Page 67 of The Discount Damsel

“To put it mildly, yesterday was pretty exciting,” Millie consoled him. “You must’ve been exhausted, and your body was just getting the nourishment it needed.” Her gaze dropped to the floor. “In part.”

“Y-yeah,” he replied shakily. Dirk fanned out his mane and tail a few times to restore a sense of balance, the equivalent to a human shaking the tension from her shoulders. “Thanks for breakfast, sort of.”

“That is your own fault, and you can take your eyes off this bowl. It’s for Sir Roger.”

“Okay,” he grumbled, swooping low to see if there was anything he could salvage off the stone steps. Aww, she’d even made his breakfast in the style of tamago kake gohan, just like they did back home in the misty mountains of Tianzi, minus the beans, of course. He could kick himself for ruining such a thoughtful gesture.

His nostrils flared. “Are there oranges in your pockets?”

Millie flicked her fingers at him in a shooing motions. “Anti-Fainting Noshables. They’re for later. I’ll not be assisted up the stairs by that grump anymore. I can practically see his skin crawling anytime he finds it necessary to touch me. Honestly, I touched his hand this morning and you would’ve thought I’d just slathered him with latrine filth by the disgust on his face.”

Until now, Millie hadn’t realized how scalded she’d been by Bradley’s revulsion on the balcony. Though, she shouldn’t been surprised—the man was a cur. She hadn’t meant to touch him, except empathy had risen at the sight of his struggling. She might have a vulgar tongue at times, but she wasn’t heartless. And the way he’d looked at her—like a princess (even a retired one) was reaching beyond her station to touch someone like him.

“Bet he loathed every minute of it,” the little dragon agreed. “Though I don’t know why. You have very soft hands.”

That was a very nice thing of him to say. “Thank you, Master Dirk. Though”—her shoulders slumped—“I’m not sure for how much longer.”

Dirk abandoned his salvage search to cup one of her hands in his paw. “Oh, Millie.” He gave her bandage a sniff. “I wouldn’t fret. This is the kelp Bradley keeps by the stove for little burns and cuts. It’s good stuff.”

“He wouldn’t have had to use it if he hadn’t been such a high-handed tyrant.” Her mouth twisted into a frown. “He thinks he’s so superior, like he sweats vanilla ice cream and shoots rainbows out of his bung hole.”

“That’d be an unfortunate place to find a pot of gold, that’s for sure.” Dirk nosed around the broken remnants of breakfast. “And as far as ice cream goes, I think he’d rather sweat strawberry.”

A portion of his breakfast was still edible, though not with any of the egg, and Dirk cleaned the rest off the stairs with a flick of wind and rinse of water. Eating from half an earthenware bowl, he flew on Millie’s left side as she descended the steps to the training room with all the resolve of a giraffe calf newly born in lion territory, that is to say, with some gangly coordination and a willpower derived from existential crisis. A gentle wind steadied her wobbling gait; it was the least Dirk could do.

When they entered the training room, they found Sir Roger tapping the rattan cane against his thigh as he scrawled a nearly indecipherable to-do list upon a vacant piece of blackboard. He turned to greet them with a warm smile. “I see you survived.”

“Of the four of us in this tower, I think I’m the only one who’s not surprised,” she said loftily as she handed him his breakfast. Then she pulled out her headscarf from her reticule and bound up her hair.

“I’m not,” he assured her. “I know what I saw when I met you. Grit. That doesn’t crumble away after one crappy morning.”

Sir Roger retreated to the window with the hourglass, turned it over so the red sand could spill, and leaned against the sill to eat. “It’s time to warm those muscles back up, though. A nice easy jog around the room should do that nicely. Off you go. You, too, Dirk. Didn’t see you sweating with Miss Millie this morning.”

So his students went. Neither made small talk; Millie was concentrating on getting her rubbery legs to do as she commanded and Dirk was wrestling with the double-whammy of six scales hiding in his tub and his unusual sleep pattern.

As much as he loathed using his paws for menial tasks, such as running like a flightless animal, Dirk had to admit the exertion it required would burn through the spells faster than flying. So he huffed and puffed, even snagged the hem of Millie’s taffeta dress with his fangs so she could help haul him forward, whether she agreed to it or not.

“Stop free-loading.” Still performing her pitiful excuse for a jog, she turned and swatted at his muzzle (lightly) until he let go.

“But I’m so weak,” he moaned, his jog devolving into a slither. “I only had half a breakfast.”

“Like I’m not suffering?” The desert heat had forced her to loosen her corset strings so she could breathe deeper, and she now jogged with her hands clamped over her ample breasts to keep them from bouncing up and clubbing her in the chin.

“Ugh, taffeta was not the outfit to wear today.” When she was a pirate captain, she would wear loose-flowing silk skirts, cut scandalously above the knee, maybe even to mid-thigh if she was feeling particularly roguish, and a corset with gentler boning. And boots with a wide toe box. Millie abandoned her pointy shoes with a hearty kick.

“Why did you wear it?”

“Because I wanted to look professional for my first lesson with Mr. Donmarin.”

Millie had styled her hair and put on her makeup and jasmine perfume, too. She believed maintaining her beauty standards, regardless of circumstance, would not only make her feel better, it would show the uppity sorcerer apprentice that he hadn’t beaten her.

The dragon wrinkled his snout. “But you didn’t want to smell professional?”

Millie looked down at the stained taffeta, held her breath against the ripeness that was festering in the pits of the dress. There were no servants here to launder her clothes, and her cleaning education began and ended with the removal of pine resin out of cat hair. Of course she knew soap was involved, and something called a washboard, but the technique was beyond her. And besides, as far as she knew, pirates didn’t have designated washrooms on their galleons. Maybe all that salt spray sanitized everything?

“Transformation is an ugly business,” she said stoutly, “but worth it in the end. That’s when it’s beautiful.”

Dirk remembered the dark gaps in his scales. Was that what was happening to him? Not a curse, as he first suspected, but transformation?