Chapter 7
ALMOST A WATERY DEATH, DEFINITELY A TRIPPING HAZARD, AND MUCH AUDACITY
The baby dragon did not return, so Bradley ate by himself in the quiet kitchen with nothing but the creaking of the stove as it dispelled its heat to keep him company.
The fish, caught only yesterday and still very fresh, did not seem as flavorful, and the browned butter and toasted almonds did little to improve the flavor.
Later, Bradley found little wonder or solace in the stars of the northern sky, so he abandoned the balcony early for some reading, which he never did at night.
First, candles were a non-renewable resource, which he had to rely on since the multisyllabic illumino incantation now had explosive tendencies when uttered with his stutter, and second, a particular piece of wisdom had been drilled into him by his father, mother, and the entire fishing village time and time again: the body needed a break sometime.
If you didn’t rest your body, your body would make you rest, and usually in the form of injury or illness just to spite you for abusing it.
And Bradley had no time for anything that would hinder his ability to study, so eight hours a night it was.
If those personal reasons weren’t reason enough, his own master forbade it.
Master Excelsior was a stickler for never bringing sorcery books out of the workroom.
“That’s how they slip from your fingers and plummet to a watery death below.
” Nor bringing any work into the bedroom.
“That room is for rejuvenation only, dear boy, whether through sleep or . . . other activities that you’ll learn about when you’re older. ”
But the sorcerer apprentice found himself simultaneously restless and exhausted, and sometimes that combination could breed recklessness.
Maybe it was the princess’s comment on him being slow.
He’d been in the top one percent of his class since he started formal education, so he most assuredly was not a dunce.
She’d just taken one look at his callused hands and sun-darkened skin and homespun clothes and had assumed someone who’d had to work for living had never learned how to read.
His pride had risen like the hackles on a dog and refused to be soothed until he proved to her that he was still the same caliber of sorcerer apprentice as always even with a cursed voice.
So he yanked a thick volume titled Small Magicks from the shelf, ignored the phantom admonishment from his master, and decided he’d read while he soaked in the tub.
Besides, the mind gleaned just as many details when it was relaxed as it did when it was focused, they were just of a different nature.
Since the potions weren’t working out for him, maybe the archaic small magics would.
Master Excelsior certainly wouldn’t have kept the book around if it provided no value.
With each winding step down the tower, Bradley kept the book tucked up tight under one arm.
Just because he was breaking the rules didn’t mean he had to be reckless in every facet of his life.
Still, he hurried down the stairs as if someone might catch him and scold him to within an inch of his life and nearly pitched into the tower’s central abyss when he tripped over something on the landing just outside his bedroom door.
The book dropped from his armpit as his hands shot out to grab the guide rope and the door handle.
A quick thrust of his hip and a kick of his leg bounced the book off his body and into the safety of the alcove.
Another crack or two might’ve appeared on its worn leather covers, but at least the integrity of the knowledge inside had been preserved.
When his ears stopped ringing from all the rushing blood and his heart no longer raced like a chipmunk being chased by a very hungry fox, the sorcerer apprentice straightened.
In the soft glow of the wall crystals, he discovered a wooden tray and dishes in slumped disarray.
Oh no. No, no, no.
Bradley shouldered open the door.
The princess looked over from where she snuggled under the covers in his bed.
On the bedside table, the taper candle flickered in the wind of his appearance. No book or embroidery lay across her lap. Hells of the deep, what had she lit it for? Ambience?!
With something akin to a panicked grunt, Bradley yanked the door shut.
Perhaps it was just the exhaustion and excitement of the day fraying his nerves.
There were dozens of bedrooms in this tower—surely the princess and the discarded tray were just figments of his imagination.
He never would’ve taken Small Magicks out of the workroom had he known the breech in protocol would cause hallucinations.
Swallowing thickly, he pushed open the door just a crack.
The princess was still there, sitting upright now.
The light from the sole candle glowed gold in her long auburn hair and slid across her bare shoulders.
Caelus’s Stars, was she naked under the bedsheets?
That thought should have set his nerves tingling, but all he felt was outrage on behalf of his meticulously organized bedroom.
Her taffeta dress draped haphazardly over the back of his chair, her silk stockings slung across the seat.
The fact that she was snuggled in his bed smacked of audacity enough, but this?
Had she never heard of a closet or hangers? Or a hamper?
Brow creased in a frown, Millie began, “Excuse y—,” and Bradley yanked the door shut once more.
With a shove of his boot, he scooted the tray into the corner of the alcove opposite Small Magics where he was less likely to trip on either again. Then he bolted for Dirk’s room.
The baby dragon’s impressive hearing heard the frantic cadence of Bradley’s approach from a long way off, and he greeted the sorcerer apprentice at his bathroom door. The white cat was in his arms, eyes slitted and ears flattened at the disturbance.
Bradley stared at the cat. It certainly hadn’t taken the beast long to make herself comfortable, just like her mistress.
Dirk yawned. “I hope you didn’t step on any hermit crabs during your stampede.”
“That princess is in my bed!” the apprentice signed.
Balancing Duchess, Dirk rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
“I need some context here, since you were so opposed to getting laid earlier. Are you excited that there is a princess in your bed, or angry? From what I’ve observed about humans, both emotions would give you that rosy complexion and cause that vein in your neck to throb. ”
“I’m angry!”
“Thank you for clarifying.”
“First she takes my mug and my seat, then my dinner companion, and now my bed? It’s insufferable!”
The baby dragon yawned and scratched the feathered mane behind his left ear.
“Can you blame her? Your bedroom’s the only clean one in the whole tower.
What woman is going to deliberately choose to bed down in dust and decay when there’s a nice feather mattress and quilt to be had? She’s a princess, not a swamp hag.”
“You told her she could take any room she likes. You tell her to get out.” Bradley glared down at the dragon who wasn’t moving a muscle in the employment of rectifying this egregious error. “Now.”
“Your bedroom, your problem.” The baby dragon turned back to the treasure in his claw-foot tub. With a flick of his tufted tail, he sent a gust of wind to shut the bathroom door right in Bradley’s face.
Double the audacity!
Fists balling, it took every ounce of willpower to not bang on the door until the dragon emerged. Because, as Bradley knew full well, he wouldn’t. Nothing was more stubborn than a dragon who’d made up its mind.
With a frustrated snarl, the sorcerer apprentice stomped back up the stairs to his suite. He retrieved his book and, mindful of the tray, entered his bedroom.
Now the princess had her arms crossed over her chest. “Excuse you,” she finished from earlier.
Bradley gestured to the room as a whole. “Mine.”
Millie drew her knees up to her chest, tenting the quilt, and didn’t move.
She was familiar with how pushy sorcerers could be—they thought themselves so superior to everyone because they could command a bit of magic.
She’d been a fool to hope someone like him might want to befriend her.
Apparently being locked up alone in a tower didn’t temper one’s arrogance as she would’ve thought.
Well, Mutineer Millie had had enough of being pushed around for one lifetime. She thrust her nose into the air in the superior way of princesses and declared, “Dirk said I could pick any room I liked.”
“Wrong.”
“What is it that pirates say? Oh, yes. Finders keepers.” It served him right for his horrible treatment of her at teatime.
In three long strides, the apprentice moved to the end of the bed. There was no footboard there, nothing but the linens to impede him from snatching her by the ankles and hauling her out his bed, out of his room, and out of his life down to the dungeons.
Millie yanked the hairpin from where it rested on the bedside table and, in her haste, knocked the sole decoration upon that table. A little wooden carving of a sailboat, polished to a dull shine from years of handling. It spun like a child’s bauble, bow chasing stern.
If it fell and broke, Bradley would well and truly lose it.
But it didn’t, and Millie whipped back towards him with her hairpin and jabbed the air between them. “Try it.”
Bradley’s father would whip him if he ever set a hand upon a woman in anger, but his father was not here right now and surely Mr. Donmarin would make an exception for such an insufferable brat as this princess. She deserved a hearty spank across her plump backside at the very least.
He set a large hand flat against the quilt.
“I’m naked under here,” she blurted. “Surely you’re not such a mannerless beast to strip a woman of her dignity, are you?”
When he reared back with an appropriate level of shock, Millie hid her smirk and burrowed down deeper into the bed. Of course she wasn’t naked, but with how her unbound hair hid the thin straps of her chemise, he’d never know. “You’re welcome to the floor.”
“Bed,” he growled.
Millie’s eyes flashed wide for only a heartbeat before her expression turned cavalier. “Fine. The bed’s big enough to share.”
Was this princess calling his bluff? Well, she would be in for a massive surprise when Bradley called her on it, right after he had his soak in his tub with his book. Propriety could pound sand—this was his bed, not a reed mat on a hard floor in a fisherman’s hut.
He slept like the dead, too, an immovable block, so when he bedded down tonight, spread-eagle, the spoiled princess would discover she lacked the strength to move him.
Then she would either compromise her own reputation by remaining in bed with him or admit defeat to guard her modesty and curl up on the rug.
Pleased with his plan, Bradley sauntered into the adjoining bathroom and stopped in his tracks.
The tub was full of water. Spent water. The drain plug must’ve swirled back into position, preventing the water’s egress.
His towel was off its hook, too, draped lengthwise over the rim of the tub, the hem soaking up the stagnant water.
And the collection of bath oils, bubbles, and soaking salts on the adjacent ledge that he relied upon to relax and hydrate his skin after spending his days in the drying dessert?
Half gone. All of them, half gone. Like that candle on the nightstand.
The fact that all the bottles and jars were stoppered and more or less in their correct positions was a detail his irate brain chose to ignore.
Hells of the deep! He’d have to drain the tub, scrub it out from all the scuzz leftover from that obscene use of bath accessories, then draw another one before he could have his own soak.
While it was doable, he was in for one heck of a wait time.
Pumping all that water two hundred plus feet above where it wanted to be yielded only one thing: crap water pressure.
(Unless it was to the kitchen sink, which made no sense at all, but Bradley was a sorcerer apprentice, not a plumber.) And no doubt the water heater was already depleted, which meant the reservoir needed refilling, reheating, and then pumping, which only would delay his relaxation time further.
The vein in his temple began to throb a tempestuous cha-cha.
Now, before you go on and start thinking Bradley Donmarin is a prima donna, how would you like an unwanted roommate disturbing your nightly routine which just so happens to be one of the only joys you have in your life after a day of complete suck?
You’d be a bit of a sourpuss fighting for a scrap of patience, too, and perhaps want to proverbially rip your hair out as well.
Bradley was there.
The only thing preventing him from having a meltdown was, strangely, the very thing precipitating this meltdown.
After the princess learned he wasn’t someone she could push around, she would be in search of a new room tomorrow.
Proper decorum and her reputation demanded it, and Bradley knew full well how nobles were sticklers for that kind of thing.
Which meant there was hope for a return to normalcy and control and routine tomorrow, at least in the private haven of his bedroom.
He could work with that, and he could make do with a sponge bath.
With a deep, calming breath, Bradley turned away from the mess of the tub—he’d rise early and clean it in the morning—and reached for his toothbrush in its cup on the sink.
The bristles were wet and smelled faintly of mint.
Bradley pressed his fingertips into his temples like he was trying to skewer his own brain. The Kraken take me straight to the Locker.