Page 159 of The Discount Damsel

“You sharpened your hairpin into a shiv?” Bradley asked, equally impressed and mortified.

“Well, yeah. I’m a pirate. Almost, anyway. Sir Roger says you never know when you’re going to need an extra blade.”

“Let me see?”

Millie chewed on her bottom lip, considering. If she needed medical attention, he was the one to administer it. But there was a level of intimacy this request required, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open herself up to that. Especially since history told her she’d only be shot down a minute or two later.

Pirates didn’t tip-toe. They took their licks and adjusted course. Maybe this was theirs. And she much preferred the congeniality of their former Fellowship days to whatever this strained thing was between them now.

She half-stepped, presenting her back. “It’s not too deep?”

Bradley’s fingers were gentle as he spread the auburn hairs, stained crimson, away from her scalp and over her shoulders, exposing a swath of tanned neck and shoulders. He suppressed the urge to curl his hands over those shoulders and kiss all the new freckles. You have no right. “Just a scratch. I think it hurt worse removing the scab just then.”

She hummed in acknowledgment and turned to retrieve her hairpin. Sparks raced up her fingertips as they brushed against Bradley’s hand, and she masked the color popping to her cheeks by beginning her descent to the spring. And she set her disloyal fingers to twirling up her hair and pinning it. “Thank you. For that and, um, rousing Dirk. You used your magic again, didn’t you?”

Bradley kept pace with her, slowing his gait to match the stride of her shorter legs. “I suppose so.”

It confused the hells out of him, and he would drive himself mad trying to figure it out. Whoever heard of leaky magic? His attention was best kept on the Tianzi Toad Treasure Hunt, which, from the robust glow of the garnet carbuncles, would deliver him his wish any day now.

“Though, I think you had your own rescue under control,” he said. “I just helped.”

Millie flashed him a smile, pure and undiluted. He’d remembered.

“Still can’t believe I saw a princess head-butt somebody, though.”

“But kneeing someone in the family jewels doesn’t surprise you?”

“That seems like a universal feminine response to aggression, so no.”

Millie laughed then, and the apprentice grinned.

In a much more companionable silence, they finished their descent to the spring.

The rest of the tower residents were already crowded around the glowing, bubbling waters, but none moved to join the Mini Red, who happily splashed about. Dirk seemed much more like his old self now that he was in the fizzy water, happy and guileless and carefree, his confrontation with Bradley seemingly forgotten.

“What are you waiting for?” Bradley asked the others. He shucked off his boots, set his neatly folded robe upon them, crowned the stack with his spectacles on top. “Get in.”

“I’ve seen the size of the fish you bring out of that pool.” Sir Roger shook his head. “No thanks.”

“I don’t do water,” Pocket said flatly.

She wouldn’t explain further, but she did open the birdcage and toss the frog prince into the spring. Almost instantly, Prince Henri doubled in size. The frog prince released a whoop and back-stroked along the circumference of the spring.

“What in the dog-eared hells was that?” Duncan shrieked.

“The shrimp release a little bit of magic every day, but much more when they spawn,” Bradley easily jumped onto the stone wall. “During the spawning, their magic can help heal, rejuvenate, invigorate, that kind of thing. Guess this frog really is cursed.”

“Aaand I’m good.” Duncan stalked back to the dungeons, muttering, “Freaky glowy weirdness.”

“You’re not a book, Duncan. You can get wet, you know.”

“Bye!”

“I told you I was cursed.” Prince Henri paused his laps to turn beseeching eyes upon Millie. “Now that you know the truth of my claims, will you at last pucker up and release me from my purgatory?”

“What, and get warts?” she asked.

“I’ve already told you, I’ve been tested!”