Page 66 of The Discount Damsel

LOOSE SCALES, VANILLA ICE CREAM, TRANSFORMATION IS AN UGLY BUSINESS

The door creaked open, echoing through the tower like the cry of a street cat gearing up for a spat with a rival over some choice morsels of garbage.

Mane flattening in an anxious whoosh, Dirk stole a quick peek outside his bedroom. It was quiet, the crystals embedded hither and thither within the stonework muted with the spiraling slants of morning sunlight forcing their way through the portholes and arrow loops. Silent as breath, he slunk out of his bedroom into the stairwell just to make sure.

Below in the pit of sand, the walled spring glowed with a faint blue light, and a soft grunting was barely audible from the training room—Sir Roger, performing his morning stretches. Above, there was the gentle clink of earthenware mug against patio table and Bradley stumbling through, “Dirk the Dangerous dozes dreamily deep in dungeons dank.”

I what now? the baby dragon thought.

There was no historical evidence whatsoever of luck dragons ever sleeping in dungeons. They slept in clouds, and more recently, in bathtubs full of pennies. He’d have to have a word with his princess about what she had Bradley recite, lest their speech exercises lead to false rumors about his species.

Dirk shook his head and returned to his room, confident in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be disturbed in the next few minutes.

The amplio spell had worn off, so a Dirk-sized magenta dragon flew back to his bathtub full of treasure. The warhammer Alfalas was too big to fit in the tub, so it hung from the nearby towel hooks. It liked to whisper, but whenever Dirk paid it any mind, the whisperings ceased. The green light veining through the hammer still flashed on occasion, and the baby dragon wondered if Raegon the Rabid’s collection of enchanted swords was this spooky.

Ignoring the warhammer, Dirk landed on the edge of the claw-foot tub.

The copper coins and cloudy gemstones inside were dazzling in the sunlight, but their beauty didn’t fill him with a sense of accomplishment like they normally did. After another furtive glance over his shoulder, the luck dragon dropped onto his treasure and rooted like a hog for a pouch he’d hidden by the drain.

It was the canvas pouch from the bean farmer, selected for its material because it would be the least eye-catching should someone decide to dig through his treasure. No one would give a rat’s fart for a canvas sack when they could snoop through the leather pouch he’d taken from the cauliflower farmer or the velvet purse from the mercenary.

His yellow claws wiggled the strings loose, and he dumped the contents into his paw. Six cerulean scales glittered in sharp relief against his magenta palm. He’d shed the last three in quick succession, one after the defeat of each Hero. Dirk’s stomach twirled a succession of pirouettes as the unknown sparkled up at him.

He was shedding his scales—it wasn’t an odd occurrence anymore.

Dirk dumped the scales back into the canvas pouch and fled for the mirror over the sink. He pawed at his mane, flattening the feathers until the six gaps in his hide beneath his jaw showed like dark tiles amongst a floor of blue. Was Bradley’s curse truly affecting him, too?

He didn’t feel any different, except for an unsettled stomach, but that could just be the matter of this moment. Overall, he felt excited now that Bradley was finally on board supporting his dream and that old hedge knight was here to coach Millie and him. And maybe fighting the Heroes was exactly what he and Bradley needed. As dragons aged and grew stronger, so did their magic. If he threw himself into his training, maybe he could beat back the curse and even eradicate it from the apprentice himself!

So long as Miss Penelope and her griffin arrived with more rice paper before another Hero attempted to rescue Millie, everything would go swimmingly.

“Egad!” he exclaimed. “Miss Penelope can’t see me like this.”

The griffin rider might just pose as a groceries delivery girl, but everybody knew she was a snoop for Master Excelsior. The grand master wanted monthly reports on both his charges, and that meant laying eyes on him. Miss Penelope would surely notice the change in his scale coloration and the addition of Draco typhonus wings, and the secret of the rice-paper spells and his extracurricular activities would be exposed.

Skin his scales, would they make him return all his hard-earned extortion money?! As if magenta coloration wasn’t already damaging to his reputation, that would ruin him!

He had to burn through the duration of these spells quick.

Dirk shoved the canvas pouch of scales back towards the drain, kicked the pennies and jewels this way and that in the tub to obscure any tracks, and fled for the suite door. He nearly barreled into Millie on the other side.

She had her fist raised to knock, two bowls of food balanced in the crook of her arm, and her brown eyes widened first in surprise, second in alarm as the luck dragon flew straight for her.

With a yelp, the princess spun to the side and grabbed the guide rope as the wake of Dirk’s flight tugged her taffeta skirts towards the edge of the landing and its nasty drop over the side. Pottery shattered, food slopped, and the raw egg yolk ruptured and dripped thick and yellow.

“Millie!” The luck dragon flattened his tail tuft into a blade-like rudder and whipped around. “Are you alright?”

“I am, but your breakfast isn’t.” She released the guide rope with a shaky inhale and sorted out the hang of her skirts with a sharp tug. Yanked the waterskin strap and reticule strings back into her elbow. “And serves you right for charging out of your room like a crazed bat from a belfry. Why the architect of this spectacular tower didn’t see fit to build an actual railing to prevent accidental deaths is beyond me, but you know to be careful, Master Dirk.”

“You . . . brought me breakfast? Why?”

She gave him a quizzical look. “You slept in. I thought it would be nice to bring you— Are you alright?”

He. Slept. In?!

Luck dragons were masters of the wind and rain and, by extension, the sky itself. They were in tune with everything celestial, which meant, most obviously, that their circadian rhythms were infallible, even more so than a hamster’s.

Dirk plastered his eye against the nearest porthole window, marked the position of the sun, and gasped when he realized that the coins and jewels in his bathtub had had no right whatsoever to be that sparkly if it were dawn and not two hours past!