Chapter 15
HOT YOGA, NO JUICY BITS, AND A DREADFUL IDEA
Dirk hovered in the stairwell, head swinging from left to right, watching Bradley and Millie retreat in opposite directions.
He had an obligation to his princess, but he also had a duty to his best friend.
Perhaps this was the very reason all the Great Reds housed their princesses in abandoned towers—they didn’t need to split their time or their allegiances.
One dragon, one princess, one purpose. One Dirk, two friends, three vastly different goals.
As he hovered, undecided, there was a gentle click below him. At first he thought it was the sound of a hermit crab’s shell against stone, but when he looked, a blue scale glittered up at him.
Egad!
Dirk swooped low and snatched up the scale and tucked it away in his satchel.
That, and the panic it had induced, decided his course, and he fled for the workroom.
The Heroes who weren’t even here yet could wait.
If there were books on pixies and the migratory habits of pegasuses, then there had to be a book in there about why a dragon shed its scales.
But the moment he entered the workroom, another, better, idea dawned on him. He raced to the jar with the cochineal shells.
“Wh-wh-what are you d-d-doing?” Bradley asked.
“How do I look?” Dirk examined himself in the abalone-framed mirror, twisting this way and that in his best imitation of a crazy straw so he could view himself from all angles. “I’m not patchy anywhere, am I?”
“What?”
“Be right back!”
It had occurred to Dirk that the tower wasn’t the only source of lore around here.
The ministry official had a chronicle as thick as his forearm, and he’d delivered his speech about the Discount Damsel Protocol with such disinterest that he was either a marvelous memorizer or he’d recited the speech so often over the course of his career because he’d overseen that many DDPs.
Dirk was hoping for the latter, because that meant his journal would be chock full of information about the dragon kidnappers.
Maybe one of them had suffered the loss of his scales, too!
Silent as a whisper, Dirk slunk to the western balcony and peered over the railing.
Dressed in a red-and-white striped bathing costume, Sir Eustace Zonure stretched out on a folding chaise longue with a foil reflector balanced on his ribs.
The strange little man’s skin had deepened its golden hue with prolonged exposure to the Ashburnum sun instead of igniting to the color of a freshly steamed lobster.
Oh, how the baby dragon missed lobster that was grilled in its own shell with lots of butter and garlic.
Just as his grumbling stomach threatened a mutiny to direct him off course, Dirk whooshed back into the workroom, ignored Bradley’s, “Hey!” and slipped over the eastern balcony to the sand below.
There, he inched around the base of the tower until he could determine whether or not the ministry official had fallen asleep during his suntanning.
Sir Eustace was regrettably awake, humming a little tune and wiggling his bare golden toes in time.
Rats.
But this wasn’t Dirk’s first time sneaking up on someone he was about to exploit.
The little dragon backtracked and, keeping low, slither-flew over the crest of the nearest dune and down into its trough.
He gave the sidewinder vipers a lesson in what true sinuosity looked like and skirted around the camp until he could approach it from behind with the cabin tent separating him from the sunbathing ministry official.
He swept up to the peak of the tent to sneak a glance at Sir Eustace . . . and had to duck immediately lest his reflection be captured by the tanning foil. The ministry official continued to hum, toes twiddling.
Dirk slipped under the tent and found the contents thereof surprisingly numerous.
By the tidy state of Sir Eustace’s belongings, he obviously felt everything was necessary to his stay here in the desert, including the espresso machine, the fondue fountain, a gold chalice with a lid that did a poor job of keeping the stench of the most repulsive-smelling dates trapped inside, and a portable clothes steamer.
The little luck dragon shrugged and began snooping.
After a few minutes of learning far more about Sir Eustace’s grooming practices than he ever wanted, Dirk realized he would never find the chronicle.
“It’s at the desk, you dum-dum,” the little dragon hissed. He could’ve kicked himself for not realizing it earlier—everything about this place screamed Sir Eustace did not mix business with pleasure.
Floating over to the tent flap, he confirmed Sir Eustace hadn’t moved from his chaise longue. He had abandoned his foil and had turned onto his back, though, his face regrettably positioned towards the desk.
Well, that simply would not do.
Dirk waggled his claws as if he were stroking the air in front of him, and a few grains of sand rose on the breeze to sprinkle against the ministry official’s face. Sir Eustace sneezed, rubbed his nose, and continued humming. Dirk flicked his claws.
“Ugh, infernal desert sand,” the little man groused. “Not only does it have the temerity to simply exist, it insists on getting everywhere it’s not wanted. It couldn’t even have the decency to be like the powder of the Lagunas beaches, could it?”
Instead of simply turning his face to the other side, as Dirk desired, the little man rose and stomped for the tent.
Egad!
Dirk’s feathered tail tuft disappeared just as Sir Eustace slapped the tent flaps aside, muttering other disparaging words at a desert that couldn’t defend itself (and really couldn’t be bothered to, anyway).
On the opposite side of the canvas, the little luck dragon calmed the frantic pulse of white light rippling down his scales. He might need his luck for later. Dirk sped to the desk situated a little distance away and started rifling.
Jubilations! Dirk extracted the chronicle from the desk’s bottom drawer and heaved it onto the desk. Since Sir Eustace didn’t come ripping out of his tent at the substantial thump, Dirk began flipping through the pages.
And his heart sank.
Each page read the same: the date; the province and country where the DDP was enacted; the names of the dragon captors, the kidnapped princess, and the Heroes who challenged the dragons; the relevant details about the rescue attempts.
Absolutely no embellishments. And certainly no mention of a dragon shedding scales.
No matter how many pages he flipped, it remained the same—a sparse, concise recording.
Where were the juicy bits? The dismemberment? The diet and exercise plan of the Great Reds? Which princesses wore their gowns the best? Which Heroes were deemed Sexiest Knight Alive? What happened after the princesses were rescued? Or not?
Dirk wanted to hurl the book across the desert, or toss it into the nearest sandstorm, or urinate upon its pages like a house cat expressing its opinion about its new puppy brother.
Instead he gritted his teeth and replaced the chronicle in the bottom drawer of the desk with more roughness than the poor book deserved.
Sir Eustace Zonure got to travel the world, witness history in the making, and this travesty was all eager readers like Dirk received?
He spun around to face the tent and the ministry official within, hissed, “I’m very disappointed in you,” and retreated to the tower.
Dirk shed the carmine coloration by scrubbing himself with the sand at the base of the tower. To his dismay, another scale rubbed loose, and Dirk exclaimed, “Shit!” instead of his usual “Rats!” such was his consternation. As he turned the scale over in his paw, a dreadful thought came to mind.
Master Excelsior had bonded the little dragon and the apprentice a full year before Gladstone had cursed Bradley.
Dirk hadn’t begun to lose his scales until they’d been exiled to the desert, where Bradley’s curse had continued to worsen.
Were their fates more intertwined than he’d originally thought?
Was Bradley’s magic-stealing curse bleeding into him?
If that was the case . . .
“Double shit,” the dragon whispered, and hurried into the tower.