Page 3 of The Discount Damsel

And besides, the more thoroughly she insulted them, the sooner they would leave her kingdom, and the sooner her parents would truly understand that she was better suited to be a pirate than a princess. They really should have listened to her the first dozen times she’d begged for a buccaneer from Pierpont to properly train her in the ways of swashbuckling instead of a pony for her many birthdays. They had thought her obsession with the black sail to be a momentary and passing fancy, that she would come to heel when she realized there was no way in Caelus’s name that they could leave the fate of Amberly in her simpleton sister’s hands.

At present, the younger princess clapped those hands with glee at another of her elder sister’s stinging rebuffs.

Neither the king nor the etiquette tutor interfered with Millie’s rejection campaign, partly because they still harbored the hope that the princess would come to her senses and choose one to marry, but mostly it was because of the shock.

The princess delivered her assessment with the confidence of a general and the cutthroat accuracy of a pirate captain. Soon the suitors were no longer snickering at their insulted colleagues, but waiting for their own verbal evisceration. Some stormed right out of the greenhouse without bidding their hosts a pleasant afternoon, bellowing for their carriages. More than one sent a vile look in Sicily’s direction, each one a knife to her reputation.

Others cast pleading looks to the king, begging him to intervene. But he caught none of these glances, busy as he was with Olabeus trying to revive the queen. The woman seemed impervious to pinching, smelling salts, and being fanned by the king’s newspaper, and now they had to resort to sorcery to drag her from unconsciousness. Secretly, the king believed his wife was deliberately clinging to insentience to spare herself the embarrassment of her daughter and kicked himself for not thinking of it first.

Her slippered feet swinging through the air a few inches above the tile floor, Rosamund sat back with another giggle and her third petit four as Millie approached her final suitor.

Prince Chandler Stonevein of Leighton lifted his chin so he could look down his nose at this beautiful imposter of a princess. There could be no other reason for the haranguing she’d just unleashed upon his peers—she had to be an imposter. A vicious joke at their expense. And if his kingdom didn’t need hers, or rather, the grain and cattle it provided (forget the grass clippings they called tea), along with another rare resource never mentioned, he would’ve walked out long ago.

Millie tilted her face so she could assess the whole of the man before her. This was her parents’ choice, from a desire to secure a tap on the Leighton gem mines to fund the desperately needed expansion of Amberly’s trading enterprise into the Duchy of Evertea. In short, they needed a bribe the duke couldn’t afford to refuse.

At first glance, this suitor cut a fine figure, if a vain one. Blond and beautiful Chandler was well-built, smart, and absolutely dripping with jewels, but his persona was as carefully curated and shaped as his clothes. As someone who spent the bulk of her time hiding her true self and presenting a façade to the world, she could recognize the same lie in others.

The other suitors had been prideful, disillusioned by their own grandeur, or buffoons, but this prince was of a different caliber. Leighton was different. That kingdom hadn’t been carved out of the land by hard work and community, it had been stolen from the dragons. And the last creature you wanted to offend was a dragon.

Upon hearing word of their impending and forced exile, an ancient and powerful luck dragon named Huang Fu cursed the land to never be healthy and green again until a Worthy One drew a soup spoon out of a petrified loaf of bread.

Why a soup spoon and a loaf of bread? Because Huang Fu had been enjoying a lovely wild boar curry at the Cuke and Snail Pub when he’d heard the news. So heartbroken was he, so bitter and aggrieved, he slammed his spoon down into the nearby loaf of bread. His luck became a curse, petrifying the bread to stone, as well as the table it rested upon and the half-eaten bowl of curry. It remains in the Cuke and Snail today, and students on their winter break love to try their hand at pulling the dragon-sized soup spoon from the dragon-sized loaf of bread after they’ve had a few glasses of mulled wine.

Huang Fu’s curse was centuries ago, and the people of Leighton still hungered like winter wolves with bellies that never stayed full for long.

Chandler’s eyes, a lovely shade of green, were hard as the gemstones his kingdom dug from the ground. His jaw seemed perpetually flexed, like he was doggedly trying to crack a walnut shell between his teeth. Tension was a living thing in his arms and shoulders, like a flexed bow beneath his skin.

He was the first to speak, his voice oily, his smile insincere. “Mildred.”

No honorific. How could she expect it when he had none himself? She shuddered inwardly. What she had heard, hidden in the hydrangeas . . . Well, one thing was certain. While Chandler Stonevein wasn’t responsible for his kingdom’s curse and current hardships with drought and famine, he certainly was no Worthy One to draw a soup spoon from a stony loaf of bread.

As if the honey-drenched derrière and sandpaper condom weren’t horrifying enough, what poured from Millie’s mouth next was so vulgar, the words wiped themselves from Sicily’s mind the very instant she heard them. The etiquette tutor’s jaw dropped further and further until she was positive it was simultaneously still attached to her skull yet resting on the floor, drool pooling in the grout of the tiles between her shoes.

The prince’s face grew redder, fists clenching tighter, as the princess exposed his every darkness to the light. He could not speak, equally enraged and morbidly curious at what words she would utter next from those luscious lips.

But the etiquette tutor rallied and rediscovered her voice. No longer a croak, it was the screech of a parrot mid-strangulation. “That is enough!”

Millie poured the cup of tea out on the floor at Chandler’s feet—the ultimate Amberlian insult.

The remaining suitors gasped. Even Viscount Saltreave risked the integrity of his styled mustache by slapping a hand over his gaping mouth.

There was a crack as one of Chandler’s bones or teeth popped from all the tension, echoing like thunder against the glass dome of the greenhouse parlor. His lip curled as Millie spun on her heel, auburn hair gleaming and releasing a faint tease of jasmine.

He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring like a wolf’s catching the scent of fresh blood. “Leighton will remember this,” he seethed, and stormed out.

“As will Merle,” the baron snarled, chasing the heels of the Leighton prince.

The other suitors were quick to follow with a cacophony of expletives and a variety of ill-wishes like, “No one wants a fatty for a wife, anyway,” and “I hope a dragon eats you.”

The first insult stung, but mildly, as Millie had heard similar comments about her weight all her life from her various governesses and tutors, and as for the second⁠—

Amberly has a fantastic relationship with the local dragon population. We have tea every third Sunday of the month, so the joke’s on you, Baron Demir.

When Millie rejoined her family, Sicily, and Olabeus at the table, she set the empty teacup and saucer down on the tray and hefted the teapot. She smiled sunnily. “Crone’s Crooked Tits, that was more liberating than loosening my corset strings. Tea, anyone?”

“You’re grounded,” the king declared.

“Just me, then.” She poured herself a cup, added a swirl of honey, and sat down in the empty chair with a practiced sweep of her skirts. After a sip and a hum of pleasure, she lifted sincere brown eyes to her tutor. “I am sorry, Miss Sicily, but it was necessary. I did learn a new thing or two from you in our time together, though.”