Chapter 17
DARK MAGIC AND CRUMBS IN THE BED
“Y-you c-c-can r-r-read th-this?” Bradley struggled, his hands full of the parchment.
“I’m a dragon,” Dirk answered, his voice still soft and nervous. “Of course I can. It’s some kind of ancient Aetherial. Ugh, put it away. I hate the smell of dark magic. Black licorice. Bah!”
Bradley hesitated, eyes lingering on the drawing, before obeying.
He didn’t replace it in Arcane Practices of the Wise but rather set it on a bare patch of desk.
Heart racing, he strode over to the clutter and began sorting through this and that for an appropriate container.
It wouldn’t do to leave it exposed, and he wasn’t about to slip it back into a book and forget its title. What if he wanted to look at it again?
Why would he want to look at it again? It was dark magic.
But surely Master Excelsior had kept it around for a reason.
Or had he hidden it here because he knew the wards at the College would’ve activated against the dark magic and sent the gargoyles after him?
Had he intended to return here and examine it further before destroying it and just forgotten about it?
Bradley Donmarin knew the moment he saw that parchment that he would never ever forget it, for good or for ill.
Summoning was a topic only briefly touched upon at the College. As it was a dark art, it wasn’t explained past the fact that it was forbidden and that a gruesome fate awaited those who attempted it on campus.
If incantation was light magic and summoning dark, then conjuring was smack dab in the middle in an alluring shade of sterling gray.
Both conjuring and summoning involved the tangible manipulation of the unseen.
Depending on the object of your desire, free will became an issue.
A plate of steaming blueberry rolls with lemon icing had no free will, and thus could be conjured to appear on your table if you were in need of a sugary treat.
As did any inanimate object. Summoning would bring the baker, apron still powdered with flour and fingernails stained with blueberries, to your table, enthralled to obey your bidding.
No baker would appreciate that, especially if they had cakes in the oven or dough in the proofing drawer.
Summoning was magical slavery, and forbidden. Since conjuring, at its core, was a lesser form of summoning, it was also forbidden to all below the level of Grand Master, lest the young fall into temptation and one technique lead to the other.
His search through the sorcerous clutter finally paid off.
The apprentice extracted a wooden box with a beeswax seal that had once contained ink supplies.
Bradley found the interior stained but dry and slipped the parchment inside.
After placing the box on the edge of the desk, away from the spread of books, he sank into his chair and turned to the three texts open to him.
He read only a few lines from each before his gaze wandered to the box.
Focus, he chided himself and returned to his books.
But like a leaky faucet with a sporadic drip, the presence of the box gnawed at the fringes of his concentration. His eyes strayed to the simple cherrywood rectangle, and the brass horn latch winked at him like a street-corner strumpet.
Bradley sank deeper over his books and drummed his fingers against the pages.
He picked up a quill and twirled it in his fingers, willing his eyes to stay upon the text in front of him and not wander over to where they certainly shouldn’t look.
There had to be a reason for this seemingly random piece of dark magic.
A good explanation. The man he trusted most, the one who had plucked him from a life of subjugation and suffering, who had seen his worth and given him an honored place at his side, surely that man wasn’t a dark sorcerer in disguise, was he?
The quill slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor like a shed leaf.
“Bradley?”
“Pen!” The apprentice would’ve shouted Miss Penelope’s full name had he been able to manage the syllables.
“That’s a quill, Bradley.”
A little spiral of air lifted the feather back onto the desk.
“No, no,” he signed. “I’ll ask Miss Penelope if Master Excelsior is a dark sorcerer when she comes this week.”
“A dark sorcerer? Have you lost your mind?” Cerulean scales turned navy. “A luck dragon would know; I am an excellent judge of character!”
To prove his point, Bradley thrust his finger at the trapdoor, indicating what lay beyond. Specifically a Major Inconvenience with a penchant for pink. And speaking of the Major Inconvenience, what was she inconveniencing? Dirk had stayed with him all afternoon—
No, not all afternoon. All evening.
The desert was dark beyond the balconies, the floating lanterns having come on automatically with his proximity after the sun had set. He’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t noticed.
Sweet mother of pearl, the princess had been left unattended for hours.
She said she was going to rest, but what if she’d gone exploring?
She could’ve fainted again and tumbled off the stairs.
Or become a grouper’s dinner. Not that she was any bit of his responsibility, but it would kill the baby dragon if his princess expired after only one day.
And princesses weren’t like goldfish; Bradley couldn’t swap one out for another without Dirk noticing.
“What are you still doing here?” he sign-shouted at Dirk. “You were supposed to spy on her!”
“She said she was going to rest, so I didn’t think it was necessary.” Dirk stuck his long tongue out at the apprentice. “She’s not like the other nobles, Bradley. She’s a lady of her word, and I trust her.”
Bradley would dispel the little dragon of his na?ve illusions another time.
Nobles always said one thing and did another.
They were about as consistent as the wind.
“You said she was searching for her own suite. Which one did she pick? We need to check that she’s still in there and hasn’t set anything on fire. ”
“She’s a princess, Bradley, not an arsonist. And I don’t know which one. She didn’t like any of them, except—”
Bradley leaned over the desk, eyes narrowing. “Except what, Dirk?”
Click-click-click came the nervous tapping of Dirk’s white claws. “Except, um, your room.”
This was not to be borne!
And just like that, the parchment of dark magic in the cherrywood box was forgotten.
Bradley left the workroom in studious disarray and sprinted down the stairs to his bedroom with a stride that echoed like thunder within the tower.
“Oye!” he shouted, ramming open the door.
The princess was nowhere to be found. His bedroom was as pristine as he’d left it that morning.
No silk stockings and wrinkled dresses draped themselves over the chair.
There were no depressions in the perfectly fluffed pillows or the quilted bedspread.
The stub of candle on the nightstand was unlit, the shutters still shut against the heat of the day, though he could open them now and let the room cool a bit.
A slow and tentative peek into the bathroom revealed a dry toothbrush, a clean tub, and the various jars and bottles of bath oils, soaps, and scrubs spaced exactly one and three-fourths inches apart for optimal spacing and selection.
There was no faint scent of jasmine anywhere, and just as Bradley’s heart rate was returning to normal, alarm gripped him. If the princess wasn’t here, then where was she? Hells of the deep, she really was setting something on fire, wasn’t she?
“Where’s my princess?” Dirk mewled from his hover in the doorway, for it was very rude to enter another’s private sanctuary without permission. “Do you think she ran away?”
“One, I’m not that lucky, and two, this is why the Great Reds are the ones who kidnap princesses—because they’re big and scary enough to keep them from escaping!”
Dirk blew a raspberry at him. “Maybe she’s just exploring the tower. Without me.”
The baby dragon wasn’t angry, just disappointed—and in the true meaning of the phrase, not the lie your mother told you.
“That’s it,” the baby dragon consoled himself. “She’s just looting a room and— Egad! What if she overheated and fainted again?” He flung himself into the vast column of air in the stairwell’s center and squinted at the glowing blue spring at the bottom of the tower. “Millieeee!”
The apprentice thought it was far more likely that the princess was doing something she shouldn’t be (he still wasn’t convinced “Princess Mildred” wasn’t synonymous with “arsonist” or “shrimp terrorist”) and sniffed madly for any scent of smoke and listened for the high-pitched whining of minuscule shrimps in pain.
“Tula,” he bellowed down the stairwell.
The screech of hinges answered them as the princess wrenched open the door below and across the tower from them.
“What is wrong with you, Mr. Donmarin, besides the obvious?” she demanded. “Or is this your perverse way of informing me you’re prone to screaming fits like a spoiled child?”
“Roomie,” the dragon exclaimed delightedly, for the princess was indeed poking her head out Dirk’s bedroom.
“I hope you don’t mind, Master Dirk, seeing as you sleep in the tub.”
“I don’t, so long as you don’t mind sponge baths. That tub is all mine but the sink is all yours.”
“Hmm.” She planted her hands on her hips and somehow managed to look down her nose at Bradley, even though he was higher up in the tower. “Are you just going to stand there and stare, sir, or are you going to make us dinner? It’s well after sunset.”
Bradley rolled his eyes, took the one step back into his bedroom, and slammed the door.