Page 230 of The Discount Damsel

She swung the wire door open with a flick of her fingernail. Fink squealed.

“I don’t know,” Prince Henri wailed. “There was just a bunch of thugs milling about the Strip mugging and beating any Heroes who tried to enter the desert. That’s all I know, I swear!”

“Heroes, or people in general?”

“Just anyone who ran his mouth saying how he was going to be the next king of Amberly. They let the caravans and traders go!”

Millie closed the door and handed a very disappointed ferret back to Pocket.

“I know, baby,” Pocket crooned. “Life’s unfair. Millie didn’t mean to tease you like that.”

“Someone didn’t want you rescued,” Duncan said.

“Someone was giving Jax time to do his job,” she spat. “And ensuring my Discount Damsel price transferred to Rosamund.”

“Chandler,” Bradley concluded. “And Gladstone told him about Dirk, what he truly was. Which was why he sent the army here for—” He cut himself off with a glance around the room. “For reasons.”

“Don’t be mysterious at all, Lord of the Curls,” Pocket snarked.

“For a luck dragon’s heart,” Sir Roger said. Bradley glared at him. “I’m from Merle, boy. I know the story of the Cursed Lands. Legend says since it was a luck dragon who cursed Leighton; it would take the heart of a luck dragon buried in the ground to break Leighton’s curse and restore the land to its former glory.”

“It sure could use it,” Dirk said. “Drought and famine everywhere—even their mines have dried up. Those rubies I, uh, stole? Apparently they were the last. The very last. Leighton’s got nothing left to give.”

Duncan lifted his hand. “I thought a Worthy One had to remove a soup spoon from a petrified loaf of bread in the Cuke and Snail to lift the curse.”

“You think Chandler hasn’t tried that?” Sir Roger snorted. “A thousand other men, too? A hundred thousand? Even Baron Demir tried to steal that kingdom out of from under Chandler’s nose by giving that spoon a tug. They all failed. That prince is trying to keep his kingdom anyway he can.”

Millie turned to Bradley, her eyes soft and apologetic. “And what happens to men who fail over and over and over again?”

He swallowed and resisted the urge to look away. “They become desperate.” He cleared the hoarseness from his voice. “They’ll try anything.”

Dirk nudged his muzzle under Bradley’s hand.

Millie faced the group. “I know where the first Skybreaker is. It’s in Amberly. The attack on the tower was just a spur-of-the-moment plan when Leighton found out about Dirk. There’s a reason why Raleigh Flinthart was leading the charge instead of Chandler—he’s already in Amberly. When he couldn’t marry me, he targeted my sister. He’s going to marry Rosamund and use the Skybreaker on the dragons that will be there in attendance for the wedding.” Her voice turned rueful. “The Amberlian royal family has excellent relations with the local dragon population, after all. To a desperate man, one dragon heart is as good as another.”

“Then why did he go after Dirk when he hired him?” Duncan asked.

“He knew I was young,” Dirk realized aloud. “A dragon’s power increases with age and strength. Dirk the Dangerous’s heart couldn’t possibly lift the curse, not like the Amberlian dragons’. But he was good enough to steal a princess.” The luck dragon deflated a foot or two in altitude. “I’m so sorry, Millie. This is all my fault.”

CHAPTER 93

DIRK HAS A PLAN, A PRINCESS BECOMES A PIRATE, A QUICK SIDE QUEST

Voices rose like a symphony’s crescendo and rolled into thunder against the kitchen ceiling. Dirk retreated to the beams and flattened his ears to dampen the sound. He concentrated on his luck, ripples of white light pulsing from his horns across his scales down to his feathered tail tuft.

“Amberly is hundreds of leagues away,” Pocket whispered. “How are we supposed to get there?”

“How are we supposed to get inside the castle and stop the wedding?” Sir Roger asked. “That place will be crawling with Leightonian guards. They’ll make sure to snatch up Miss Millie before anyone in Amberly can recognize her.”

“What about Dirk?” Duncan said. “He wasn’t always blue and puny. Can he get big and red again? Fly them over?”

“What about all those portals that kept popping up?” Prince Henri suggested.

Mutineer Millie tried to rally, but she had no answers to these questions. Dirk could never use one of those rice paper spells ever again, and Bradley had returned the hag stone to Master Excelsior. There was the griffin on the balcony, but not even that magical creature could cover that distance in so short a time, and certainly not when carrying more than one rider. In six hours, her sister was going to marry a monster, and her kingdom would be thrown into a war with the dragons.

“Can we rig the dune skiff to travel over land?”

“What about attaching it to that griffin on the balcony?”