Chapter 95 #2
Hazel eyes widened in a round, olive face, a fat bottom lip dropped into his beard, and Baron Demir sputtered, “What are you doing here?”
The tension crackling between them snapped when the pleasant cascade of a chime summoned them all to the throne room for the wedding.
The Merlish baron snatched the paisley handkerchief from his suit pocket and flung his hand high above his head, wrist twisting. “Gu—”
Mutineer Millie jabbed him right in the throat.
Then the pressure point in his shoulder when he reached for her.
Her final strike landed on the side of his neck, and the baron stilled as if paralyzed.
Unable to move, unable to speak, he just stared at her with the same slack-jawed expression of a codfish.
Millie blew him a kiss and hurried to join the others filing into the throne room.
She whirled when someone grabbed her elbow, thinking another jilted suitor with a vendetta had recognized her, but it was only Pocket. “I couldn’t find him,” she wheezed. “Why is it so hard to run in heels?”
Millie grabbed her hand and hauled her along until the crush of people halted their momentum. They were at the very back of the throne room, and while Millie couldn’t see the events with her own eyes, she could picture them easily enough.
Mother and Father, dressed in their finest, would be seated upon their thrones.
Across the marble floor, the fractal light of the stained-glass dome painted the marble floor in dazzling crimson, buttercup yellow, and robin’s egg blue.
Rosamund stood at the base of the dais in an intricate white gown with a long veil obscuring her face.
Prince Chandler, no doubt dripping in jewels and wearing an emerald doublet with ridiculously puffed sleeves, held her hands in his. It wouldn’t be a soft touch, but a hard, possessive grip.
Rosamund, sweet-natured bimbo that she was, would mistake it for ardor and stare dreamily up at his cold, handsome face from behind her veil. Then she would speak the words that would bind her to the man who would destroy her heart and throw her kingdom into chaos.
“Absolutely not,” Millie vowed.
She kicked off her satin slippers and unleashed the pirate within.
Mutineer Millie stomped on feet, kicked knees, elbowed ribs and jaws, and bitch-slapped the courtiers precocious enough to demand what the hells she was doing.
Millie ripped off her hat and used the beautiful tulips to beat back the insufferable women who would not get out of her way fast enough, then hurled the hat into the face of the first man who truly tried to stop her.
Momentarily blind, he never saw the fist coming for his solar plexus.
Millie vaulted over his back as he doubled over and continued her warpath to the front of the throne room.
By now the guards, both Amberlian and Leightonian, were fully convinced there was a madwoman in a jealous rage gunning to humiliate their princess and abscond with their prince, and rushed to intercept her.
They were thwarted by the crush of weddings guests fleeing that very same madwoman.
After spending the entire day waxing unwanted hair, exfoliating, shaving down their foot calluses, primping, subjecting themselves to honeybee facials—where beestings were used to smooth out wrinkles and plump lips—and purging the contents of their stomachs so they could fit into their sumptuous gowns, no woman alive wanted the same fate of Lady Belinda, who had suffered the brunt of Millie’s tulip assault.
As if petals and bits of leaf marring her coiffure wasn’t travesty enough, the flowers’ pollen had activated a previously undiagnosed allergy.
A faucet of a runny nose ruined her makeup and dribbled snot into her gown, and her eyes were swollen shut and puffy red as a baboon’s ass.
The women’s stampede was joined by the men, who had not undergone such preparatory torture but still found the idea of rumpled clothing distasteful, for they wanted no part in the tragedy that had befallen Lord Corydon: doubled over on the marble floor by a woman, his brown toupee dangling from his left ear and thrashing like a weasel caught by its tail as he hacked and gasped from that hit to the solar plexus.
In a matter of minutes, Millie reached the front of the crowd and thrust her hairpin into the air. At the sight of this threatening weapon, the guards of all the visiting dignitaries from Evertea and beyond unsheathed their swords in defense of their sovereigns.
“I most heartily object,” the princess pirate bellowed.
The blood drained from Prince Chandler’s face.
Rosamund tangled with her veil like she was fighting off a swarm of mosquitoes and finally ejected it over her head. “Sissy? Oh, Chan-Chan, look! Millie got parole to come to our wedding!”
The king lurched out of his chair. “Millie?”
The queen screamed, hands crushing against her mouth and smearing her lipstick.
“What did you do to your hair? And why are you in that horrible citrus color? You’re so tan!
Whatever happened to your parasol? Are those .
. . are those freckles?” Her voice reached a fevered pitch, cracked, and she slumped back against her cushions, unconscious.
“Hang it all,” the king swore. He snapped his fingers at Olabeus, who had his attention divided between the impromptu family reunion and a dark-skinned beauty in a midnight-colored dress. “Revive her.”
“How did you get out of that tower?” Chandler hissed at Millie.
“With embarrassing ease. You really should teach your army and that pathetic little pimple of a dark mage to suck less, Chan-Chan.”
The prince’s emerald eyes darkened to shards of flint beneath the thundercloud of his furrowed brow.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Rosamund gushed. “Now you can be my maid of honor, Sissy! I don’t even blame you for getting yourself kidnapped by a dragon and reducing both our bride prices to pittance.
I’m finally getting married!” Despite just celebrating her fifteen birthday, she spoke as if she had been marriage-minded for the last thirty years.
In a manner reminiscent of the grumpy sorcerer, Millie rolled her eyes.
Rosamund had never taken the time to learn the distinction between reckless and admirably daring, and Millie did not appreciate this smudge on her character that the former implied.
“First of all, it’s not like I volunteered to get kidnapped, though I have enjoyed the experience immensely.
And secondly, your bride price isn’t pittance.
The Discount Damsel Protocol was deemed invalid just yesterday. ”
Hope brightened the king’s expression. “So you’re not a Drain of Resources?”
The queen, who had returned to her senses quite suddenly and without the aid of Olabeus’s magic, lurched out of her throne. “So Millie can still inherit?”
The two regarded the court sorcerer for confirmation, and Olabeus rose from where he’d had his palm flat against the floor.
What looked like a wagon wheel of golden light upon the marble faded away as he straightened his robes.
“Well, we would have to get official confirmation from the Ministry of Folklore, but since Princess Mildred is known for being honest to the point of savagery, then I suppose so.”
Millie shook her head. “But I’ve retired to become a pirate.”
Paying her no mind whatsoever, her mother turned to her father, and the two rulers clutched hands as if they had just heard the most wonderful news. “The future of Amberly doesn’t rest on Rosamund!” her mother squealed.
“Someone crack the champagne,” the king roared.
“Lies,” Chandler shouted. “You have no proof—”
“Chan-Chan wouldn’t mind paying my full bride price, would you, Chan-Chan?
” Rosamund gazed up at the furious prince with nothing but daydreams and rainbows in her eyes.
“He’s got plenty of jewels to spare—he told Daddy only yesterday that one of his mines just produced twelve crates of the finest rubies! ”
The princess pirate crossed her arms over her chest and popped her hip out to the side. “Are those the same rubies that Dirk the Dangerous stole out from under your nose, or new ones?”
“What’s this now?” the king demanded of the prince. “You’re broke? Unhand my daughter immediately!”
“Daddy, no, this has to be some kind of mistake,” Rosamund protested. “Sissy, please, you’re putting a raincloud on the happiest day of my life.”
“You’re not made of sugar, Rosamund. You won’t melt.” Millie leveled her hairpin at the prince. “Get away from my sister.”
Rosamund tsked. “Don’t be jealous.” She reached up to stroke the blond fuzz on her fiancé’s jaw. “Don’t worry, Chan-Chan, she just need some time to adj—”
Prince Chandler snatched Rosamund’s hand, wrenched it hard behind her back, and yanked her against his chest. Jewels from an ostentatious amount of rings and bracelets flashed as his other hand swept up and clamped around her throat.
“Chan-Chan,” she chastised, scandalized. “My governess said you would have manly urges after the wedding, but please, wait until we’re alone.” Rosamund tried to smile at Millie, but her face had gone rather red. “See? He”—she fought for breath—“loves me.”
“I don’t know how you got out of that tower,” Chandler snarled, “but you can’t stop this. That army I sent to Ashburnum was just a fraction of the forces at my disposal. The rest of them are outside right now.
“You should’ve known you couldn’t insult me and just walk away. I will have my dragon heart and leave your kingdom in ruins.” He laughed, a sound as cold as the winter wind. “I thought you were the smart sister, Mildred. It was stupid of you to come alone.”
Mutineer Millie grinned. “Alone? Who says I’m alone? This is a wedding, Chandler, of course I brought a plus-one.”
The stained-glass dome burst apart like a firework as an airborne pirate galleon swooped into the throne room.