Page 38 of The Discount Damsel

“That’s a quill, Bradley.”

A little spiral of air lifted the feather back onto the desk.

“No, no,” he signed. “I’ll ask Miss Penelope if Master Excelsior is a dark sorcerer when she comes this week.”

“A dark sorcerer? Have you lost your mind?” Cerulean scales turned navy. “A luck dragon would know; I am an excellent judge of character!”

To prove his point, Bradley thrust his finger at the trapdoor, indicating what lay beyond. Specifically a Major Inconvenience with a penchant for pink. And speaking of the Major Inconvenience, what was she inconveniencing? Dirk had stayed with him all afternoon⁠—

No, not all afternoon. All evening.

The desert was dark beyond the balconies, the floating lanterns having come on automatically with his proximity after the sun had set. He’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t noticed.

Sweet mother of pearl, the princess had been left unattended for hours. She said she was going to rest, but what if she’d gone exploring? She could’ve fainted again and tumbled off the stairs. Or become a grouper’s dinner. Not that she was any bit of his responsibility, but it would kill the baby dragon if his princess expired after only one day. And princesses weren’t like goldfish; Bradley couldn’t swap one out for another without Dirk noticing.

“What are you still doing here?” he sign-shouted at Dirk. “You were supposed to spy on her!”

“She said she was going to rest, so I didn’t think it was necessary.” Dirk stuck his long tongue out at the apprentice. “She’s not like the other nobles, Bradley. She’s a lady of her word, and I trust her.”

Bradley would dispel the little dragon of his naïve illusions another time. Nobles always said one thing and did another. They were about as consistent as the wind. “You said she was searching for her own suite. Which one did she pick? We need to check that she’s still in there and hasn’t set anything on fire.”

“She’s a princess, Bradley, not an arsonist. And I don’t know which one. She didn’t like any of them, except⁠—”

Bradley leaned over the desk, eyes narrowing. “Except what, Dirk?”

Click-click-click came the nervous tapping of Dirk’s white claws. “Except, um, your room.”

This was not to be borne!

And just like that, the parchment of dark magic in the cherrywood box was forgotten.

Bradley left the workroom in studious disarray and sprinted down the stairs to his bedroom with a stride that echoed like thunder within the tower.

“Oye!” he shouted, ramming open the door.

The princess was nowhere to be found. His bedroom was as pristine as he’d left it that morning. No silk stockings and wrinkled dresses draped themselves over the chair. There were no depressions in the perfectly fluffed pillows or the quilted bedspread. The stub of candle on the nightstand was unlit, the shutters still shut against the heat of the day, though he could open them now and let the room cool a bit.

A slow and tentative peek into the bathroom revealed a dry toothbrush, a clean tub, and the various jars and bottles of bath oils, soaps, and scrubs spaced exactly one and three-fourths inches apart for optimal spacing and selection.

There was no faint scent of jasmine anywhere, and just as Bradley’s heart rate was returning to normal, alarm gripped him. If the princess wasn’t here, then where was she? Hells of the deep, she really was setting something on fire, wasn’t she?

“Where’s my princess?” Dirk mewled from his hover in the doorway, for it was very rude to enter another’s private sanctuary without permission. “Do you think she ran away?”

“One, I’m not that lucky, and two, this is why the Great Reds are the ones who kidnap princesses—because they’re big and scary enough to keep them from escaping!”

Dirk blew a raspberry at him. “Maybe she’s just exploring the tower. Without me.”

The baby dragon wasn’t angry, just disappointed—and in the true meaning of the phrase, not the lie your mother told you.

“That’s it,” the baby dragon consoled himself. “She’s just looting a room and— Egad! What if she overheated and fainted again?” He flung himself into the vast column of air in the stairwell’s center and squinted at the glowing blue spring at the bottom of the tower. “Millieeee!”

The apprentice thought it was far more likely that the princess was doing something she shouldn’t be (he still wasn’t convinced “Princess Mildred” wasn’t synonymous with “arsonist” or “shrimp terrorist”) and sniffed madly for any scent of smoke and listened for the high-pitched whining of minuscule shrimps in pain.

“Tula,” he bellowed down the stairwell.

The screech of hinges answered them as the princess wrenched open the door below and across the tower from them.

“What is wrong with you, Mr. Donmarin, besides the obvious?” she demanded. “Or is this your perverse way of informing me you’re prone to screaming fits like a spoiled child?”