Page 95 of The Discount Damsel

“Stairs,” Bradley barked at her. “Now.”

“You know,” Sir Beauregard Beauchamp drawled, leaning against the bars, “the rest of us wouldn’t mind getting our heart rates up in the morning.” He winked at Millie.

The princess pressed her lips so she wouldn’t smile and turned away. The knight wasn’t particularly clever in his flattery, nor subtle in the way he found a reason to be free of his shirt (and sometimes his pants) whenever she was around, but the way he looked at her . . . The suitors her parents had introduced her to only saw her title, but Sir Beauregard Beauchamp saw her as a woman, and that was a whole other matter entirely.

She wouldn’t pursue him, of course. Sir Beauregard was clearly a rake and dallying with him would only distract her from her goal, but it was still nice to be desired.

“I very much would mind,” Duncan said, looking up from where he read a book by crystal-light. The gnome shuffled his knees closer to his chest and angled the book propped against them into the purple glow. “Mornings are for quiet reflection. Study.”

“Of course I wasn’t talking about you, Duncan,” Sir Beauregard replied amiably. “But Jax and I are used to a little exercise, not to mention the old man⁠—”

Sir Roger cuffed the taller knight across the back of the head. “That’s ‘Sir Roger’ to you, whelp. You want a little exercise? You can do pull-ups just fine in here. Push-ups, too. Those’ll get your heart rate up in no time.”

“But what about cardio?” He slid Millie a sly smile.

She cocked an eyebrow. “What about it? These stairs would have you crying for your mother in two minutes.”

“Oh, I’ll be crying a woman’s name alright, but it won’t be my mother’s.”

“You want cardio?” Sir Roger asked. “You can run away from the foot I’m about to shove up your ass. Git.”

Sir Beauregard didn’t push himself away from the dungeon door until Bradley approached. They were of an even height, though the knight was thicker. Bradley’s tight jaw and burning blue eyes were warning enough, and Sir Beauregard sauntered off. The apprentice watched him go, fingers twitching to lob a fireball at that thick blond hair, then turned to the hedge knight.

“I’ll be back with”—Bradley caught himself before he could stutter on breakfast and amended it with—“food.”

“Thanks very much,” the hedge knight said, fixing Bradley with a pointed look.

The apprentice nodded once and joined the princess on the stairs. Her endurance had become so they could walk amicably side by side now, should they wish to be amicable or tolerate closer proximity. Which they rarely did. But he would do so today, because she deserved chastising for that prank with the ferret. It undermined his authority, and that simply would not do.

Nor could he ignore the risk to the princess’s safety any longer.

After Dirk had “defeated” the Heroes and the princess had assimilated them into her talent stable, the Heroes had not seen scale nor claw of the dragon. This was to preserve the illusion that Dirk was a Great Red without the use of spells, which would wear on the luck dragon eventually. Every once in a while, Dirk would roar and shake the tower with a silly stone, but without a sighting to back it up, the Heroes had become desensitized.

They still respected Bradley, for the time being, which had more to do with his physical bearing than anything else. They knew he was a sorcerer of some kind, though he never performed magic in front of them. And keeping his words short and directed only at Sir Roger reinforced the mystery surrounding him as well as the hedge knight’s position as warden over the others.

For now.

The apprentice took the stairs two at a time and soon caught up to the princess. “Tula,” he began sternly.

“Millie,” she corrected, not pausing in her trek up the stairs.

Her breath was measured, her arms swinging lightly in rhythm with the stride of her legs. It was this symphony of movement that enabled her to reach the top of the winding staircase without her lungs and heart desiring to secede from the rest of her body, and she would not let him interfere.

“Tula.”

Her stride faltered. There was something beneath the insistence in his voice. Concern?

It caught her so off-guard that she didn’t protest when he took hold of her arm and pulled her into the shadowy alcove of a doorway.

Her backside bounced her off the oak door, but his hand on her arm steadied her. It was different than the harsh grip he used when he trained her, but no less strong or secure. It was gentle, somehow. Earnest.

Whether he knew it or not, Bradley Donmarin was being nice, even if he was caging her against the door.

No, no, no, Millie panicked. Bradley couldn’t be nice. If Bradley was nice, she might look at him differently, perhaps even soften towards him. Which would be very inconvenient because they were still very much at war.

Millie sucked in a nervous breath and instantly regretted it. The air was laced with the warmth trapped in the tower stones, but also the scents of rustic homespun and sun-tanned skin. Him.

The alcove was enshrouded in gloom, but what light provided by the nearby crystals intensified the blue of his eyes and deepened the darkness of his hair. He was surrounded in a purple glow that seemed to offer a glimpse of the power he might one day wield as a master sorcerer. For an instant, he was magnetic. Intense. Alluring.