Chapter 6
A MODEL HOSTAGE AND THREE COURSES SHOULD BE SUFFICIENT (PLUS DESSERT)
“Ooo,” the baby dragon exclaimed. “I like her. And her cat. Did you hear what she called me? Master Dirk. I don’t even have my barbels yet!
And my scales? Liquid sapphire.” Dirk corkscrewed through the air.
“And she’s going in to make tea. An Amberlian princess making us tea, can you imagine?
It is quite literally art in motion. What an honor! ”
His excitement fizzled in the face of the sorcerer apprentice just standing there with a scowl, spectacles fogging with the oncoming chill of night, and a tapping toe.
“Well, you heard the princess. Hop-to with the grease! I want to enjoy that tea while it’s fresh.”
Dirk twisted around for the workroom only for his forward momentum to come to a complete halt as a large hand clamped onto his tail. The baby dragon was yanked back onto the balcony then squished up against the tower wall. “Oof!”
“What were you thinking?” Bradley signed.
“Kidnapping a princess puts me on the map, Bradley. This is fantastic for my reputation!”
The sorcerer apprentice’s gestures were nothing short of curt. “You know how I feel about the nobility. And she’s worse! She’s royalty!”
“She is not Viscount Saltreave. And dragons only kidnap princesses, so my paws are a bit tied here, aren’t they?”
“Why did you bring her here?”
“Because kidnapped princesses are held hostage in towers, duh. Everybody knows this.”
“Why. This. Tower?”
“For one, I could feel my enchantments wearing off, including that endurance one, and in case you’ve forgotten, Bradley, I’m a baby dragon. My flight radius is rather limited. Unless you know of another tower within twenty-five leagues that’s currently unoccupied.”
Crossing his arms over his chest and resting them on top of his satchel, Dirk gave the sorcerer apprentice a sour look. “And secondly, I brought her home for you. But if this is how you’re going to react whenever I do something thoughtful, don’t expect me to do it again.”
The scowl lines in Bradley’s brow softened with unexpected curiosity. “For me? Why?”
“So you can get laid.”
“What?” he shouted.
The spittle on Dirk’s cheeks evaporated from the heat of his flush. “I heard all about it from the other apprentices at the College! Everyone says it does wonders for clearing the mind, so I thought she could help you. All you need to do is—”
“I don’t need instructions, Dirk!” Bradley paused his gesticulation tirade to tear his hands through his hair and rip out a dark curl or two.
“I don’t need to get laid. I need all the peace and quiet I can get to study and rid myself of this infernal curse.
Get that princess out of here. All she’s going to do is snoop and get in the way and—"
Dirk flung up a paw. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. Grumpy Robes. You act like you own this tower, when, in fact, the two of us are both guests here.”
“Master Excelsior put me in charge!”
The baby dragon ignored him. “Millie is my princess, so I’ll deal with her.
And so far, she’s been a model hostage. She screamed at all the right times and didn’t throw off my flight pattern once.
She only needed to stop to relieve herself one time, and she didn’t even protest that the best I could offer her was a secluded glen instead of an outhouse.
And she’s a brilliant conversationalist, truly well-read in all manner of things.
Our flight over here wasn’t the least bit boring.
Truly, my first time princess-napping couldn’t have gone any better. You should be happy for me!”
But Bradley wasn’t happy for Dirk. Bradley could only see the Major Inconvenience that was that princess in rose-pink taffeta who had disappeared into the sorcerer workroom— Sweet mother of pearl!
She was probably snooping through everything and fogging the crystal balls with her breath and getting her fingerprints all over Master Excelsior’s books!
The sorcerer apprentice threw himself towards the archway and was met with a solid whump of Dirk’s feathered tail tuft. He stumbled back onto the western balcony, arms wrapped around his stomach and blue eyes glittering with outrage.
“We have guests,” the little blue dragon said forcefully, “and you’re still naked. You can join me and Millie when you’re presentable. There’s some beef tallow in a jar by the dried peony petals on the shelves right over there.”
With a gust of wind, Dirk upended the washtub.
The bar of lye soap slid perilously close to a gap between the rungs of the wrought-iron railing, but the dragon’s luck kept it from joining the cascade of dirty wash water.
A gesture of his claws caused the washtub to refill itself with hot water. “You’re welcome. Get scrubbing.”
Then the luck dragon abandoned him, swirling through the open trapdoor and shutting it behind him with a resounding thud.
Bradley knew when a stubborn streak took hold of the baby dragon that there would be no reasoning with him. And the fastest way he could keep the princess from snooping everywhere and touching everything was to wash his clothes as she and the dragon both insisted.
With a growl, the sorcerer apprentice yanked the beef tallow off the shelf and returned to the balcony where the moon was just beginning to rise over the twilit dunes.
Bradley scrubbed the grease into the gunky parts of his robe with the fervor of a freezing man trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
Confound it, the princess was right. The tallow drew the black gunk out of the homespun fibers and had it floating upon the surface of the wash water like miniature lobster buoys.
Bradley rolled his eyes and retrieved the lye soap for the final wash. There wasn’t much heat left in the desert now that night had truly fallen, so even after he’d wrung the robe out, it still clung damply to his skin. Good enough.
Abandoning the washtub, he dashed into the workroom, flung open the trapdoor, and bounded down the stairs to the kitchen.
“Ah,” Millie greeted with a smile. She sat in his seat at his breakfast table and sipped tea out of his mug. “Not quite in time, but the tea’s still at a pleasant temperature. Won’t you join us?”
“It’s delicious,” Dirk gushed.
Catching sight of Bradley’s dripping hem, the little dragon set down his china teacup and flew across the kitchen. He spun a tight circle around the sorcerer apprentice, and his magic sucked the remaining moisture out of the robe into a ring upon the floor.
With a sparkle of cerulean scales, Dirk returned to his seat and picked up his teacup to inhale the fragrant steam. “Yummy, yummy, yummy.”
Bradley crossed the kitchen, came to a halt at the very edge of the table, and loomed over the princess who was in his seat.
Millie didn’t move. She’d had an exhilarating but exhausting day, and she found this little breakfast nook delightfully cozy and this young man exceptionally rude.
Invading her personal space like this might not get him beheaded in the Amberly court, but it would certainly earn him a stern word.
That manhandling display on the balcony and this looming were certainly not helping his case to become her friend, a prospect she found positively thrilling, as she’d never had a friend before. Perhaps he was just socially awkward?
Ignoring his pointed look, Millie set down her mug and poured him some tea into the tower’s only remaining cup. She supposed she could give him a second chance.
“One must always attempt to diffuse a situation, or kill a foe, with kindness first,” Miss Josephine, her first etiquette tutor, had always said.
Bradley immediately recognized the nefarious mug with the broken-off handle and the chip in its rim that had bloodied many an unvigilant lip. The Lip Cutter.
The mug’s reputation unknown to her, Millie proffered the tea.
“Master Dirk was kind enough to carve some sugar lumps from that big block over there, and since this blend is a little on the darker side, not to mention old, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a lump to your mug already.
Do try it out, as you might want to indulge in another lump. Master Dirk and I certainly did.”
She smiled up at him in a way that Bradley would’ve called pleasant if he wasn’t determined to classify her as a Major Inconvenience.
He took the mug from the bottom and didn’t drink.
“It’s quite a sippable temperature.”
The mug remained where it was in his hand.
“I suppose one’s tepidity is another’s scalding.
” Millie smoothed out a non-existent wrinkle in the tablecloth.
“Now that you are properly clothed, would you care to introduce yourself? The situation was rather tense on the balcony, so I’ve decided to take no lingering offense to your lapse in manners.
I find it good practice for becoming a pirate, for, as you know, they are rather loosey-goosey with matters of propriety, what with the thieving, swashbuckling, and general nuisancery and whatnot. ”
“Brad.” It came out clipped and formal and not at all how he wanted to introduce himself, but he refused to stutter and so a monosyllabic shortening of his name was the compromise. Plus, he couldn’t help but be curt. It was instinct with this breed of person.
This was the third time she’d mentioned being a pirate aspirant, and more than one internal organ twisted and coiled like a dock line around a cleat.
Bradley knew a thing or two or a thousand about pirates and hated the lot of them.
They were nothing but thieves, locusts upon the seas who thought nothing of razing poor defenseless fishing villages when their cannons couldn’t crack the thick walls of a port city.
It was clear this young woman had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but such was the way of royals.
They thought themselves subject matter experts simply because they sat on fancy cushions and wore gold upon their heads.
His dislike of her and her misplaced (and delusional) aspirations magnified.