Page 30 of The Discount Damsel

Bradley continued his interrogation. “Can you even swim? Sail?”

“I’m willing to learn.”

“Tie knots?”

“I’m an excellent embroiderer and know many decorative knots. I’m sure it’s a transferable skill.”

He leaned back, baffled. “You’re delusional.”

“You mean determined.”

Bradley snorted in such a fashion that would’ve had Miss Dama reaching for her fan to thwack him. “It’ll take more work than you’re prepared to give.”

“If a peasant like you can make a new life as a sorcerer,” she said reasonably, “then it’s not farfetched to believe a princess can do the same.”

In fact, Millie was counting on it. It’d been evident to her from the very beginning that Bradley Donmarin hadn’t been born to the privileged life of a sorcerer. No sorcerer’s son ever became that muscled, tanned, or worldly shrewd. He must have wild magic, latent until stimulated.

Bradley wasn’t sure what rankled him more: that she had guessed his lowborn origins correctly or she was comparing her work ethic to his. They were nothing alike.

The hand that the gripped the mug shook. “A new life you’re making at the expense of my friend!”

“I didn’t asked to be kidnapped. I’m making the best of the opportunity given to me. As you should be.” Her chin jutted elegantly towards the mug. “And the tea works best when it’s consumed warm. Now, once you’ve finished, I do believe we’ll start with an alliteration exercise, since you’ve demonstrated some mastery over monosyllabic words. It is important to focus on the word first, not the sentence, otherwise your mind is just rushing ahead of your mouth and you’ll get frustrated. Oh! Here’s an applicable one: Dirk the Dangerous dozes dreamily deep in dungeons dank. It’s a strange but musical combination of both trochee and dactyl meters, but⁠—”

Bradley hurled the remaining tea onto the floor.

As the liquid soaked into the worn floorboards, the burnt umber darkening to ebony, the princess moistened her lips against the dry, wicking air of the desert. Her fingers clenched in her skirts just once before they splayed in forced relaxation. When she lifted her gaze, Bradley recoiled.

Her cheerful demeanor had vanished like the sun behind a hurricane. In its place wasn’t disappointment or contrition, as expected, but the cold severity of a queen at the very end of her magnanimous patience.

“I should twist your nipples for that and teach you some manners. Or have you squealing for your mother, at the very least.” She stood with cold, effortless grace. “So, you’ve chosen war.”

Bradley swallowed. War?

Without another word, Millie disappeared through the trapdoor. She didn’t look back.

CHAPTER 13

IGNORAMUSES, TOWER SECRETS, A COLLAPSE OF TAFFETA

“The man is an intolerable, juvenile, belligerent—” Millie paused to throw up her hand and cough into a handkerchief. It was the kind of cough common to those suffering from consumption in its violence, though hers was wholly dry and non-life-threatening. But by golly, how those dust particles tore through her lungs like children’s fingernails through wrapping paper on Yulemas morning. Vicious.

With vision blurred by the same dust motes that assaulted her lungs, Millie stubbed her toes stumbling over this and that in her hurry to get to the closest window. She’d long ago abandoned her shoes—cute pink heels that matched her taffeta dress perfectly—citing cramped toes and terrible arch support.

Throwing open the shutters, she sucked in a blisteringly hot yet dust-free breath and hacked into the open air. They were still high up enough in the tower that there was no sand to inhale. At least, not until the next sandstorm decided to grace itself with their presence, which, Dirk informed her, happened approximately once a month.

Lungs clear and searing, she flapped out her handkerchief and tied it about her face in the semblance of a masked brigand before turning away from the window.

“You can swear,” Dirk offered. “I called him an asshole earlier today.”

He hovered with the barest flicks of his tail to remain aloft, lest he disturb the dust that coated the abandoned bedroom like rancid icing sugar.

“Ignoramus,” she hurled through the handkerchief mask, though it provided less satisfaction than if she’d called him a fuckwit.

She should’ve just cursed him out, but her etiquette tutors had taught her a vast vocabulary with which to express herself, and some habits died harder than others. Besides, she couldn’t be profane all the time lest her expletives lose their poetry and potency.

Tomorrow, she vowed. Tomorrow I will call him a fuckwit if the situation calls for it.

The room remained gloomy despite the open window, layering a depressive air to Millie’s already foul mood, so the aspiring pirate stumbled over this and that again to another window for a cross breeze to clear out the stuffiness.