Chapter 65
AN EFFERVESCENT SWIM, THAT FROG IS DEFINITELY CURSED, AN ILLUSION FAILS
The magical spring was, in fact, not boiling, though it was easy to make that mistake. It was effervescing like an endless bottle of shaken champagne.
And frankly, the shrimp could not have chosen a better time to spawn.
Millie and Dirk met Bradley and Pocket on the stairs just as the sandstorm hit.
The princess had a brisk stomp to her step, her gauzy skirt flapping about her knees like the wings of a fledgling learning how to fly.
Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was still crumpled in the back where she’d butted the desert guide in the nose.
“Dirk! Tula.”
Bradley shoved Henri’s birdcage into Pocket’s hands, took the stairs three at a time, and enfolded the pirate princess into his arms. It was a brief embrace, hard and fierce, and the princess squeaked in surprise.
Recovering his wits, Bradley realized he had no right to embrace her like that. No right to cradle her close.
He shoved himself away, forcing his hands to his sides. “Are you hurt?”
“Don’t fuss over me,” she replied, averting her gaze. “Dirk—”
“I’ve been reprimanded enough,” the Mini Red said sulkily, crossing his short arms over his chest. “Excuse me for being protective of my princess.”
“Protective?” Bradley fixed the little dragon with a stink-eye worthy of any mother. “You were going to bite that desert guide’s head off.”
“No I wasn’t!”
“Fine.” Bradley waved his denial aside. “Then what’s your reasoning behind blowing that dune skiff east? There’s nothing but the deep desert out there. It would’ve been more merciful to bite their heads off than the fate you left them to.”
“They have provisions,” the dragon grumbled. “Or at least they did before any spilled overboard. And why are you defending them? They tried to kidnap my princess!”
“I’m not defending them. I’m just holding you accountable for your actions. That rage I saw out there? That isn’t like you, Dirk.”
“I’m not going to apologize for keeping Millie safe, however I see fit to do it. Not after what happened with Jax!”
“I don’t want you to lose yourself.”
“I’m becoming myself, Bradley. This is what it takes to be a Great Red. I’m finally doing it. No more tears by the lake, no more riding the winds by myself.” A greenish light infected his yellow eyes. “In two weeks, I’m not going to return to the College a failure just like—”
Dirk had choked off his words, but the damage had already been done.
The frost in Bradley’s voice could’ve frozen the sandstorm outside to a standstill. “A failure like whom, Dirk?”
The Mini Red swallowed and averted his eyes. “I didn’t mean—”
“Go cool off,” the apprentice ordered. “Literally. The shrimp are spawning.”
The Mini Red’s ears perked, and he swiveled around to verify Bradley’s claim with his own yellow eyes. “Oh. I’ll see you there, I suppose. C’mon, Millie.”
“I’ll be along,” she said, but her facial expression didn’t match the lightness of her voice.
Dirk flowed past them, picking up speed until his flight was less “sullen slide” and more “enthused wiggle.” He zoomed down the stairs, whizzing past the pickpocket. “You, too, Pocket. I’ve been waiting for this moment for almost six months!”
Biting her lower lip, Millie placed a tentative hand on the apprentice’s shoulder. It was easily done, as she stood on the step above him. “He didn’t mean that,” she said quietly. “Jax’s betrayal affected us both more than we anticipated. Me with the training and him . . . Dirk’s not himself.”
“Don’t I know it,” Bradley growled, watching the Mini Red spiral ever closer to the fizzy blue waters below.
When he turned, Millie snatched her hand back and linked them together in front of her. She was still irritated with him, after all. “Well, this shrimp spawning seems a rare opportunity, so—”
“Tula.” Bradley half-stepped in front of her. Not enough to impede her descent if she really wanted to get past him, just enough to make her pause. He gestured to her arm where a rash had bloomed from her fall against the dune.
She tried to hide the wound with her hand. “I said you don’t need to worry—”
“Let me.”
Millie finally stole a look into his face.
The disgruntled furrow that marred his forehead these past fourteen days was gone, replaced by raw concern and no small measure of protectiveness.
She remembered hearing his voice, as powerful as a hurricane, blasting across the sand and rousing the dragon.
That, and his sincerity now and the way he leaned forward to be near her without the impropriety of touching her without permission threatened to undo her.
How dare he? How dare he almost kiss her and rub little circles on the back of her hand then reject her and now look at her like that?
The man didn’t know what he wanted, and she was done investing her own emotional currency on his internal war.
Mutineer Millie knew what she wanted and knew others had to make the choice for themselves.
As much as it felt like getting kicked in the heart by a bitchy mule.
“Just a few bruises,” she said briskly. Millie looked down at herself: Her tanned skin was a scratchy red in a few places, and her shoulder throbbed.
And her hand . . . it still pulsed from where it had rested on the apprentice’s shoulder just moments ago.
Traitor. “That bola hurt, and I didn’t exactly land in powder sand. And my head—” She winced.
Bradley’s hand lifted and paused in midair. When she didn’t shy away, he moved over her hair and pulled the hairpin free from where it was askew in her tangled bun. It came away red and sticky. Millie hissed with pain, her hand instantly pressing against the back of her head.
“You sharpened your hairpin into a shiv?” Bradley asked, equally impressed and mortified.
“Well, yeah. I’m a pirate. Almost, anyway. Sir Roger says you never know when you’re going to need an extra blade.”
“Let me see?”
Millie chewed on her bottom lip, considering.
If she needed medical attention, he was the one to administer it.
But there was a level of intimacy this request required, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open herself up to that.
Especially since history told her she’d only be shot down a minute or two later.
Pirates didn’t tip-toe. They took their licks and adjusted course. Maybe this was theirs. And she much preferred the congeniality of their former Fellowship days to whatever this strained thing was between them now.
She half-stepped, presenting her back. “It’s not too deep?”
Bradley’s fingers were gentle as he spread the auburn hairs, stained crimson, away from her scalp and over her shoulders, exposing a swath of tanned neck and shoulders.
He suppressed the urge to curl his hands over those shoulders and kiss all the new freckles.
You have no right. “Just a scratch. I think it hurt worse removing the scab just then.”
She hummed in acknowledgment and turned to retrieve her hairpin.
Sparks raced up her fingertips as they brushed against Bradley’s hand, and she masked the color popping to her cheeks by beginning her descent to the spring.
And she set her disloyal fingers to twirling up her hair and pinning it.
“Thank you. For that and, um, rousing Dirk. You used your magic again, didn’t you? ”
Bradley kept pace with her, slowing his gait to match the stride of her shorter legs. “I suppose so.”
It confused the hells out of him, and he would drive himself mad trying to figure it out. Whoever heard of leaky magic? His attention was best kept on the Tianzi Toad Treasure Hunt, which, from the robust glow of the garnet carbuncles, would deliver him his wish any day now.
“Though, I think you had your own rescue under control,” he said. “I just helped.”
Millie flashed him a smile, pure and undiluted. He’d remembered.
“Still can’t believe I saw a princess head-butt somebody, though.”
“But kneeing someone in the family jewels doesn’t surprise you?”
“That seems like a universal feminine response to aggression, so no.”
Millie laughed then, and the apprentice grinned.
In a much more companionable silence, they finished their descent to the spring.
The rest of the tower residents were already crowded around the glowing, bubbling waters, but none moved to join the Mini Red, who happily splashed about.
Dirk seemed much more like his old self now that he was in the fizzy water, happy and guileless and carefree, his confrontation with Bradley seemingly forgotten.
“What are you waiting for?” Bradley asked the others. He shucked off his boots, set his neatly folded robe upon them, crowned the stack with his spectacles on top. “Get in.”
“I’ve seen the size of the fish you bring out of that pool.” Sir Roger shook his head. “No thanks.”
“I don’t do water,” Pocket said flatly.
She wouldn’t explain further, but she did open the birdcage and toss the frog prince into the spring. Almost instantly, Prince Henri doubled in size. The frog prince released a whoop and back-stroked along the circumference of the spring.
“What in the dog-eared hells was that?” Duncan shrieked.
“The shrimp release a little bit of magic every day, but much more when they spawn,” Bradley easily jumped onto the stone wall. “During the spawning, their magic can help heal, rejuvenate, invigorate, that kind of thing. Guess this frog really is cursed.”
“Aaand I’m good.” Duncan stalked back to the dungeons, muttering, “Freaky glowy weirdness.”
“You’re not a book, Duncan. You can get wet, you know.”
“Bye!”
“I told you I was cursed.” Prince Henri paused his laps to turn beseeching eyes upon Millie. “Now that you know the truth of my claims, will you at last pucker up and release me from my purgatory?”
“What, and get warts?” she asked.
“I’ve already told you, I’ve been tested!”