Page 153 of The Discount Damsel

“You failed,” Prince Chandler spat.

“I don’t think I have.” Jax wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his wrist, slid the empty tankard back across the table.

“Then we have very different definitions of failure. And only mine matters.” The prince raised a finger, and Raleigh lurched across the table and seized Jax by the front of his vest.

The tavernkeeper, alerted by the sound of breaking glass when the tankard fell to the floor, quickly looked away from their table.

“It’s the dragon,” Jax rasped.

“What about him?”

“He’d not a Great Red at all. He’s a luck dragon.” Jax had seen the slinky blue body with pearly horns and claws, clear as day, before he’d passed out from the pressure of the force crushing him against the ceiling.

“You lie. No luck dragon has ventured past the Tianzi mountains in centuries.” Despite Prince Chandler’s doubt, he lifted a finger and Raleigh shoved Jax back into his seat.

Jax gulped in a deep breath. “It’s no lie. He’s only pretending to be Great Red. Here.” When he slipped his hand inside his vest, the prince’s bodyguards tensed. But he only pulled out a single white feather—stolen from the dragon’s room by his little bandit companion.

When Jax had coerced the ferret to spy on the dragon, he hadn’t understood the feather’s significance at the time. Not until he’d seen the luck dragon unglamoured for himself.

The prince snatched the feather from his fingers, turning it over in the candlelight to examine its pearlescence. Not even a pegasus feather shone with such radiance.

“It’s true,” he whispered.

Weeks ago, a courtier had dragged his disgraced son by the ear into Chandler’s court room with a similar story, but Chandler hadn’t believed then. It was just too preposterous, especially when spewed from the mouth of the recently disgraced, yet here in his hand was proof to the contrary.

It was a young luck dragon, too, for the feather had yet to mature from pearlescence to true white. Young or old, it didn’t matter to the magic that could heal this land. All it needed was a luck dragon’s heart, and now the prince knew exactly where to get one. And lucky for him, the second Skybreaker crossbow and its Damascus steel crossbolts had just arrived at the Strip en route inland. Perfectly poised to claim it.

But the crossbow and its mount were heavy, meant for traveling across road or packed earth, not sand. It could be done, but it’d be easier to lure the dragon within range with the perfect bait.

“Oh you stupid creature,” he murmured, pocketing the feather. “You were hired to kidnap her, not fall in love with her.”

CHAPTER 63

EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS, DUNE SURFING, A SUSPICIOUS WINK

In the weeks following Jaxson’s betrayal, the tower was a frenzy of activity:

Dirk refused to let the princess out of his sight. It wasn’t lost on him that his escapades had left his friend dangerously vulnerable. He became her shadow, leaving her side only to sleep or fend off a Hero, which were in short supply of late despite there being less than a month left on the DDP, because . . .

The height of sandstorm season had fully descended upon Ashburnum. Storm after storm choked the sky with dust and whipped up sand to flesh-ripping speeds, delaying Miss Penelope’s sixth and last visit to the tower. She managed to send word through the enchanted blackboard of her delay but could provide no new arrival time. Bradley had assured her that he had enough supplies to stretch a few more weeks. Which was true, if the girls would ever stop eating because . . .

Pocket was unaccustomed to two meals a day, let alone three, and had immediately embraced this new norm. She helped herself to the salt barrel, preferring heavily seasoned food, and even took the liberty of refilling the salt cellar crock she kept in one of her raffia purses. She offset her indulgence by collecting all the kitchen’s fruit scraps and some honey to start making a rough-and-ready mead for all to enjoy in a few weeks’ time.

While the pickpocket became acquainted with her new home, Millie trained with a fervor that had the tower residents questioning: one) if she’d been bitten by something rabid, and two) was it still loose in the tower somewhere?

She rose unconscionably early and went to bed long after the apprentice had doused the floating lanterns in the workroom. Jaxson Sloop, if that was his real name at all, had fooled her in more ways than one, and she never wanted to be found at such a disadvantage ever again.

Millie’s diligence and determination had impressed the hells out of Pocket, who’d been expecting Dirk’s princess to be a whiny bimbo always choking on the silver spoon lodged in her throat. To her great surprise, she and the princess became fast friends. Each absolutely adored the other’s sassiness, ambition, genuineness, and sense of fashion. Millie was edgy aristocrat with her shortened hems and embellished corsets, and Pocket was Bohemian chic with flowing layers of lightweight fabric and that large tooth pendant strung from rawhide around her neck. Society would’ve pitted them against each other, as they could not be further divided in terms of class and rank, but none of that mattered in the tower. It was a marvelous time for both women—finding a peer who’d rather build you up than tear you down.

And, aided as she was by her own hag stone, Pocket became an invaluable asset to the Tianzi Toad Treasure Hunt. She met up with Bradley every morning after breakfast and searched the myriad rooms with him in a surprisingly comfortable silence—broken only by Prince Henri’s singing as he kept watch from his birdcage on the northern skies for any sign of the griffin and her rider—until Millie and Dirk joined them in the afternoon for her pickpocket training.

Millie’s ongoing lesson was to attach a clothespin to her mark without getting caught, because if you couldn’t add something to someone’s pocket undetected, then how would you ever successfully remove something? That was the difference between a pickpocket and a thief—subtlety. Anyone was fair game: Bradley, Dirk, and Pocket herself. Millie even practiced the clothespin prank on Sir Roger and Duncan, much to the former’s amusement and the latter’s confusion. Millie never attempted to pin Bradley, choosing to avoid him entirely.

This afternoon, Millie knocked on the door of the room they were searching, but only stuck her head in. Behind her, a Mini Red hovered like a mute bodyguard. “Pocket? The sky is clear and the winds are doing something delightfully devious across the dunes and I would very much like to seize this opportunity with the skiff. Would you mind terribly if we postponed our lesson until this evening?”

“I would not mind in the least, Millie.”

“Thank you.” Her brown eyes flicked to Bradley. “Hmph.” She spun on her heel and left, Dirk swirling behind her.