Chapter 86 #2
The luck dragon swirled around his best friend’s shoulders, scales flashing with ripples of luck.
“But the portal,” Millie protested.
Bradley stared at the portal for a long moment.
It was a sight he had dreamed of seeing for the last six months.
It eased an ache within him just as it stoked a deep-rooted yearning.
He had broken his curse through sheer willpower.
He could take the baby dragon and step through to the Prestigious College of Sorcerers right now, leave this entire mess behind and claim what was rightfully his.
But what kind of man would that make him? The kind who abandoned his friends when they needed him most for his own selfish gain. He had already abandoned his family and his village on the Cut, and he had abandoned his Designated Sorcerer Companion.
Never again.
Bradley turned his back on the portal and crossed the sand to retrieve his robe and spectacles. The portal flashed once, beckoning. The apprentice ignored it to smooth the smudges from his lenses.
There was a note of desperation in Millie’s voice. “Bradley! Please, hurry. It won’t wait forever. You finally broke your curse—you can go take your exam and become a master sorcerer!”
And it was this woman’s support of his dream that made it impossible for him to leave to pursue it. But not when she needed his help. Not when there were still so many things left unsaid, deeds undone.
“I am a full sorcerer, Tula.” He pulled the malachite-flecked hag stone from his pocket. “Besides, this will create another portal for me. We still have one day left, after all, and my work here is not yet finished.”
Then he stepped close, returning her belt and reticule that he had retrieved from the sand.
The former seemed rather pointless, now that it didn’t have a cutlass to dangle by her hip, but she put it on anyway.
Tossed the remaining lychee in her reticule to Dirk, who peeled away the bumpy rind with a happy little, “Yummy, yummy, yummy.”
All sorted, Millie tensed when the apprentice wrapped his arms around her. This wasn’t a hug. She tilted her head up to search his face. His blue eyes were steady and warm, and his whole body was filled with an easy confidence she’d never seen before. It made him devastatingly attractive.
“Levitas,” he murmured, and the two of them rose into the air.
Below them, the portal vanished just as it had appeared, with a whoosh of wind and flash of light.
“I could’ve lifted you,” Dirk huffed, flying beside them.
“But you’re on crystal-fetching duty.” Bradley jerked his chin towards the wall where a large cluster protruded from the stone. “I need six big ones.”
The little dragon was quick to understand, and a feral gleam shone in his golden eyes. “Containment field?”
“Containment field.”
As they rose ever higher, the air whispering in her ears and chilling her wet skin, Millie clung to the apprentice.
She wasn’t necessarily afraid, but it wasn’t every day she floated through the air, either.
Her arms around his neck tightened, and the balls of her feet balanced on the tops of his boots inched closer to his ankles.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured.
“Don’t talk to me,” she practically snapped. “Keep your mind on the spell!”
Chuckling, his hands slipped from her waist, palmed her backside, and hoisted her up onto his hips.
She instinctively clamped every limb around him like the little pink octopus he’d always accused her of being.
Now that they were cheek to cheek, it was easy to steal a glance at his face.
From his clamped jaw and quivering mouth and laughing eyes, she knew immediately he was thinking the exact same thing as her.
“I still have my hairpin,” was all the warning he needed to keep his thoughts to himself.
He clamped down harder on the smile that threatened to steal across his lips.
When the three of them floated into the workroom, they were met with a surprising sight.
Someone had let Prince Henri out of his birdcage and the frog prince was hopping madly about the potion shelves.
He leapt from one jar to another, reading labels and hurling his choices over his shoulder for Duncan to catch.
Duncan in turn tossed them to Pocket, who opened them up and poured them into the cauldron set over the portable hearth.
Sir Roger stirred the strange concoction with a large wooden spoon, his face turned away from the fumes.
“What is going on here?” Bradley demanded.
“What’s going on there?” Pocket waggled her finger between the apprentice and the princess who clung to him like a barnacle. All thoughts of teasing her bestie fled when she spied the luck dragon. “Noodle Neck! You’re alright!”
Cheers rose from the dragon’s Heroes, and Dirk spun a circle with a ripple of luck to celebrate.
“Well?” Bradley reiterated when the celebrations calmed down. His brow creased at this very unorthodox and very liberal use of his master’s workroom.
“Ask the frog,” the hedge knight grunted, pinching his nose shut when yellow smoke rose from the latest of Pocket’s additions.
“Prince Henri?” Millie prompted.
“Defending the tower, what it’s look like?” the frog said irritably. “You know, I’ve been in this tower for what, five or six weeks now, and not one of you has thought to ask me who turned me into a frog in that entire time, have you?”
He kicked the big jar of dried rose petals off the shelf into Duncan’s waiting hands. “It was my dear mother, thanks for not asking. The woman thought I didn’t appreciate the gentler sex and turned me into a frog with one of her potions in an attempt to teach me a lesson or some other rubbish.”
“Was your mother a hedge witch?” Millie jumped out of the way as the frog heaved a bottle labeled “Eau de Violet” off the top shelf.