Page 157 of The Discount Damsel

The third man yanked a knife out of his belt, the sunlight lancing across it like molten silver. Clearly he was done trying to capture her. Maybe when he was done with the princess, he’d turn that knife on the sleeping dragon, too.

A tether inside Bradley’s chest snapped. Gripping the windowsill, he heaved the upper half of his body out into the desert air and bellowed, “Dirk!”

A blast wave rippled across the desert and shot Sir Eustace’s tent straight into the air. The little man had been napping on his cot with Duchess on his chest, but neither were asleep now, and all of Duchess’s claws stabbed through his thin linen shirt right into his skin. The blast wave bowled over the dragon, and Dirk came up snorting sand and cursing.

Until he saw the knife.

The Great Red leapt into the air with a roar. Every fang was on full display as a feral green light consumed his yellow eyes. Millie staggered, then threw herself out of the way as the claws descended. The dragon snapped and slashed and spun with his barbed tail. He was a terrifying sight to behold, and Bradley realized with a start that this wasn’t the usual show Dirk put on for the Heroes. The one where they got to walk away from the fight with only a headache and maybe some missing weapons.

Dirk the Dangerous was going to taste blood.

“Dirk,” Bradley shouted, waving frantically. “Don’t do it! Stop!”

Millie realized the danger almost at the same time, and she bolted for Sir Eustace’s exposed camp. Her arms now free of the bola, she snatched up the little man’s coatrack and ran back to the dragon.

The desert guides were sprawled on the sand, dazed, and Dirk had the knife man pinned under his paw. Just as the dragon was about to strike, Millie walloped him across the snout with a resounding crack!

“Let him up,” she shouted. “Bad dragon!”

The dragon shook his head with a whine, but he didn’t back up. Millie jabbed the coatrack into his toe. Dirk howled and staggered away, rearing back and cradling his wounded paw to his chest.

The desert guides collected themselves and scrambled a hasty retreat back up the dune.

“No,” Dirk snarled. He sprang after them, his wings casting a terrifying shadow large enough to block out the sun. “You do not get to harm my princess and just walk away, meat sacks!”

“If you hurt them, Dirk, I will never speak to you again,” Millie shrilled, giving chase though she had no way of catching up to them in time.

The men screamed as Dirk plucked them off the dune like June bugs off a rose’s petals.

Bradley’s fingernails dug into the stone windowsill and threatened to snap when Dirk disappeared over the crest of the dune. His heart beat with the frenzy of a storm-whipped sea. What was happening to his friend?

Then there was a crack, a jettison of orange dust against the blue sky, and Bradley saw a large dune skiff flying eastward. Propelled by the magical wind of a luck dragon, the skiff barely touched the ground and shot out of sight.

By now, Millie had reached her dune skiff. After freeing it of sand, she maneuvered it into the wind and skipped up to the crest as easily as if she were riding a feather. The princess pirate tacked the sail, turning the bow of her skiff into the wind, and the moment the sail fluttered, luffing and losing speed, she jumped off onto the dune’s crest.

The apprentice couldn’t hear the princess and the dragon’s conversation, but she was clearly displeased and just as clearly giving him orders. The Great Red heaved himself into the sky, turned a circle, descended, then returned with Sir Eustace’s tent. Millie helped the irate ministry official reattach it to the enchanted tent stakes in preparation for the approaching storm as the dragon sat and held the fluffy white cat up to his nose for a calming whiff or twelve.

“ . . . sneak attack . . . the nerve . . . no honor these days,” Bradley heard Sir Eustace grouse.

When the tent was secure and the little man turned to the task of sweeping the rugs free of sand, Millie pulled Duchess from the dragon’s grasp, gave her a quick cuddle so she knew she wasn’t the one in trouble, and thrust her finger at the tower. “Home.”

Grumbling like a scolded dog, Dirk lifted his princess and flew the both of them up to the balcony. Bradley pushed away from the window, grabbed the frog’s birdcage, and vaulted over the mountains of stuff to the door.

Pocket met him on the landing. “We have a problem.”

“I know.” He tried skirting around her, but she wouldn’t budge. “Dirk⁠—”

“It’s not Dirk.” Pocket pointed down the stairs. “It’s the spring. It’s boiling.”

CHAPTER 65

AN EFFERVESCENT SWIM, THAT FROG IS DEFINITELY CURSED, AN ILLUSION FAILS

The magical spring was, in fact, not boiling, though it was easy to make that mistake. It was effervescing like an endless bottle of shaken champagne.

And frankly, the shrimp could not have chosen a better time to spawn.

Millie and Dirk met Bradley and Pocket on the stairs just as the sandstorm hit. The princess had a brisk stomp to her step, her gauzy skirt flapping about her knees like the wings of a fledgling learning how to fly. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was still crumpled in the back where she’d butted the desert guide in the nose.