Chapter 14
LET’S NOT GET NAKED AND A SALTY ORANGE JUICE RESCUE
The sorcerer apprentice looked up from the three books he was reading simultaneously—including Small Magicks, which was once again in the safety of the workroom, lest the “war” the princess had announced they were embroiled in entailed property destruction as a tactic.
Was that the cry of a desert hawk? Curious that, for they never flew close to the tower due to the dragon.
Bradley rose and padded over to the nearest balcony, glad for the distraction.
Small Magicks was actually a compendium written by many different authors in three different languages—Commons, Tradertongue, and Sino.
All had been required learning at the College, in addition to High Aetherial, but Bradley still found Sino rather tricky.
A single character could have one of four meanings, and only its context within the sentence revealed to you which one it was.
The reading was always slow, yet the Sino authors always wrote the most fantastical tales, so it was worth the time.
Time that was not on the apprentice’s side.
Leaning over the balcony railing, Bradley strained his ears and eyes but caught no sight of the hawk or a griffin arriving ahead of schedule.
A check on Sir Eustace Zonure found the little man in a striped bathing costume practicing some hot yoga.
A glass that resembled a fish bowl on a stem was wedged into the sand nearby and filled with something orange and fragrant with citrus.
Caelus’s Stars, were those ice cubes floating around in there?
How did he get the ingredients for a margarita in the desert?
That faraway cry sounded again. Bradley lifted his gaze from the bemusing sight to the dunes and the heat specters writhing there.
Small Magicks had just revealed to him the presence of djinn, and while sources couldn’t agree whether they were demonic spirits or tortured souls, they could agree they were anchored to purgatory in the sand with the ability to grant you your heart’s desire if they were freed from captivity.
Until such a time, they would wail incessantly.
Was that what these heat specters truly were, just obscured from normal sight via mirage? And was your heart’s desire worth the cost of their freedom? Something had damned them for a reason, after all.
Bradley frowned. He couldn’t remember any facts concerning the nature of wishes, if he’d read about them at all. In fact, he couldn’t remember a third of what he’d read today because his mind kept wandering to a certain someone and what she was doing to his tower.
“All of this is yours for the next six months, my boy,” Master Excelsior had said with a grand sweep of his arm.
“Except the tower itself and the shrimps. Leave the masonry and those little ones be. They’re older than you are and deserve some peace.
You are to take care of both during your stay.
Do whatever you must with anything else you find to help you break this curse, and good luck, dear boy. ”
Take care of the tower. Take care of the shrimps. Break your curse.
Ugh, Bradley should be watching the princess to make sure she wasn’t sticking chewing gum in any of the crystal crevices. Or saturating the stones with her perfume or terrorizing the shrimps in the spring. Or stealing any one of the priceless, albeit dusty, treasures.
Except watching her meant changing his routine (the horror) and sacrificing his own study time.
Which had already been sabotaged enough, thank you very much, with his thoughts wandering to the princess loose in his tower.
What was the point of having Dirk spy on her for him if he then wasted all this extra time worrying about what they were doing?
It wasn’t just his future profession on the line here, it was his entire life.
The College Board would not let someone with his raw potential leave without taking the appropriate measures to ensure he wouldn’t go rogue or find an alternate (and forbidden) conduit for his magic and become corrupt.
If he failed his exam, they would march Bradley into the Deamplification Chamber and strip him of his wild magic, like castrating a stallion unfit for breeding before releasing it back into the herd.
“Bradleeeey!”
The sorcerer apprentice whirled as the trapdoor burst open and a blue dragon flew into the workroom.
Dirk slammed into him, knocking him back a step. The claws of all four feet tangled into the apprentice’s homespun robe and yanked. “My princess,” the dragon wailed. “Something’s wrong with her!”
At the sight of those big fat tears in those frightened golden eyes, Bradley forgot about the war. Forgot his revulsion of Millie’s birthright and chosen profession. Forgot his irritation when she used the coffee maker as her tea distiller. He forgot everything but the need to help his friend.
“Go,” the apprentice barked.
The baby dragon hurriedly led the way, spiraling halfway down the tower before halting in a hover by a darkened threshold. Something pink slumped in the corner.
Bradley crouched and found Millie’s wrist to take her pulse.
He could already tell from her clammy skin, the rapid shallow breathing, and the heat radiating from every pore that she was suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration.
Salt crusted in the long hair at her temples.
When he tapped her cheek, she wouldn’t rouse.
“She needs water,” he signed.
“She’s been drinking all day! I-I mean, a few sips here and there, but frequently enough from her flask.”
Flask? Since when had this aspiring pirate procured herself a rum flask?
Bradley searched her skirts for pockets and found none (such was the curse of women’s fashion) then spied the carpet bag wedged under her hip.
Inside, he found the flask and cursed. It truly was only a hip flask of six-ounce capacity, hardly enough to keep a human hydrated even after multiple drainings in this desert heat.
With quick, deft movements, he unscrewed the flask and dumped the remaining water all over the princess’s head and face. She flinched, eyelids fluttering, but remained in her overheated stupor.
“I can splash her.” The dragon twirled, sucking moisture out of the dry desert air. His magic yielded about as much as the flask, which wasn’t nearly enough. “Oh, Bradley, what are we going to do?”
Bradley dropped the flask, hauled the princess into his arms, and began the climb for the kitchen.
“Fan,” he ordered, cursing himself that he couldn’t manage more detailed instructions.
But the luck dragon was an intuitive creature and flared his feathered tail tuft. He maintained a hover as he fanned the princess, his scales rippling with light as he poured his luck out for a positive outcome.
The princess wasn’t exactly light, and the tower was blasted hot, so he when he reached the kitchen, he was panting and on the verge of overheating himself. Yet he managed to ease Millie into a chair before dropping to his knees.
Normally he would never deign to look at a lady’s ankles, but certainly as a matter of survival, he could be forgiven.
Finding her barefoot, he shoved her skirt up to her thighs and peeled off her silk stockings.
He would’ve loosened her corset next so she could breathe more easily, but found the strings infuriating.
Briskly but gently, he leaned her forward so he could get her hair off her neck.
The long mane was as thick as a carpet, each silky strand soaked with sweat. Where was her blasted hairpin?
The princess’s forehead slumped against his shoulder, head lolling to the side. At another time, in another life, he could’ve sworn those lips pressing softly against his neck were giving him a kiss. His whole body shuddered, an ache he had buried long ago igniting.
Flushing, he twisted and coiled her hair into a bun and leaned her back against the chair far, far away from him. He couldn’t afford any distractions, not even that faint smell of jasmine lingering in the air, teasing his senses.
“Wouldn’t she cool off faster if she was naked?” Dirk asked.
Flushing, Bradley jerked away from the princess. “Fan,” he told Dirk again, and the little luck dragon added more oomph to the sweeping of his tail.
“Are you okay?” Dirk panicked. “You sounded really choked up there. You need to be okay. I can’t take care of both of you at once. I’m not a human caretaker—I’m just a baby dragon!”
“Calm.”
“Okay, okay,” he sniffled, fanning even harder. “Why aren’t we using ice?”
“Too cold too fast,” were all the signs Bradley chose to explain himself with before he grabbed the bean pot from the dish drainer.
He set it under the faucet to fill then snatched the coffee pot, as there was no lemonade pitcher to be found.
Bradley hurried around the kitchen on an electrolyte scavenger hunt, added a fistful of salt from the barrel, the juice of two oranges, and—“Don’t ruin my sculpture!
Take from the base!” Dirk cried—a large lump of brown sugar to the coffee pot.
Water dissolved the salt and sugar and diluted it all to a palatable level of salinity.
The bean pot was full of water now, so he dumped it over the princess’s head.
She came awake with a sputtering start.
Millie rocked forward, catching herself before she could fall out of the chair, and wiped the water from her face. It took only a second to assess the state of her skirts, her stockings, and her shoes.
“You scoundrel,” she shrieked.
Bradley rolled his eyes.
“Master Dirk, as I have yet to acquire a cutlass, I demand you retrieve me my hairpin. One prick is as good as another!”
The baby dragon didn’t budge from his hover. “You were burning up and he was doing everything he could to cool you down without getting you naked!”