Chapter 89
A NEW HOME, THE TRUTH ABOUT MAGIC, A VISITOR FROM THE DESERT, AND NO APOLOGIES
The knock on the door dragged Bradley from a boneless sleep.
“Bradley?” Dirk pounded his paws against the hard oak. “Pocket said she’d make a fancy necklace out of my scales if I disturbed you and Millie, but this is really important. There’s a griffin rider on approach, and it’s not Miss Penelope.”
All at once, the bed was a flurry of flailing limbs and flying bedsheets. Tangled, Bradley fell in a heap onto the rug and fought to free himself. “Expecto!”
The sheets immediately shed themselves and collapsed into a ring around his feet.
“Piss and plagues, Bradley,” came a drawl from the bathroom. “Thank Caelus’s stars you couldn’t do that before. Why, I would’ve been dismembered.”
He looked up to find the princess pirate in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors in hand.
Naked. All the panic racing through his veins from Dirk’s announcement vanished.
Nothing else existed beyond the morning sunbeams slanting across her curves and mellowing the brown of her tan to caramel.
Bradley rose from the floor, pulse quickening at the thought of running his hands across her smooth skin and kissing her neck in that way that made her toes curl.
Then the scissors flashed, and he remembered what she was capable of with something pointy in her hands. Turning her head to the side, Millie snipped off one final length of auburn hair. Her tresses now fell just a few inches past her shoulders.
When she set the scissors down on the sink, Bradley approached and ran his fingers through the shorter length, which, coincidentally, was the same length of his own curls.
“What is expected of a princess is entirely unmanageable for a pirate.” She rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry. I left it long enough so you have something to tug on.”
A flush tore across his cheeks like wildfire. He was still under the impression that such talk was best left only whispered about and preferably at night. “Millie—”
“Is that Dirk at the door?”
She plucked his bathrobe off the door peg and cinched it closed around her before opening the door. “Master Dirk, good morning.”
“Morning, Millie. Ooo! Love what you did with your hair.” He swirled into the bedroom and tickled her with his feathers. Then he jerked to a halt. “Egad, Bradley! Why are you naked? Didn’t you hear me? There’s a griffin rider on approach!”
“I heard you. I just, um, got distracted.”
He hurried over to his dresser for some fresh underwear. He tossed a pair to the princess pirate, who quickly shimmied into them under his bathrobe.
“Well undistract yourself. And, Millie, Sir Eustace is requesting you.”
“Is he?” She collected her heap of yesterday’s clothing and got to dressing.
Dirk lingered. “So I’m assuming Pocket didn’t want me to interrupt you two because—”
He gasped when the puzzle pieces shuttled into place. The tangled bedsheets; the two humans who had, up until very recently, had been very naked; the fact he hadn’t seen them all evening after the party.
“Bradley Donmarin! Have you finally done what all the apprentices were talking about at the College? Have you finally gotten laid?”
“Why don’t you get the coffee started?” he barked.
“It’s already made. This time,” the baby dragon said smugly, “it was you who slept in.”
When his princess was ready, Dirk lifted her with his magic and flew out of the tower and down to the sand where Sir Eustace waited.
His camp was entirely packed away into his rucksack—tent, cot, stove, bezoars, books, rugs, even the potted tangelo tree.
Duchess the cat sat in the shade at his feet.
At Millie’s arrival, the ministry official unclasped his hands and straightened his suit jacket with a little tug.
“Your Highness,” he greeted, oddly cordial.
“Sir Eustace, good morning.”
He inclined his head. “I’m off today, back to home office to submit my chronicle of this”—he swallowed back what had to be a harsh word and selected a more affable one—“experience.”
“I wish you an uneventful journey, Sir Eustace.”
His eyebrows quirked. That is exactly what he wished for. Something told him it wasn’t the offhanded pleasantry many royals offered just to keep the conversation moving along. This princess meant it because she understood him.
Sir Eustace wet his lips, unsure what this revelation meant to him.
Best to stay on subject. “Before I left, I wanted to let you know what a pleasure it has been to spend time with Duchess. She is a rare soul, and my life has been made the better for knowing her. I . . . just wanted to make sure she was in proper care before I took my leave.”
Duchess looked up at him, trilled softly, and curled her tail around his ankle. The portly little man wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and stiffened his spine.
Smothering a smile, Millie knelt and extended her hand to the cat. “Duchess. Come tell Mummy good-bye.”
“What?” Sir Eustace sputtered.
The Persian mewed and padded over to the princess for a cuddle and a chin scratch.
“My life has never been well suited for a cat of Duchess’s preferences.
She wants to be adored and pampered and waste her days on a pillow in the sun with a can of caviar within paw’s reach.
Not be dragged on harebrained adventures.
She has been very tolerant of me, but I think she would be much happier off with you, Sir Eustace.
That is, if you’re willing to give her the life she deserves. ”
“Willing? Why, Your Highness, it would be the greatest honor of my life!”
When Millie leaned forward to transfer Duchess into her new papa’s arms, Dirk surged forward. “Wait just a minute. You give her to him and I’ll never get to give her a proper good-bye.”
Duchess’s purr was loud and comforting as Dirk held her in front of his nose for a good long sniff. “No other cat will smell as good as you.”
She trilled again, agreeing whole-heartedly. She knew her strengths.
Sir Eustace’s iridescent eyes sparkled with happy tears when the cat was finally transferred to his embrace.
Instead of lounging in the cradle of his arms, Duchess draped herself over his shoulder and told him in no uncertain terms how much she loved her new living arrangements and her new papa—she drooled onto his ear.
“Oh!” the little man exclaimed softly, truly touched. Then a moment of panic: “My bag. I couldn’t possibly set this goddess down and ruin our bonding session—”
“I’ve got it.” With a flick of his tail and a flurry of his claws, Dirk lifted the heavy rucksack off the ground and held it aloft for the ministry official to thread his arms into the straps.
Sir Eustace smiled gratefully. “Many thanks, Dragon.”
“I, uh, don’t suppose I could get any of those points back?”
The smile vanished. “Not a chance. Good day, to the both of you.”
Murmuring sweet nothings into the cat’s ear, Sir Eustace turned and began their journey home.
“Best get you hidden in the tower before the griffin arrives,” Dirk said a mite apologetically.
“Quite right.” She made a conscious effort to relax as Dirk lifted her with his magic. “I suppose since the Discount Damsel Protocol officially concludes at six twenty-two this evening, we’ll have plenty of time for a light breakfast, a spot of tea, and pack before it’s time to leave.”
The little dragon only hummed his agreement.
It had been easy to push away the thoughts of this particular day into the future, but now that future was here.
Bradley’s curse was broken. There was no need to remain in the tower any longer.
As his Designated Sorcerer Companion, Dirk was bound to follow wherever the young man went.
But he also had a commitment to Millie that he wasn’t quite sure how to fulfill.
You’ve gone and put yourself into a pickle yet again, Dirk my lad. But his mood only dampened for a moment. This time, he didn’t have to make the decision alone. But he did have to tell Master Excelsior alone, which was mildly terrifying, even if he was a sassy little dragon.
The tower residents, aside from the sorcerer apprentice and the luck dragon, had just enough time to huddle in the kitchen for a very quiet breakfast before the griffin rider arrived ahead of schedule on a tailwind.
If discovered, the worst they could receive was ejection from the tower, and they were already planning on ejecting themselves this evening.
The coffee and all the leftover party food was worth the risk.
Washed and presentable in a fresh robe, his black curls brushed to a gleam and pulled into a Tianzi topknot, Bradley awaited the arrival of the griffin rider in the workroom.
Sometimes looking your best was all the armor you had, and the sorcerer apprentice wasn’t sure what to expect from this College representative.
If Dirk hadn’t told him there was an incoming rider, Bradley would’ve taken the portal that had appeared after he’d gotten dressed.
Persistent little piece of magic. As it was, it would’ve been rude to leave before at least discovering what the rider had come all this way to tell him.
While Dirk circled around in the air above Bradley’s head, working himself into a tizzy about how he was going to break the news about him having a princess to Master Excelsior and muttering how half a dozen teacakes and something hot to drink would’ve done wonders for settling his nerves, the sorcerer apprentice toyed with the hag stone.
It tingled with magic, ready to summon a portal to the exam chamber with a simple thought.
Funny, that. He hadn’t questioned Miss Penelope’s instructions at the time, hadn’t questioned a lot of things—which would have earned him a swat or hundred from Master Excelsior—but upon reflection, he couldn’t understand why the hag stone would create the portal for him if he did not speak the name of his intended destination in High Aetherial.
That was the way of these portalling hag stones. They had to have direction.