Page 97 of The Discount Damsel

Millie’s expression fell. “Dirk.”

“I’m asking you to be careful is all. Don’t be so naïve⁠—”

“Naïve?” She wrenched out of his grip. “Why do you think I asked Sir Roger to teach me chi blocking? I do not suffer the delusion that someone of my stature can overcome a larger adversary through brute strength. To be the One in Ten, I need to be like Fink: quick and sneaky.”

Millie dropped and jabbed him with her knuckles again, and Bradley collapsed onto all-fours. “Like that. Now you can climb the stairs like a dog and see how that feels. Just make sure you wash your hands before you make breakfast.”

As Bradley sputtered, trying to regain control over his body and failing, the princess hoisted her skirts and soldiered up the stairs to Dirk’s room. She did her best to focus on anything but the sorcerer apprentice and the roiling mess of confusion he’d stirred up inside her.

The tower had brightened with the dawn, slants of buttery sunlight from the windows striping the stairwell and dimming the crystals. It bounced off the large pearls dangling from her earlobes and sent flecks of white chasing after each other like cinder pixies. A welcome diversion.

Moments later, Millie rapped her knuckles against the D carved in the wooden door, and a sleepy cerulean luck dragon emerged from his bedroom.

“Huh?” Dirk scratched at his mane, caught himself, and tucked his paws behind his back. His golden eyes widened at the sight of his best friend crawling up the stairs. “Egad! What happened to him?”

“I did,” Mutineer Millie said proudly.

Dirk swirled around Bradley, inspecting him much like a foxhound would an opossum playing dead. “You blocked his chi! Don’t take this the wrong way, Bradley, but well done, Millie. All the huzzahs!”

“Dirk,” the apprentice barked.

“Yes, yes, Grumpy Robes. Hold on.” The luck dragon tapped here and there with his claws, much like he had when resuscitating Sir Roger after his fall. “So why did you happen to him?” he asked Millie.

“He had some concerns about reminding people who was really in charge, so I addressed them.”

Bradley, having regained full usage of his body thanks to Dirk, surged upright with a tirade prepared on his lips.

The princess was waiting for him on the step above so they were at eye level. Before he could react, she booped him lightly on the tip of his nose. If he could turn her morning upside down and topsy-turvy with a few choice words and an errant touch, then turnabout was fair play.

“By the way, that was a very smart thing you did back there,” she said, “substituting ‘food’ for ‘breakfast.’ But you mustn’t be intimidated by a word simply because you think you’ll stumble over it. I was going to have you work on your Ms today with ‘my mother makes mushy marshmallows malleable in March,’ but now I think we’ll return to those Bs again with ‘bonehead Bradley babbles besmirching bullshit about beautiful buccaneers.’ But after breakfast. I’m starving. Aren’t you, Master Dirk?”

“Like a bear fresh out of hibernation.”

Bradley remained on his step, befuddled, bemused, and his nose tingling most distractingly.

“Fetch Henri from the workroom, would you, Master Dirk? There’s a fellow who certainly needs reminding who’s in charge now and then. He can sing for his sashimi.”

Millie glanced over her shoulder at the apprentice, smirking. If she could handle that grumpy hothead with a simple tap on the nose, she had no doubt she could handle anyone else. But only after breakfast.

CHAPTER 42

LITTLE PESTS, LARGE INNUENDOS—A TRYING AFTERNOON INDEED

Bradley thumped Small Magicks shut and slid it off to the far side of the table within the crystal barrier. He opened The Ultimate Spell Directory – Volume 3 and read the first spell. Fulminis, the lightning bolt spell. He was very familiar with it.

Before continuing on to the next spell, his eyes flicked up with the same sour expression of an exam proctor who’d heard whispering in what should’ve been a silent exam hall.

The princess and Dirk had had their morning session with Sir Roger, Swashbuckling for her and Knight Fighting for a supersized, Great Red version of Dirk, and now the princess sat on the floor of the training room with her legs crossed at the ankle and her weight shifted back onto her hands. The posture did wonders for presenting her corseted cleavage, something Bradley told himself he hadn’t noticed, but her All Things Nautical & Marine professor certainly had.

Sir Beauregard Beauchamp stood before the blackboard, which had been flipped around from her How to Become a Pirate training checklist to the chalk drawing of a three-deck galleon. The rattan cane she used as a fencing foil was now his pointer, and he tapped the front of the ship.

“The galleon is best described as a beautiful woman lying on her back,” Sir Beauregard began, voice low and velvety.

Oh is it? Bradley groaned inwardly.

“This bow is the galleon’s proud, ample bosom, thrusting forward to cleave the seas.”

Bradley’s gaze strafed from the blackboard to the princess, whose expression hadn’t changed. Surely this poorly masked euphemism wasn’t escaping her. He glanced at Sir Roger next, who leaned against the wall by the door as he filed his nails down to nothing. The hedge knight’s expression was the textbook definition of unamused.