Chapter 49
THE DANGERS OF FANTASIES, DISTRACTIONS, AND AGE-OLD INSTINCT
“Girl!”
“Millie, watch out!” Dirk cried.
Millie blinked and caught the downward cut of Sir Roger’s sword with her cutlass.
Oathkeeper was a heavy broadsword, wielded by a seasoned fighter, and would slice into her collarbone if she didn’t deflect it this very second.
Instinct guided her arm to the left, shuttling the sword along her blade’s edge to wedge against the shell guard that protected her hand.
With a quick shove and a spin, she dislodged the broadsword and evaded the return swing.
Sir Roger dropped his sword, lodging the point in the seam between two stones in the floor. “Girl,” he barked a second time, “where is your head? These are live blades!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, defensive. “I’m . . . distracted.”
“Maybe you need a break?” Dirk suggested, then grumbled, “I could use a break.” The baby dragon hovered off to the side, a barbell loaded with ninety pounds gripped parallel to his body between both sets of paws.
“No breaks,” the hedge knight snapped. “You need to work on your endurance, boy.”
The pirate aspirant and the Mini Red shared a covert look.
The apprentice had been more stingy with his spell-writing as of late, and if Dirk could offset the difference in strength and endurance from his own merit, all the better.
Millie weighed double what he currently struggled with, at least she had before she’d starting training every waking hour, so that was the goal line.
“And you, girl.” Sir Roger waved his hand in front of her face.
“What is so distracting about this barren training room in the middle of nowhere? Cannon fire? Is a deck pitching under your feet? Saltwater stinging your eyes? Perhaps the screams of men as they get skewered by harpoons and their guts ripped out?”
“Sir Roger,” she exclaimed.
“Because that’s the fate that awaits your crew if their captain is distracted.”
“I get it.” She shook out her arms and lifted her cutlass. “Again.”
Sir Roger only budged to layer his forearms over the broadsword’s pommel and lean. “I’m not interested in maiming you. What’s on your mind, girl?”
Without meaning to, her attention strafed to the empty folding table by the training room door.
Sir Roger glanced over his shoulder. “Miss Millie,” he began.
“Let’s go again.” Millie smeared the sweaty strands of auburn hair away from her neck. “I’m ready.”
“Well I’m not.” He shoved off his sword and stalked to the windowsill with the hourglass.
“Liar.”
“Takes one to know one. And I’m old. I’m taking a water break.” Slouching upon the sill, Sir Roger popped the cork of the waterskin and took a long swallow.
“Why do you get a break?” Dirk demanded.
“You don’t need your yapper to hover and keep that weight up. Higher, boy. You’re getting lazy.”
Dirk strained to gain another foot in altitude. The hedge knight wouldn’t let him practice by the windows, lest he commandeer the aid of a passing wind. It was good endurance training, but that didn’t stop the little luck dragon from grumbling.
He wasn’t alone in his frustration. Scowling, Millie stalked to the center of the training room, her bare feet scuffing against the worn stones. She lifted her cutlass and began the drills she knew by heart.
“You’re going to tucker yourself out swinging that hard,” the hedge knight commented.
“Then come over here and make me do it right.”
“I’m not done with my water break.” He took another swallow. “You’re gonna be too tired to climb that rope with Jax this afternoon.”
“And I won’t be around to catch you,” Dirk reminded her.
“I’ll. Be. Fine.” She thrust her cutlass through her imaginary opponent’s chest, which just so happened to be in line with the empty table. Millie spun around and performed her drills in the opposite direction.
The apprentice hadn’t sat in that chair, hadn’t hunched over a book with his chin cupped in his hand, for a week.
He also hadn’t trained her, returning that duty to Sir Roger.
When she woke in the mornings, now right before dawn, he was already gone.
Light glowing along the seam of the trapdoor revealed him to be in the workroom, studying she supposed, as she heard no pacing.
They had breakfast together, but there was no talking.
The apprentice horked down his food like he couldn’t wait to rid himself of her presence; he chugged his tisane and performed his speech therapy exercises with the same rapidity.
What used to make him struggle for thirty minutes took seconds, and then he was back at his studies.
And he was always studying, shut away in the workroom even after supper, which made it impossible for her to keep her promise to Dirk that she’d dig around in the books.
She’d told the apprentice to trust her—to stay out of his hair, mind her own business, and all the rest—but she hadn’t expected it to manifest like this.
A week ago, it wouldn’t have bothered her.
In fact, she would’ve celebrated the absence of the brooding apprentice.
But a week ago, she hadn’t threaded her fingers through his hair, either.
After that disaster with the lye detergent, she hadn’t given up on the laundry.
Or Bradley. Something had changed that afternoon when they’d sat on the bed and he’d tended to her wounds.
A door, or maybe a keyhole, had opened between them, and with it, fledgling amicability.
Once Millie had had a taste of it, she craved more, even if they technically still at war with each other.
The man had yet to formally apologize to her, but she was willing to forgive him if it meant more of this amicability.
The next evening, after supper in the hours she preferred to spend lounging or gossiping with Dirk about the latest creative way Sir Beauregard had managed to lose his shirt in front of her or Prince Henri’s newest proposal, she had surprised Bradley in the workroom by demanding the washboard, the appropriate soap, and a lesson.
Startled, Bradley dropped a folded piece of parchment into a cherrywood box, slammed the lid shut, and shoved it into the center drawer of the large desk.
In his haste, he knocked the quill from the inkwell and scrambled to catch it before it scrawled unintelligible lines across his notes. “Y-you do?”
“I told you, I’m not selfish. And I want a lesson on how to make those scones,” she added, hands on her hips with mock superiority. “You don’t make nearly enough in the morning.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes, but the behavior lacked its usual derisiveness. “Yes I do, Tula.”
That nickname, too, lacked its typical heat.
From her books, she knew that’s what friends did—they teased and often deprecated each other, but it was all in good fun.
A swell of excitement flooded through her, but Millie maintained her composure.
It wouldn’t do to scare him off if she appeared overeager.
Bradley sprinkled sawdust over his notes to blot up the extra ink and stuck a bookmark between the pages of the spell directory.
He stalked past her, the wake of his passage bathing her with warm air spiced with him and teasing the hair that always seemed to escape from her bun.
She felt pulled to follow, drawn into his gravity.
Or was that simply the pull of his power trapped inside?
Olabeus had told her that the strongest sorcerers had a magnetic quality, a molecular attraction that enabled them to ply the world around them without the need of High Aetherial as a conduit.
They didn’t need staffs to amplify their power, either, though they often wielded one as a guise to keep their true power secret. Archmasters.
“Well,” Bradley said, hand propped on the trapdoor, “come on then.”
The apprentice wouldn’t let her use the tub again, but he brought the designated washtub and its accompanying stool into the suite’s bathroom because it was easier done than lugging Millie’s clothes elsewhere.
“I wouldn’t wear any of your finery when doing this,” he warned.
“Or anything that might cause you to slip.”
Millie hiked up the hem of her skirt, tucking it into her belt.
“The Kraken take me,” he muttered, jerking his gaze away from her bare ankles.
“Only after you look at this,” she said. “You were wrong about the ointment.”
“I what?” He stole a quick glance, gasped, and dropped to his knees to inspect her legs. His touch was gentle, awe-struck, as he rotated first her right leg back and forth, then her left.
“Steady on,” she cried with a laugh, grabbing hold of his shoulder when he jerked her leg up to inspect the sole of her foot. “Careful, Mr. Donmarin!”
He smoothed a hand over the unmarked flesh as if he had to convince himself through touch what he saw was indeed the truth. She knew it was an innocent inspection, so why was her heart fluttering?
She’d thought the tenderness of yesterday was just a fluke—the practiced touch of a man who’d treated wounds before.
Perhaps a testament to the past he talked very little about.
Maybe so, but it contrasted sharply against the man she knew him to be.
Or thought he was. Bradley Donmarin was a prickly grump, his softness reserved for a single baby luck dragon. And yet . . .
“But it’s impossible.” His whisper buffeted warmly against her skin. “It’s only been a day. That ointment has never worked that fast ever.”
“I must be incredibly special,” she teased. Anything to dispel the nervous energy of the thousand frolicsome greyhounds racing through her veins.
“I mean,” he said, looking up, “you don’t have any merfolk ancestry, do you?”
Millie’s heart stopped at the wonder shining in his blue eyes. This was the truth of him—wide-eyed at the marvels of the world—and a truth he kept hidden away. It was at once profoundly arousing in its excitement and heart-breaking that he should imprison it.