Chapter 77 #2
The apprentice trembled with the need to kiss her.
This princess was astounding. Selfless. A champion to people just like him.
What he would give to see her sailing up the Cut and turning her cannons to Viscount Saltreave’s keep.
What he would do to convince her of his appreciation and adoration afterward.
Kissing her would only be the beginning.
But he wasn’t free to kiss her. Not yet.
“Millie, about yesterday, I never meant to overwhelm you. I was just trying to tell you how inspiring you are.” He groped for the right words. “You really are as marvelous as that little pink octopus.”
“The tula.” Her nose wrinkled.
“Listen, I could compliment your hair, how it shines like fire when the sunlight hits it. Or how your smile can beguile even the surliest snake. Or how you pull everyone towards you like gravity. Or how all your new freckles enhance your beauty instead of detract from it, like your governesses would tell you.”
He risked touching her then, sliding his fingertips down her cheek to her jaw. Her chocolate eyes were impossibly large, shimmering. “But all those things don’t make you you. When I call you tula . . . what I mean to say is, I see you, Millie. The Princess Pirate of Amberly. Unstoppable.”
She held his gaze. “If you see me, then you know me and what I want. So why haven’t you kissed me?” It was so cathartic to finally call him out on it.
Twin spots of color like springtime poppies bloomed on his cheeks. “Pocket asked me the same thing.”
“My bestie needs to shut her mouth.”
“Your bestie was right to ask.” He grimaced. “And right to deter me.”
“She did what?” Millie wiggled upright. “So she can stay behind at the tower and strip Duncan out of his clothes with some cards and I can’t even get one measly kiss? The perfidious tramp!” She reached for her cutlass.
Bradley grabbed her hand and pulled it back, held it in the cushioned valley of the comforter created by their legs. “She wasn’t sabotaging you, Millie. Far from it.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” she grumped.
“She told me if I didn’t know what I wanted out of my life, then I had no business kissing you and weighing you down with my indecisions.”
“Oh.” She inhaled, as if preparing to refute it, then released a long breath, unable to. And she wouldn’t pretend otherwise. She had no need or desire for a man without purpose. “Oh.”
Bradley smiled softly. “Exactly. I’ve had some time to think since then, when I wasn’t livid with you or Dirk.”
“So you’ve had a few seconds. Your thought-processing speed must be extraordinary.”
He nudged her in the shoulder with his. “Passing my Master’s exam and getting my staff is the finish line to a single goal, but it is also the starting line of the rest of my life. I know that now.”
Bradley looked out at the rain, and beyond.
“I want to do something grand with my life, to show the world that great things can come from humble beginnings. I realize I don’t want to return to the Cut as a fisherman.
But I could return there as its protector.
To help make it prosper. Or take a position somewhere where my gift can really help those who need it. Because that’s what I have. A gift.”
He looked down at his hands, one intertwined with hers, the other lying palm-up on his lap.
“Wild magic, more potent than the masters have seen in generations. I don’t want squander it.
I want to be worthy. I want to give back to those who helped me—my parents, my village, Master Excelsior. If . . .”
“If what?”
He unlaced his fingers from hers. “I found a piece of dark magic in the workroom. And I even considered using it to summon a djinn to break my curse. I don’t know why Master Excelsior has that in his possession.
If it was stored there away from the College so it could be disposed of and was accidentally forgotten, or .
. . if I was meant to discover it and . . . join him.”
Millie went very, very still. Olabeus had spoken to her about the Dark Arts one time, and one time only. She knew of the dangers that awaited sorcerers who attempted to wield magic beyond their understanding. And the price it could, and would, take.
The pounding of her heart was louder in her ears than the rain. “What are you going to do?”
His blue gaze flitted to Dirk, then hers. “At my lowest moment, Dirk stopped me from using it. Then again, after the failure with the Tianzi Toad Treasure Hunt, you stopped me.”
“B-but I didn’t know about—”
“It was the cherrywood box. You looked inside and tossed it over your shoulder with a succinct, ‘Well, no help in there.’”
“That calligraphy case was dark magic?” she exclaimed.
“The parchment inside.” He shook his head. “That’s not the point. Your hope helped me, sort of bullied mine back to life.”
“I think you mean ‘rekindled’ instead of ‘bullied.’”
Bradley gave an amused snort. “No, it definitely was bullied. But it reassured me who I wanted to be, and what I didn’t want to become.”
He flushed then, remembering but choosing not to tell her that it was also the hope of loving a wonderful woman, and receiving her love in return, that had stopped him. A woman who wanted him, not his magic. Millie.
“I’m so sorry this trip isn’t what we expected it to be,” she whispered.
Her knees tented under the comforter, her arms encircling her legs.
“The seasickness, the library’s lack of knowledge, the dragon sage’s absence, this stupid storm.
” Millie buried her face on her knees. “I’m no closer to becoming a pirate than you are breaking your curse or Dirk healing his scales and—”
Bradley set his hand on the back of her neck, gently turned her head to look at him. “I’m not giving up. Are you?”
Tears glistened in her eyes as she shifted onto her side, drawing near. “And that’s why I want to kiss you, Bradley Donmarin. Because you’re inspiring, too.”
“I’m sorry I was so cruel to you,” he whispered back. “I let my preconceptions fool me, and pain and despair warp me. I’m not like that, not at my core.”
“I know.” They were so close now. His hand still cradled the back of her head, and her hand had moved to cover his heart. “Your love for Dirk showed me that every day.”
It was a love she wanted for herself. No suitor spoke of love to a princess—his words were all flattery and empty promises. Marriage amongst the noble houses was a business transaction, and if you were very, very lucky like her parents, you might genuinely like, and eventually love, your spouse.
But the broody sorcerer apprentice had showed her a relationship could be different.
It could be vulnerable, challenging, encouraging, filled with mistakes and beautiful forgiveness.
It could be passionate, too, but not in the way of fire, which flared hot and brief.
It was a sunrise: bold and reassuring and a choice made again and again.
Mutineer Millie realized she didn’t want to simply be the One in Ten lady pirate captain with the beautiful clothes, who could throw daggers into people’s eyes, and who made love with a man completely besotted with her.
She wanted to be the One in Ten lady pirate captain who was loved by Bradley Donmarin.
“Dirk brings out the best in everybody. That little dragon—” Bradley sat up straight in alarm. “That little dragon hasn’t moved all morning.”
He flung himself out of bed like he’d been shot out of a cannon. “Dirk.”
The baby luck dragon was a rigid coil on the nightstand. Bradley pressed a hand against his cerulean scales, peppered here and there with patches of navy hide. The little dragon was ice cold.
Terror ripped through him. Never was a dragon, even one of the wind and rain, not warm.
“Lung Shang, you will open your eyes this instant,” he shouted.
A sliver of gold glistened in the slit between his eyelids, and Bradley felt the little creature shiver.
“Dirk?” Millie’s voice was fearful. “He’s supposed to be fine in the rain. Thrive in it!”
Bradley scooped up the dragon and hurried back to the bed. “We need to get him warm. Right now.”
The two of them worked to unwind the freezing dragon. They laid Dirk out in the center of the bed like a line of blueberry filling down a slab of pastry and sandwiched him in. Arms and legs knitted together, they layering him in warmth.
“Will he be okay?” Millie stroked the threadbare feathers of his mane. “The dragons never talked about this at the afternoon teas.”
“I don’t know.” Bradley’s voice broke. “I should have taken that warhammer away from him sooner.”
“Oh, Bradley,” Millie sobbed.
He thumbed the tears away as they spilled down her cheeks. “We’ve got him now. It will be enough.”
It had to be.