Page 94 of The Discount Damsel

In the weeks that followed, the tower residents adapted to a new routine. Bradley still tortured Millie every morning with physical training, she retaliated with vulgar tongue-twisters designed to emasculate or embarrass him, and the Heroes were let out of the dungeon one at a time to train the princess how to be a pirate while the sorcerer apprentice hunched over his books in the corner and glowered out under lowered lashes. Dirk had become somewhat of a recluse when he wasn’t training with Sir Roger or defeating another Hero, spending his free time sleeping in his claw-foot tub of treasure.

To this day, Millie still struggled to lift her chin past the pull-up bar. If there was a verbal method of expressing agony more potently than screaming, her muscles were doing it now.

Her shaking fingers loosened from the bar without her consent (mutiny!), and she slipped through Bradley’s grip. His strong hands slid across her ribs before they dropped away from her sweaty armpits and she landed in the sand at his feet.

Wordless and silently watching (or judging) her as always, the apprentice stepped around her, jumped up, and performed his own pull-ups with perfect execution.

She crawled out of the way and began stretching, as she always did when her body rebelled, and watched. Gone were the days when she regarded him only with envy and stinging pride. Now, those two emotions were equally mixed with dogged determination—she would watch, she would pick apart his movements like she was dissecting a disgusting creature (because she could not bear to imagine dissecting a frog or bunny or anything similarly adorable), and she would learn.

Millie had learned much already that way—push-ups, squats, and how to climb the winding steps more efficiently without overtaxing her muscles. She couldn’t run up and down the stairs with Bradley’s proficiency yet, but she could definitely walk them without wanting to keel over and die. If only she could master these pull-ups with the same quickness Bradley had mastered his stutter.

Only yesterday upon the eastern balcony, her sitting up straight and him hunched forward with his elbows digging into his thighs, the apprentice had stared into his dwindling cup of tisane, lips moving silently as he memorized the tongue-twister du jour.

Then, blue eyes brighter than the morning sky, he’d looked up at her and said, “Rowdy randy rabbits rut really rapidly.”

“Yes, they do,” Millie agreed, then she burst into applause. “Mr. Donmarin, you did it!”

The grin that had split his face and taken years off his face faltered. Had his stutter truly been a psychosis all along?

Bradley set his mug of tisane down on the patio table and plucked up a lump of brown sugar from its bowl. Holding it in the palm of his hand, he said, “Amp. Amp—” He sucked in a frustrated breath. “AMP⁠—”

Instead of enlarging with the simple amplio spell, the sugar lump exploded.

Millie shrieked and flung up her hands, shielding herself from a spray of hard brown crystals. When she lowered them, Bradley was watching the desert wind flick scorched granules from his palm.

She leaned forward and set her hand softly upon his arm. “Don’t give up.”

“Rowdy randy rabbits rut really rapidly,” he muttered. Flawlessly. His body trembled under her hand, but he didn’t shy away from her touch. “What is this curse?”

His fierce eyes were wet when he looked at her, then he stood and strode so forcefully from the balcony, the wake of his passage nearly yanked Millie off her seat.

He’d been able to speak Commons ever since, but not a syllable of High Aetherial.

In the mornings after her soul-crushing workouts, she still coached him through another tongue-twister and many other speech exercises, just to be sure. And they worked, on everything but the language of magic. So long as he didn’t attempt to use his magic, no one would’ve known the apprentice had ever been cursed.

Rustling in the sand broke her studious contemplation of Bradley’s backside, which is where her attention always seemed to drift whenever his bunching shoulder muscles grew monotonous. Bradley might be an insufferable perfectionist, but he was a handsome insufferable perfectionist. Her brown eyes strafed to the right—Fink.

The black-footed ferret in his dapper vest and enchanted collar had wormed his way through the dungeon bars and currently scampered over to her for his morning cuddle. Achy and cross, Millie forgot all about her own troubles as the ferret crawled into her lap and promptly rolled over to expose his fat white belly. Fink whined happily as she obligingly stroked his fur and played with his toes and rubbed his ears and tugged lightly on his tail. He was far more amenable and personable than Duchess, who much preferred to be admired from afar. Unless you had caviar to share.

Millie scooped up the ferret and brought him close for a conspiratorial whisper. “Now he’s just showing off. Again. Care to do something about it?”

The yellow opal on his collar glowed, and Fink squeaked. He hopped down from her hands, darted across the sand, and just when Bradley’s boots dipped low, the ferret leapt. The apprentice was so consumed with his pull-ups that he didn’t realize the ferret was climbing up his robe until his tiny nails dug into his arm.

“Hey!” the apprentice exclaimed.

Fink reached the bar and proceeded to nip Bradley’s fingers.

“Stop that.”

The ferret squeaked a laugh and nipped some more.

Bradley released one hand from the bar to swipe at the ferret. Fink, being the exceptionally slinky and agile furry noodle that he was, easily evaded. The ferret then balanced over the hand that still held the bar, squatted, and released a yellow stream of urine.

“Ugh!” Bradley dropped to the sand and held his hand out like it had recently become possessed and was trying to strangle him. He hurried over to the spring and splashed water onto the offending liquid.

The occupants within the dungeon chuckled.

Millie rose and lifted her hands to catch Fink. The opal glowed on his collar, and the ferret leapt into her arms. She set him on the sand with a playful swat and watched him scurry back to the safety of the dungeon before Bradley could think to catch him and feed him to the groupers in the spring. Fink crawled into Jax’s lap, and the deckhand favored her with an appreciative smile.