Epilogue
HOMEWARD BOUND AND ONE FINAL CURSE
Miss Sicily Whitewhistle had no idea what to do with a crossbolt twelve feet long, but she sure knew how to string a diamond necklace around her neck.
As she and Ivar the Bane celebrated their reunion on the newly repaired trestle table to the pleasant bleating of goats, the Tula soared west towards the Prestigious College of Sorcerers and the Ministry of Folklore headquarters.
Festus disembarked with only a little fuss—he’d come to enjoy the free-spirited attitude of the Tula’s crew, but his Auntie Zora was expecting him back to help with her kits, and there was nothing more vicious in the world than a sleep-deprived mother griffin.
Sir Eustace and Duchess departed with little fanfare, such were their ways, and Sir Eustace immediately submitted a parental leave request to finish bonding with his new cat.
From Bellafont, the galleon set her sails for Leighton.
Treasure sack in hand and apologies prepared, Dirk visited the bean farmer, the pig herder, the cauliflower farmer, and everyone else he had ever extorted.
In addition to reimbursing them with interest from the very funds he’d been paid to abduct Millie, he donated a shimmer of luck to each and every farm.
It wasn’t their fault Leighton was cursed, and until such a time that a Worthy One could extract a soup spoon from a petrified loaf of bread, at least the struggles of these few could be lessened from “slaving towards the grave” and into “bone-tired” territory.
The Tula flew to Merle next to extract Tabitha Ferris from the laundry room of Baron Demir’s keep.
Since the baron’s horse was not as fast as a flying galleon, he was not at his castle to deter them.
And anyone who’d previously been considering it immediately shunned the thought at the sight of the dragon and the sorcerer, both in the exact shade of blue, but most of all, at the stunningly dressed lady pirate captain with the unhinged smile and a smoldering linstock poised over the ignition port of a very large cannon.
An older woman with forearms made massive from countless loads of laundry hustled out of the main gate with a suitcase in each hand and another one under each arm.
She had a gleeful skip to her step as she hustled over the dirt road and to the field where the ship hovered.
Dirk lifted her and her luggage aboard the Tula, and unlike her husband, Tabby squealed like a woman a quarter of her age with the delight of flight.
Once aboard, she slapped Sir Roger across his cheek for letting her think he was dead all this time, then covered him with kisses.
The two spent the rest of the voyage south to the marsh kingdom of Marais locked in martial embrace.
Millie leaned against the gunwale with a wistful expression as the twisting waterways glittered like crushed starlight amidst tufts of grass and thousands of little forested islands.
The thready canals soon fattened into lagoons choked with waterlilies, and a white palace draped in honeysuckle vines and Spanish moss emerged from the foliage.
His arm slung about his wife’s shoulders, Sir Roger released a low whistle. “Not bad, Prince Henri, not bad.”
“What’s your gross per capita?” Duncan asked, flipping open to a new page in one of his books.
Bradley crossed his arms over his chest and chose to antagonize the frog one more time, for old time’s sake. “Looks like a breeding ground for pond scum. Give me the open sea any day.”
“Because low tide smells so much better, peasant,” the frog sneered.
The grand master cracked a smile that faded quickly.
The calm, glistening lagoons were lovely, but he was impatient to return to the white-capped seas of the Cut so he could introduce Millie to his parents and give her a very special ring he and Dirk had fashioned out of a green pearl and rose gold, the same colors as her pirate sigil.
At present, it was tucked safely away in his knapsack with his most treasured possessions: the sailboat carving and the two drawings Millie had given him.
The trip home would also provide the perfect opportunity to persuade Viscount Saltreave to do his duty or see his keep blown apart. A family dinner, a proposal, threatening the local authority . . . their schedule was quite booked after Marais.
Millie sighed again. “It’s absolutely breathtaking.”
“And to think this all could’ve been yours,” Prince Henri prodded. “Just one measly kiss and you could’ve been a queen. There’s something truly wrong with you, isn’t there?”
“Thank you for all your serenades, Prince Henri, but it’s time for you to go home now.”
Knowing the frog prince might do something rash like leap at her face and take a kiss from her lips without her consent, Millie let Pocket do the honors. When the frog prince refused to move faster than a regal strut, Fink jumped into the cage and snapped at his webbed feet.
“Gah!”
The frog prince hopped into Pocket’s hand, and she whisked him away from the playful ferret.
“You did good in the end, Hop-Along, even if you were an absolute ass about it. Here.” She lifted him closer.
“Ugh, keep your filthy peasant lips away from m—”
There was a flash of yellow light, and suddenly a dashing prince in a white-and-gold doublet appeared on the deck, his lips smooshed against Pocket’s. The two flew away from each other, Prince Henri spitting over the edge and Pocket covering her mouth with her hand.
“What just happened?” Dirk demanded. “I thought you were a pickpocket.”
“I am!”
Millie’s eyebrows knitted together. “And how long have you been a pickpocket?”
“Since . . . since I can remember.” She dropped her gaze so she wouldn’t see the surprise on her friends’ faces. The betrayal.
“Well that sounds suspicious,” the little dragon huffed.
“You never asked,” she fired back.
“Pocket, I never pressed you about your past, because that’s your business, but now . . .” Millie gave her a pleading look.
Pocket’s bottom lip trembled. Her hands worried over Fink’s fur. “Everything’s a little hazy before I woke up on the beach, but that’s the life of a pickpocket, isn’t it? You’re bound to bump or scrape into things or knock your head at least once in a while.”
“But I’ve seen you, Pocket,” Millie said gently, seriously. “You don’t make mistakes.”
“Stop it, please.” She shrank away from them, touched each of her raffia purses in turn. She’d never stopped wearing them, not even in her time in the tower. In case she had to run again. “I’m just a nobody. A pickpocket from, from—” She didn’t know where.
“Magic curses like these don’t lie.” Bradley set a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Whoever you were before you came to Pierpont was a princess, Pocket.”
In the common room of Lantern & Hearth, a man in a pin seal coat sat at the table furthest from the fireplace where it was cooler, damper.
More like home. The light of a single candle glistened in the brothy dregs of the night’s seafood soup, thyme leaves and bits of dill clinging to the edges of the bowl like displaced seaweed.
He spread the wrinkles from the town newspaper and angled the headline article into the light.
Amberlian Princess Goes Rogue at Sister’s Wedding
Princess Mildred Angelique Tisane had been the talk of the town since news of the scandal had reached Pierpont, but the man could not take his eyes off the illustration that accompanied the headline.
The grinning princess was front and center, flanked on either side by a grand sorcerer and a luck dragon.
In the background was an old hedge knight, a bookish gnome, and a young woman with a ferret on her shoulder.
A shark tooth pendant hung just below the hollow of her throat.
Darian Tideborn traced the curve of the young woman’s jaw with a fingernail.
The last time he’d seen her, there had been no moon in the night sky, but something bright had flashed all the same.
The next morning, he’d woken with a scar above his heart and a blood-crusted knife on the rocks beside him.
“You should’ve stayed hidden, little fish.” Darian tore the illustration from the page, folded it, and placed it in his breast pocket, right next to his scar. He’d leave for Amberly this very night. “Now, you’re mine.”