Chapter 85
A NEMESIS RETURNS AND DIRK MUST MAKE A CHOICE
When the princess had tasked Bradley to write another renovatio spell, she hadn’t known that he’d used up the last of the edible ink writing the first one. Bradley took the steps two at a time to the kitchen to prepare the Kyoho grapes.
With his elbows propped up on the kitchen table, Bradley lifted the first of the walnut-size grapes and began peeling with a paring knife.
A long purple ribbon coiled onto the plate below.
He tossed the peeled grape back into the bowl and grabbed another.
Unlike before, when he allowed his mind to wander when performing this menial task, he devoted his entire attention to the grape peeling.
Efficiency and precision were needed here.
He’d seen what Dirk had become. Bloated, ugly, hateful. Only a few patches of scales and his threadbare mane hinted at his former self. If peeling grapes was what was needed to restore him to his carefree, joyful cerulean self, then Bradley would process an entire vineyard.
That baby luck dragon wasn’t just his Designated Sorcerer Companion, he was his friend.
His family. He was the only reason why Bradley hadn’t slipped into despair months ago.
It was a burden that little creature should have never borne—sacrificing his luck beyond what he could tolerate and dispelling the negative aura that clung to Bradley like body odor.
It should be him who bathed the little dragon, not the princess. He should’ve been the one to think up the idea of removing Dirk from his treasure to stave off the wyrm transformation. He should be the one ensuring Dirk ate and drank and wasn’t lonely.
But the almost-wyrm wouldn’t tolerate him. Too many repressed emotions had surfaced—the malcontent fed by all the slights, the disparaging comments, the knowledge that whatever Dirk did to help wasn’t considered good enough.
“I’m sorry I was so cruel to you,” Bradley had told the princess in Pierpont. “I let my preconceptions fool me, and pain and despair warped me. I’m not like that, not at my core.”
He should’ve said the same to the dragon. Should’ve apologize first to Dirk. Not taken him for granted.
Bradley shoved the plate of peels into the oven to dry out.
They had to be as desiccated and brittle as autumn leaves to make the ink.
While the oven performed its task, Bradley climbed to the workroom for the acacia resin on the apothecary shelves.
He portioned out a palmful and poured the amber pebbles into the big mortar and pestle, started grinding.
“I could sing one of Madame Palferoi’s folk songs, if you wish,” Prince Henri offered. “It has a robust rhythm that should complement your work.”
“I would appreciate that, Prince Henri. Thank you.”
The frog prince, unused to words from the apprentice not laced in gruff wool or derisive nettle, brightened.
“Alright!” He hopped down from his swing and held on to the bars for balance so he could really stomp the beat out with one big floppy foot.
“‘Grab your lassie by the hand, twirl her left and right. Spin her close and don’t let go, hold her nice and tight!’”
Bradley pounded the resin into powder, filtered it through a sieve, and returned the larger granules back into the mortar for another round.
“‘Fiddle sings and laughter rings, hearts are feeling light. Stomp your boots upon the floor, keep the rhythm bright!’”
He swirled a thread of yellow olive oil into the resin and smoothed it all into a paste. He’d thin it out more after he added the grape peels. “I’ll be right back,” Bradley announced.
The frog prince continued to sing and stomp as the apprentice returned to the kitchen for the grape skins. They were curled tight like cinnamon sticks and had darkened to the color of nightshade berries. He swept them off the hot plate and into a small bowl and returned to the workroom.
Prince Henri was really belting it out now, hind leg stomping like he was trying to work out a cramped muscle. “‘When the music starts to fade beneath the pale moonlight, steal a kiss and whisper low, ‘Stay with me tonight.’”
Almost immediately, the amphibian singer let out a strangled cry of frustration and rattled the bars of his birdcage. “This rudeness will not be tolerated. I am in the middle of a concert!”
“I told you I’d be right back,” Bradley said defensively.
“Not you. Them.” Prince Henri flung a webbed finger towards the western balcony. “You couldn’t hear that competing rumbling trying to mess up my timing? The audacity!”
Them?
Bradley rushed to the balcony. The Leightonian army had arrived and Dirk wasn’t ready.
Hells of the deep, the ink wasn’t ready.
Despite the desert heat, a chill sent a shiver from the nape of his neck down into his toes at the sight of that gigantic crossbow.
As the company charged down the dune, a small crew and two officers stayed back to prepare it for its first assault.
Bradley barely registered the howls of the soldiers as they encountered the princess’s boobytraps.
He didn’t even notice when Sir Roger, Pocket, and Duncan began lobbing Master Excelsior’s old potions out the windows.
His ears were deaf to the shouting match between Sir Eustace and the army captain.
Bradley’s entire being was focused on that young man beside the crossbow in the amethyst-colored jerkin.
Clutching the railing, Bradley leaned forward and squinted. He knew that face. That elitist sneer. “Gladstone?”
Bradley had forgotten his rival’s family was from Leighton. Everyone in that kingdom—the land of gems and precious stones—had a petrographic surname. The trend was similar in all the major countries, even along the Cut. His own name Donmarin was a bastardization of don marine, meaning “of the sea.”
And Gladstone, upon his expulsion, had had nowhere else to go except home.
Where the wretched blighter had obviously ingratiated himself with the prince if he’d been given this assignment.
But he didn’t even have a staff, so what good was he as a sorcerer without the amplifier?
Had he gone rogue and found another source?
Or was he here because he knew what the other Heroes had never discovered—that Dirk the Dangerous was a luck dragon in disguise?
And his tower companion was a sorcerer who couldn’t tap into his magic?
They had left the College on the same day, after all, Gladstone to a life of dishonor and Bradley, cursed, to the tower. And juicy rumors spread amongst the dormitories faster than pixie dust on a summer breeze.
The answer revealed itself the moment Gladstone placed his hand on the arrowhead and molten black magefire bubbled up beneath his palm.
“We’re not here for the princess, you overgrown gnome,” the captain shouted. “Leighton’s already got one of those on the hook. We’re here for that dragon’s heart.” He turned back to the crew and sliced his hand through the air. “Fire!”
The burning arrow launched through the air and buried itself into the tower wall.
Thrown violently off his feet, Bradley sailed through the air to crash against the smooth planks of the workroom floor. Before he had even slid to a halt, the apprentice was clawing at the floor with his fingernails for purchase. He found it, launched upright, and dashed back out onto the balcony.
Black magefire from where the bolt was buried in the masonry spread like rot across an apple’s skin. It ate away at the wards protecting the tower, dissolving them into steam before gnawing away at the stone beneath.
When Bradley lifted his eyes from the black fire—the flames of the damned—they were bright and burning as two blue suns.
Gladstone had taken his magic, stolen his future.
Bradley could forgive that—maybe—after a dozen decades and about a billion kegs of ale, but he could never forgive Gladstone coming here to steal Dirk’s.
That luck dragon was a pure soul who deserved the best this world had to offer.
Gladstone would not take that away. No one would.
Blood roared in Bradley’s ears, thundered down his veins. A wind rose from beneath his feet as the apprentice stalked to the old folding table. Upon it, resting side by side, was the cherrywood box and the papyrus spell pinned down by one of the scroll tube’s ornate end caps.
The silver end cap rattled in the tumultuous wind of his approach, and the papyrus took flight. Bradley caught it out of air with the precision of a striking falcon. He held it between both hands, the light from his eyes bathing the beige parchment in blue.
For Dirk.
His heart burned with purpose. Indomitable will.
Tethers snapped within him. Invisible chains sundered and scattered their links.
Bradley felt his chest expand as something that had been imprisoned and compressed burst like a flower from a tightly wound bud.
Wild magic, his magic, coursed down his limbs and warmed his soul like a hug from a very old friend.
His gaze sharpened on the High Aetherial in front of him, and his mouth and tongue spoke the words into being with flawless pronunciation.
The renovatio spell complete, the words disappeared as if they had never been written, and the papyrus drifted from his grasp to the ground.
The silver magic of the spell spread over Bradley’s palms, clung to his fingers like glue.
He need only place them on the object of his desire and see it restored to its former brilliance.
Then, in the strange quiet that sometimes inserts itself in the midst of chaos, the apprentice heard the princess’s cries from far below.
The wind beneath his feet intensified, and Bradley shot out of the workroom.
He didn’t take the stairs. The apprentice arrowed down the core of the tower where the princess’s training rope had once hung. The frightened hermit crabs peeked out of their shells as a blur of silver and blue lights and brown homespun shot past.
There, at the bottom of the tower, the princess defended the almost-wyrm from the gluttonous mouths of the giant groupers with swipes of her cutlass. She was soaked, ragged, her face contorted with the agony of fatigue and despair.
“Bradley!” Her greeting was half cry, half whimper.
The apprentice slowed his descent until he was hovering just above his delirious friend. The rest of the world faded away, everything else forgotten except this pivotal moment.
“Lung Shang.” Bradley’s voice had a strange, multi-octave quality about it that sounded like the ringing of deep-toned bells.
The few ceruleans scales that remained flashed weakly as the almost-wyrm stirred. A brown eye opened into a thin crescent. “Dirk,” he murmured. “I’m testing . . . the name out.”
“Dirk.” There was steel in Bradley’s voice. And love. “Open your eyes and look at me.”
The dragon obeyed. He startled at the blue fire burning in the apprentice’s eyes, the silver magic writhing around his hands. It flashed like the sun peeking through the gaps in a cloudy sky.
“I’m so sorry, Dirk.” Bradley ached to touch him, but he couldn’t, not yet. “You needed me and I wasn’t there for you. But I’m here now, and I can promise you I’ll never make that mistake again.”
His voice cracked as tears sprang to his eyes, but he forced himself to continue. To be strong for the little dragon. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Dirk slumped against his raft, glowing water sloshing against his dark, swollen skin. In a small voice, he said, “I just wanted to matter. To belong.”
“You do belong, Dirk. To me. To Millie. To Pocket and Sir Roger and probably even to Duncan, though he might always prefer his books.”
That earned him a weak chuckle.
The princess’s words in the desert echoed softly in the apprentice’s mind. “I know we’re not dragons, but I hope you see we love you just as fiercely as they ever could. You are enough, Dirk, just the way you are. Blue scales and that uncommonly sassy attitude of yours.”
Another weak chuckle. The almost-wyrm struggled to look at him again. “I’m in so much pain, Bradley.”
“You don’t have to be.” He held up his silvery hands. “This is the renovatio spell, Dirk. It will renew you. But you have to want it, Dirk, with every fiber of your being.”
“It’ll change me back? To what? I’m not Lung Shang anymore.”
That was the real root of the spell, the real root of his problem.
“And you can’t be Dirk the Dangerous,” Bradley said. “Can you just . . . be yourself?”
The almost-wyrm looked away. “I’m not sure I know who that is anymore.”
“I do.”
A brown eye rolled up at him.
“You’re the little dragon who finds delight in the rain. Who loves grouper pan-fried with butter and almonds. You’re a little dragon who never let his lack of barbels or the color of his scales keep him from dreaming big and following his heart.”
“And look where it got me.”
“This was never the result of your dreams, Dirk. This was a result of an obsession, of that treacherous thought that you had to change who you are at your core in order to be accepted. You don’t need to conform to someone else’s ideas on what a perfect luck dragon should look and act like.
How dare you let someone else define who you are.
You are a dragon. You do what you want.”
The faint smile that had curved on Dirk’s muzzle faded. “I’ll have to give it all up, won’t I? My extortion racket, the rice paper spells, my treasure.”
“Did they ever really make you happy?”
The almost-wyrm gave that some thought.
Dirk the Dangerous had just been a means to an end.
A way to matter. By force and intimidation, though, not through love or genuine connection.
His treasure had never given him the same joy as he’d experienced riding the thermals or rousing a tornado or bending a storm to his will.
The reputation he’d earned had never fulfilled him the way Millie or Bradley’s friendship and support had.
Dirk forced himself to roll over onto his paws.
His body ached, his joints throbbed, and he was so very miserable.
He lifted a blue scale from the raft and truly looked at it.
Liquid sapphire. For the first time, Dirk could look at that color and see for himself that it was beautiful, that it was his, even if it was different.
“I’m not sure who I am,” he said in a small voice, “but I love these scales. I love me. And know what I’m not. I’m not cruel, and I’m not this ugly, hateful creature either. And that’s a start.”
“Yes, it is.” Bradley reached forward and cupped the sad dragon’s head in his hands.
Silver magic exploded from his fingers, and the world went white.