Page 215 of The Discount Damsel

“Aye, aye!” Dirk saluted her with a flick of his tail and followed after the apprentice as he vaulted over the balcony railing.

CHAPTER 87

WILD MAGIC, TANGELO MARGARITAS, AND SIR EUSTACE HAS HAD ENOUGH

The Leightonian army went wild at the sight of the baby luck dragon. Each soldier had been promised a bonus of ten gold sovereigns if it was their arrow who took down the dragon for their prince, and since starving men were desperate, the air became infested with arrows.

The luck dragon merely laughed and roused a tornado.

While the dervish caught the arrows and directly them harmlessly into another dune, Bradley used a levitas spell to hover near the black flames devouring the tower.

“Oblivatus,” he incanted, and the dark magefire vanished as if it had never been.

Bradley felt a drain on his magic that left him gasping and clutching the homespun over his heart. His levitas spell faltered and held, but he braced himself with a hand against the tower all the same.

Every spell exacted a price on the sorcerer, but with as much wild magic as he possessed, he rarely felt the spells’ effects. Apparently overcoming dark magic exacted a greater toll. He wouldn’t be able to do that again so soon without dire consequences.

“Reparo,” he barked at the tower, who obediently ejected the gigantic crossbolts from its wall and began repairing its damaged stones.

He spun away from the tower and glared at the dark mage. Gladstone.

The captain beside him screamed orders at the crew loading the Skybreaker for another attack. Its arrowhead was aimed straight at Dirk. The little dragon was distracted by his tornado, directing the dervish like a conductor of an orchestra with his claws slinging to a rhythm only he heard.

“Dirk,” Bradley shouted. “The Skybreaker!”

The blue dragon’s attention snapped to the crossbow, and a shimmer of white rippled down his scales. The Skybreaker fired, and the striated Damascus steel gave a deadly flash as it tore through the air.

Dirk spun, and a wind more powerful than his greatest tornado caught the bolt and whipped it away from his body. The baby dragon growled under the strain of changing the arrow’s trajectory. His magic prevailed and arced the arrow behind the tower to return it to the dune from whence it came.

“Take that, bucko!” With a swish of his tail, Dirk flipped the crossbolt a quarter turn so its point drilled straight down like the punishing hand of an angry god.

“For Caelus’s sake,” Sir Raleigh bellowed at the dark mage, “do something!”

Franklin Gladstone’s mean dark eyes were bulging out of their sockets, his skin the same pallor of curdled milk. “I-I⁠—”

The soldiers screamed and flung themselves out of the way. The bolt skewered the Skybreaker with a thunderous crack.

Bradley flung out a hand and roared, “Fulminus!”

Lightning tore from the cloudless sky and zinged down the metal bolt. The Skybreaker crossbow exploded into splinters.

Orange sand and beige dust rose into a cloud as voluminous as a circus tent that billowed over the surrounding desert. Sir Eustace’s tent and desk vanished. The cloud swallowed the agave plants, the soldiers, the camels. The world became silent under the weight of the sand.

The desert softened Bradley’s landing to a whisper as he touched down just outside the haze, sleeve pressed over his nose and mouth to keep from choking. He nodded at Dirk, and the luck dragon sent a wind to clear the air.

Nothing remained of the Skybreaker except its metal workings and smoldering splinters. The monstrous bolt endured, scorched black and its head buried in glass created by the lightning strike. The army had scattered, the soldiers running in every direction into the desert so long as it was away from the tower. Camels trundled after them, grunting their contempt. Two horses bolted down the westward side of the dune in a frantic retreat for the Strip, but only one bore a rider. Sir Raleigh Flinthart.

Franklin Gladstone was the only one left behind, buried up to his waist in sand. He thrashed like a wild beast with its paw in a trap in an effort to free himself. Black veins threaded around his void-like eyes, harsh against his pale, freckled skin.

“I cursed you,” he screeched. “You should be a stuttering, dumb fool!”

Bradley’s voice was tight. “Glad I could disappoint you.”

The more Gladstone pawed at the sand, the more the veins around his eyes spread. It even corrupted his fingertips, for they appeared as if freshly dipped in ink. His dark magic was eating him from the inside out. Such was the fate of all sorcerers who grasped for magic beyond their understanding.

“But you’re nothing! You’re just a peasant from the Cut,” Gladstone raged. “That power was never meant for someone like you. It belongs to the nobleborn. It should’ve been mine!”

Perhaps that was the very reason the wild magic had chosen him, if such things were decided and not left to fate. Bradley hadn’t come into magic or to the College with the preconception that he deserved any of it. That he was owed anything. His magic was a gift, and he treated as such.