Page 29 of The Discount Damsel

In one fluid, visibly restrained movement, Bradley stood.

“Bradley, come on,” Dirk cajoled. “You had your bit of fun and Millie returned fire, as any good pirate would. Sit down and⁠—”

Ignoring the baby dragon, Bradley took his breakfast elsewhere.

Master Excelsior had strict rules about food entering the sorcerer workroom as he had with books being removed—“Not ever.” But since Small Magicks was still safe and sound in Bradley’s bedroom, stuffed under his pillow to protect it from the desert wind that swooped in from the window and from the snooping nose of that insufferable pirate-wannabe, and he hadn’t suffered any ill effects from breaking the rules, Bradley decided he could risk it.

He sat cross-legged in the very center of the workroom, just in case, with his bowl carefully balanced in the valley of his legs. There would be no errant splatters or drips, not on his watch. It was strange to eat in the workroom, stranger still for the luck dragon to be in residence and not accompanying him. Probably still pandering to his princess⁠—

Bradley’s mood lifted with the squeaking rise of the trapdoor.

“There you are,” Millie said, and Bradley’s hopes deflated. “I brought tea.”

He wanted coffee, not whatever inferior herbal brew she held in her hand. But he was thirsty, the bean pottage thick and sticking to his ribs as well as his throat.

Millie handed him his mug, clean of the apricot-flavored black tea from twenty minutes ago and steaming with something earthy and floral and not entirely unpleasant. He sipped cautiously and watched with growing trepidation as Millie dragged two mismatched chairs from the clutter to the center of the workroom.

“Hunching over like troll is just as bad for your digestion as it is for articulation. You’re going to sit up straight.” She plucked his bowl from his lap and snapped her fingers at him in an imperious prompt to rise off the floor.

He launched upright, set his mug on the seat of his chair (carefully, so it would not become like the Lip Cutter), and signed angrily, “I’m not a dog for you to command.”

“And yet like a very good boy, you are off the floor and nearly ready to begin. Now finish your tea.” She sat in her own chair with hands folded in her lap and, with perfect posture, waited for him so they might continue.

Bradley sat, but he didn’t drink his tea on principle. She was too much like the professors at the College who expected to be obeyed without question simply because they were in a position of authority, not because they were right. The notion had gotten him kicked out of the classroom many a time.

After a prolonged silence where he’d only drilled her with a frosty blue glare, which she hadn’t found intimidating in the least, she prompted, “We can’t help Dirk until you finish your tea.”

He took an obscenely loud slurp, then signed, “Don’t pretend this is about Dirk. You need to him to fend off the Heroes so you can become a pirate.”

“Of course I do. But I can still care about Dirk at the same time.”

“You just met him!”

“We became quite close on the flight over here. He’s considerate, charming, and what monster could look at him and not fall immediately in love?”

“Then you’re off to a pretty bad start to becoming a pirate. They only love treasure.”

Millie gave a delicate snort, one her fifth etiquette tutor, Miss Dama, would’ve been most proud of, for it was the perfect combination of derisiveness and class. “I sincerely doubt that.”

“Have you even met a pirate?”

“Have you?”

“Of course.” He took another swig of tea and shook his head. “So you want to be a pirate, but you’ve never met one?”

How very much like a princess—diving in head-first without any previous study or scrap of planning, knowing Mummy and Daddy’s coffers could bail her out whenever this current fancy no longer interested her. With no never mind paid to the taxpayers who filled those coffers.

“How do you know the pirate life is for you?”

“I suppose piracy is a spectrum, much like many professions.” She squared her shoulders with a brilliant smile. “I’m confident I’ll find my niche.”

“Not as spectral as you’d like. They’re all the same—sea rats. Speaking of, have you ever seen the sea?”

As Amberly was a kingdom of tea, cattle, and grain and landlocked, it was a valid question. Though, she was a princess and royalty were known to go on an obscene amount of seaside holidays.

“No, but I’ve heard it’s lovely.”

She’d seen pictures of it, of course, read hundreds of poems extolling its beauty and treachery, had even been gifted a red scallop shell from the Duke of Evertea’s son when the two countries had tried to force an alliance between them through marriage.