearl.

Below, the sand and the glowing waters of the spring rushed up to meet her.

The spring!

There was a chance, such a slim chance, that she could survive this. Maybe she would hit the water! She had to try, which meant tucking her arms and legs in tight so they wouldn’t rip out of their sockets when she hit.

Millie screamed again when something caught her. It was a wind, perhaps, maybe even an invisible hand?

All she knew was that she was no longer falling, but rising. Whatever magic had hold of her was gentle, cradling. A single shuddering sob wracked through her with the knowledge that even though she was suspended over a hundred of feet in the air, she wasn’t going to fall.

The stairs and windows and crystals, they all passed by—a hermit crab even waved its claw at her—as she rose higher and higher and the apprentice came into view.

Black curls whipped around his face like lashing snakes as a churning wind rose from the ground at his feet. His blue eyes burned hot and bright as stars. One hand, fingers splayed, was outstretched towards her, the other was a fist raised above his head. Every muscle and tendon in his bare arms and chest stood out in stark relief from the blue light shining from his eyes; they were all taut, all straining. To save her.

Millie chanced a glance and found Jax flattened against the underside of the workroom, held in place by another invisible hand. The deckhand’s eyes bulged as he clawed at his throat, desperate for air that would not come. She turned her gaze back to the apprentice, that beautiful and terrifying man with the burning eyes.

“Bradley,” she pleaded, reaching for him.

His magic, for there could be no other explanation, guided her to the landing as softly as if she were riding a cloud. Her bare feet whispered against the stone, so light was her touchdown.

Millie launched away from the edge, right into the apprentice’s chest. His arm coiled tight and fast around her, cheek pressing down hard against the top of her head as she burrowed into him.