Page 43 of The Discount Damsel

“Come out and fight me, Dragon!” The Hero had taken to brandishing his sword now, which was just as equally shiny and new as the rest of his armor. “Or are you a wussy little worm, hiding away in there like⁠—”

The tower shook as a thunderous roar echoed across the sands. Dust rained from the mortar, feathers and crust from the eaves of the cone-shaped roof, and the stones seemed to vibrate. The roar grew in intensity, compounding like an avalanche, until the sand at the base of the tower rippled away in fright.

The Hero screamed and bolted. He high-stepped across the sands like a silver stork, arms pumping, red horsetail plume flowing straight out behind him.

In his fright, he’d dropped his sword, and when the desert guide bent to retrieve it, Sir Eustace’s voice rang out, “What has been abandoned by the Hero belongs to the Dragon. Leave that sword where it lies!”

The guide flung the ministry official a foul look but obeyed and tromped after the Hero, who was still screaming and presently cresting the second dune in his escape towards Leighton.

Inside the tower, the sorcerer apprentice, the princess-turning-pirate, and the luck dragon abandoned their positions along the spiraling staircase to regroup in the kitchen to celebrate.

“That’s not how I envisioned defeating my first knight,” Dirk admitted, “but it still counts, right?”

Millie held up her index finger on her left hand and made a fist with her right. “It counts on my scoreboard. One-zero, Master Dirk!”

Dirk zoomed around Bradley’s shoulders and swirled under Millie’s arms. His celebratory swirling ceased when he realized, “Wait! I have a sword to collect.”

Bradley caught the little dragon by the tail yet again before he could slither out the kitchen window.

“Ack! Leggo! I earned that sword.” Dirk squirmed and kicked at the hand with his rear feet.

The sorcerer apprentice barked, “Wait,” then signed, “Wait until the Hero and guide are truly out of sight, then go get your sword. You still look like you, remember?”

“Oh.” The luck dragon’s fluffy mane and tail settled back into place, the navy color bleeding from his scales until they were a radiant cerulean once again. “Well that’s alright, I guess. Shall we have a spot of breakfast in the meantime, then?”

CHAPTER 20

NO REASON TO BE NICE, JELLYFISH STING, AND SABOTAGE

Since no beans had been left out to soak overnight, and they were all in a triumphant mood, Bradley decided pancakes were the order of the day. As he made a batter out of flour, ground oats, milk, and pigeon eggs, Millie prepared tea and coffee (not well, but sometimes weak coffee was better than none), and Dirk excavated more of his tower replica from the block of brown sugar. The granules were retained to sweeten the beverages and make a butter caramel sauce for the banana topping Bradley was creating for the pancakes, since there was no maple syrup in the tower.

And as the three went about amicably preparing their breakfast, they regaled each other with their individual victories, as if the three of them hadn’t been present for the combined effort all along. Millie had been responsible for the shaking tower—her silly stone tickled a corkscrew of enchanted rebar that reenforced the whole of the tower—and Bradley, with his greater lung capacity, had been given the task of the first roar. Dirk’s silly stone was located near the base of the tower itself, another roarer, as he called them, and, given his command over wind itself, he had used his stone to amplify Bradley’s roar and make the sand shiver. Their concerted attack had yielded the insinuation that a very large and very irritable dragon was waking from its slumber and preparing to cook that Hero in his plate armor like a crab, just as Millie had said.

“We make a great team,” Dirk concluded, grinning cheeks full of pancake.

Team? Bradley and Millie glanced over their mugs at each other, his coffee in his mug and her tea in the nefarious Lip Cutter. A team was defined as a collection of individuals working together for a shared goal, and their goals weren’t anything alike. She aspired to be what he hated, and he was an arrogant tea-spiller who loathed her for reasons completely lost on her.

And just like that, the camaraderie they’d shared for a job well done vanished. Millie, in his seat, shifted closer to the wall. Bradley scooted his salt barrel closer to Dirk, maximizing the distance between them. Yet, when Millie lifted her mug for her first sip of tea, the apprentice’s hand shot out. It covered the mouth of the mug, shielding against the chip in the rim that would surely cut her. The princess’s lips kissed the back of his hand instead of the tea, and the world froze.

It was like the zing of a jellyfish sting racing up the back of his hand and into his heart and down into the depths of his gut. A zing that alarmed but didn’t hurt.

Bradley jerked back, plucking the mug free and setting it on the table. He pointed to the nefarious chip, tucked his tingling hand into his lap, and hunched over his breakfast. Sweet mother of pearl, why had he interfered? A moment of camaraderie and a job well done weren’t enough for him to be nice to her. Maybe it was because he knew Dirk would be upset if she hurt herself. Scowling, Bradley forked a bit of breakfast into his mouth.

After a stunned pause, Millie rotated the mug so the chip was opposite her mouth and finally took her sip. The tea felt cool in comparison to the heat of her lips, transferred there from the back of the apprentice’s hand. Well that simply would not do. She quickly ran her tongue over her lips to dispel the sensation. That grumpy apprentice was not allowed to have any effect on her other than irritation, not even if he apologized. She had seen too many women’s dreams become derailed after falling for inadequate men, and that would certainly not be her fate. Love, and certainly dalliance, was the jess on a hawk’s ankles—a leash to keep her from flying after her dreams.

“Guess I’ll go get my sword now,” Dirk muttered into the silence.

Now that their buffer was gone, the princess and the apprentice turned their full focus towards their breakfasts. There was no talking. There were no inefficient movements. There was only the scrape of a fork against a plate, the slurp of a hot drink, the soft rhythm of chewing.

For about three seconds.

“You’re a horrible person, Mr. Donmarin, you know that, right?”

Bradley choked on his coffee, forced it down, and blinked away the tears in his eyes. “What?”

Millie jabbed the air with her fork, coming dangerously close to his nose. “Did you think I was just going to forget about that detail about the rice paper? You weren’t going to tell Dirk that the spells could work on anything edible, were you? That it’s the dragon and the words that make the magic happen, not the vehicle. You’re taking advantage of his youth and inexperience.”

He swatted the fork out of his face and signed, “You don’t understand. He is my responsibility. I can’t have him going out there against trained killers and⁠—”