Page 204 of The Discount Damsel

The ministry official was one inconvenience away from a full meltdown. Apparently no one had ever sent an army to reclaim a DDP princess before, and either he didn’t have the necessary legal code to guide him through it or it didn’t exist or it was so convoluted that it boggled even his brain. At the very least, it would be a nightmare recording all their names for the history books.

Her hand dropped to her cutlass, smoothing over the shell guard with a familiar touch. “Well, we know our tasks. You’re in charge of the tower, Sir Roger.”

He nodded briskly. “Ma’am.”

Normally it would be very poor form indeed to leave her first command to another, but she was in the habit of shunning Propriety’s Way of Doing Things. The hedge knight was the seasoned one who could guide the others in the tower’s defense, leaving her free to cause what mischief she wished—she’d found a crate in the armory labeled ‘grenades’ that she was excited to tinker with—as well as care for the ailing luck dragon.

Dirk the Dangerous’s condition had worsened dramatically, and his mood had soured to match. The luck dragon had become quite bloated and grub like, his slinky length nowhere to be found. Even his eyes had changed, darkening from their beautiful gold to a mottled mud brown. He refused to fly—or couldn’t—and would have spent his days sleeping in his tub of treasure had Millie and Bradley not forcibly removed him to the dungeons. There, he was confined until bathtime. At such a time, which had increased to four times a day, Millie scooped water out of the spring and into the laundry washtub. Dirk became as frantic as an octopus on its way to the soup pot then, grabbing everything he could get his paws, tail, or teeth on to keep himself out of the water.

And how the little dragon would curse her. He said the vilest things to her, things that would earn a man tea hurled at his feet or her cutlass in his stomach. But she was the only one he would barely tolerate—she was his princess, and, somewhere deep down, that desire to keep her safe still burned.

Millie always prevailed in the Washtub Wars, love and desperation fueling her muscles in equal measure, and she would eventually stuff him into the washtub. The water would sizzle, the dragon would howl, and then his thrashing would subside. He would calm, his old self returning, and she would sit with him until the magical water lost its effectiveness. Sometimes she regaled him with stories of her afternoon teas with the dragons, sometimes it was the little adventures she’d taken Duchess on when they were both younger.

After leaving Sir Roger in the training room, Millie paused on the landing to steel herself. She loved the little dragon, but she found his behavior positively insufferable as of late. Almost to the point of loathing. She had to remind herself, multiple times a day, that this wasn’t the real Dirk. The real Lung Shang.

He’d been an absolute horror to her earlier this morning, so much so that she decided she needed a large glass of Pocket’s mead before wrangling him again. Leighton’s army wouldn’t arrive for another hour or so; her liver had plenty of time to burn it out of her system. With a heavy sigh, she began her trudge up the stairs to the kitchen.

“Millie!”

“Bradley?”

The apprentice was practically charging down the stairs, robe and rope belt flapping madly. The hermit crabs flashed a bioluminescent warning and scuttled out of his way. She’d barely seen him since their return from Pierpont, though she’d heard him pacing about the tower like a man with an unhealthy obsession with fitness at all hours of the day and night.

When he wasn’t puzzling out the Tianzi Puzzle Box, he was searching for his next clue on how to break his curse. Only then could he speak High Aetherial and use the renovatio spell on Dirk. He practiced all the tongue-twisters Millie had ever given him, just in case improving his tongue dexterity jogged loose the lock on magic, but he had yet to be successful.

Now, as he bounded like a baby goat down the stairs, maybe he had.

“Did you have a breakthrough?” Crone’s Crooked Tits, her voice sounded so desperate for good news. “Or hear back from Master Excelsior?”

The night they’d had returned from Pierpont, the apprentice had sent his master a message through the enchanted blackboard in the kitchen. It could’ve taken his master a day or two to receive it, though, as the blackboard’s enchanted twin was in the College kitchens.

“Neither. But look.” He held an unfamiliar piece of papyrus in one hand and a whole sheet of rice paper in the other.

“I-is that—? How did you⁠—?”

“Yes it is the revival spell, and Henri opened the scroll tube. That little frog apparently loves Tianzi Puzzle Boxes and got it open in, like, ten minutes. He is demanding a kiss from you as recompense.”

She waved that aside. “And the rice paper?”

Bradley’s face was bright and smiling, his blue eyes mildly crazed like a child who’d had their first taste of refined sugar. “If I can write Dirk enlargement and endurance spells, even that complicated one that gives him wings, why not a revival spell?”

Millie felt like her heart would burst like an overripe tomato. She snatched his wrist and darted down the stairs. “Come on then!”

Giggling like teenagers sneaking off to snog in the woods, the two raced down to the dungeons. Slumped in the sand, the luck dragon eyed them balefully from behind the iron bars. The gloom did a good job of hiding how many scales he had lost, but not good enough. Where cerulean scales once glittered, thick dark skin covered him in large patches. A bald nub was all he had left of a tail tuft, the pearlescent feathers skipping along the sand. He’d stopped collecting his shed feathers and scales long ago.

“Well if it isn’t the Has-Been and the Deluded Ditz,” Dirk sneered. “Fuck off.”

Bradley didn’t take the bait but didn’t approach, either. The last time he’d tried to go anywhere near the luck dragon, sharp pointy teeth had narrowly missed his forearm. “I transferred the restoration spell to some rice paper for you.”

Some of the hate left Dirk’s eyes. There was a flash of the old Dirk, the hopeful Dirk.

“Here.” Millie eased the rice paper from Bradley’s tense grip. “Let’s give this a try, Dirk. Come on.”

Joints popped as Dirk rolled out of his slump onto all fours. The princess folded her skirt under her knees and knelt in the sand on the opposite side of the bars.

The dragon eyed the sheaf of rice paper, swiveled his gaze back to Bradley. “You couldn’t have written this on something smaller?”

The apprentice clenched his jaw to keep his retort to himself.