Chapter 63 #2
“Pfft. You’re kidding, right?” Bradley rose from his crouch with a pea the size of a marble cupped in his palm. He knew from his Lost Relics course that this pea could enchant any piece of sittable furniture to render its user an insomniac. “I’m breaking my curse and becoming a master sorcerer.”
She snorted. “That’s not a plan. That’s just a goal. What happens after you become a master sorcerer?”
Bradley opened his mouth, but no words volunteered themselves. He wasn’t going back to the Cut, that’s for damn sure. But avoiding something wasn’t the same as chasing after something exciting or fulfilling.
“You don’t have the foggiest idea, do you?” Pocket clicked her tongue. “You thought your dream career, which you don’t even know what it is, was just gonna fall in your lap after you get your staff? Were you going to take up a position as a court sorcerer?”
“Court appointments are for those who can’t hack real magic.”
“So what do the fancy sorcerers do? Teach at the College? That what you gonna be, a professor?”
“Absolutely not.” Half of the professors were more conceited than their students.
“So how you gonna make money? Support yourself? Actually thrive so you’re not a depressing drain on everyone around you?”
When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. “You know what? I’m glad you didn’t kiss my girl. She doesn’t need to be weighed down by some man with no real future, even if he’s built to make her walk bowlegged for the rest of her life.”
“What do you know?” he snarled. “She just wants to be a pirate, a scourge, a thief of the sea. What kind of life is that? What kind of future is that? At least I won’t be terrorizing anyone.”
Pocket had lifted her hag stone for another sweep but lowered it now with a wide-eyed expression. “You have no idea, do you? Why she’s doing any of it? All this training, all those blisters and sweat stains, it’s all a means to an end. But it is not an end for her. It is only the beginning.”
Bradley waited, jaw set, for her to explain.
“How do you not know this? How do I, who’s only been here two weeks, know more about that girl’s hopes and dreams than you do?”
“You speak in riddles, Pocket.”
“Millie gave up the throne, remember? That means family title, resources, money. If you muck this all up, you still have possibilities—you could find staff work at the College, return home and fish. When her ninety days are up, Millie is going to leave this tower with nothing but her name and the skills she learned here. She’s going to have to rebuild herself from the ground up so that she can then go save a kingdom that didn’t appreciate her to begin with. ”
Pocket grabbed a nearby lace fan and thwacked him wherever she could reach.
“You’ve got your head so far shoved up your own ass you think that crap you’re seeing is the night sky.
Ugh.” She hurled the fan at him and turned to march out of the room.
“Your next magical do-dad is over there by the birdbath. I’m done for the day. And don’t forget the frog.”
During her tirade, Bradley’s frown had deepened into such a scowl that he’d given himself a headache.
Rubbing his temples, he waded over to the birdbath, then discovered a pegasus feather that he put in the little knapsack with the pea.
Without Pocket’s hag stone, finding more artifacts in this mess would take much longer, if there were any to be had, but at least no one would be needling him with existential questions.
The breeze flowing through the nearby windows brought with it a faraway laugh, and Bradley was compelled to discover its source, though he knew full well whose laugh that was. He joined Prince Henri at the northern window and leaned against the frame.
The princess, in nothing but a billowy blouse and a gauzy mid-length skirt, launched the dune skiff into the air. It was nearly identical in construction to a windsurf board, this one larger and designed for travel. But Millie had no trouble managing it after their first and only lesson.
Dirk had excavated it for her after ejecting Jax from the tower, and Bradley had been the only one familiar with its usage. Since it was the sole contraption around that would allow Millie to practice a form of sailing, she had immediately insisted upon a lesson.
Bradley still remembered the feel of her body, molded into his, as he framed her into position upon the skiff.
“Hands here, on the wishbone boom,” he said. “You are the rigging now. You control the sail with the pitch of your body, how you lean and distribute your weight. Feel the wind pulling it away from you? Sit back to create some tension.”
She did, pressing right against his lap and sending lightning along every nerve. She’d definitely created tension.
“Lean to the left,” he said thickly, and mirrored her movements.
The skiff shot off the dune, skipping like a stone across the surface of a lake.
The princess whooped, overcorrected when a gust barreled through the valley between dunes, and the bow buried into the sand.
The two of them launched into the air, pelted into the opposite slope, and tumble-slid back into the valley by the skiff.
Millie came up breathless and giggling, sand raining from her absolute mess of hair.
Bradley lay still beneath her, trapped under her thighs and not knowing what to do with his hands.
When the princess realized where she was—astride him—her breath caught in her throat.
She paused then, brown eyes flickering across the features of his face as if searching for something. Bradley didn’t move. Couldn’t.
The desire from last night had returned, fiercer than before.
But he didn’t know what to do with it. Should he just lean up and kiss her, quick and sweet?
A peck on the cheek or a soft meeting of their lips?
Should he pull her down on top of him and kiss her with his entire body?
Or would that be horribly presumptuous of him?
His indecision manifested as a strangled-rooster-like cry that formed in the back of his throat.
Millie’s face contorted with confusion, then fell. She scrambled off him not a heartbeat later, cheeks burning. “I think I’ve got it from here,” she said briskly, tugging the skiff free.
“You’ve only had half a lesson,” he protested.
“But many theoretical ones from Beau.” She didn’t wait. She just shoved the skiff in the direction of the wind whipping through the valley, jumped aboard, and shot off.
Bradley had watched her take many tumbles since then from the vantage points of many different tower windows. She always got up, always tried again. Persistent little princess pirate.
And now, after Pocket’s unwelcome examination of his life choices, he wondered if it was his single-minded ambition holding him back as much as it propelled him forward.
But what would he be without it? What would he be if he didn’t earn his staff?
A laughingstock. A failure. Unworthy. The freak from the Cut with the wild magic who couldn’t hack it as a real sorcerer.
He couldn’t bear it.
“If you don’t want her, let me kiss her,” Prince Henri said from his birdcage. “When she restores my manhood, I won’t even kill you or the dragon. How’s that sound?”
“Shut up, Henri.”
Bitterness rose from his wounded heart and tainted his voice. More than anything, Bradley missed the easy camaraderie of those first Fellowship days. He missed his friend. He needed that more than he wanted a kiss.
“That’s Prince Henri. How many times do you need reminding, peasant?” The frog prince languished on his swing. “Now you’ve put me in a mood only a bawdy pub song can fix. What will it be? ‘The Bouncing Breasts of the Busty Barmaid’ or ‘Sir Swain’s Swinging Sword’?”
“I said shut up, Henri.” Suspicion had replaced the bitterness lacing his words. Bradley gripped the cage and leaned over it, squinting at the crest of a nearby dune.
Upon the same dune, the princess skimmed back and forth across its face. Dirk the Great Red lounged nearby in the shade of Sir Eustace’s tent, napping.
“Why am I even giving you a choice?” the frog groused. “It’s not like you tip— What was that?” He jumped off his swing and gripped the bars with his sticky webbed feet. “It was like sunlight reflecting off water.”
Or off a spyglass lens.