Page 28 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

brYCE

Faking a dangerous ailment to get out of training wasn’t my proudest moment, but the opportunity dropped into my lap, and I couldn’t let it pass me by.

I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to feel guilty.

I was exhausted and bruised, and my mind had started trying to convince me that maybe I had a fatal illness after all.

Back home, I would have been googling my body’s normal functions like they were symptoms, self-diagnosing with four different diseases and deciding that I had mere hours left to live—my go-to hobby.

Touch grass, I told myself.

An image of Courtney smiling as she placed a daisy chain on a little village girl’s head floated into my mind’s eye.

It destroyed me when she was nice, wrecked all of my carefully crafted convictions that she was The Worst. Slipping a hand into my pocket, I found the pebble she gave me and pressed it hard into my palm.

My bedroom door flew open, and Courtney marched in.

She stood over my bed and crossed her arms, eyes half-lidded.

I’d changed out of my clothes into fresh pants, but she still wore the pink dress from earlier, now dirtied and torn.

“You are being so dramatic. I’ve faked plenty of illnesses to get out of work in my day, but convincing everyone you have edema takes the cake. ”

“I’m dying,” I rasped, letting out a feeble cough. “Show some compassion.”

“So this is it, then. You’re giving up.” She pressed her lips together, giving me a weird look. All morning she’d been looking at me like that, eyes boring into me like she wanted to eat me alive. Likely, she was actually planning to eat me, maybe chopped up in a stew or something.

“No.” I moaned, throwing an arm over my eyes. “I’m sick. There’s a difference. I’m unfit for fighting dragons and overthrowing darkness and competing to be a Chosen One and whatever the hell else we’re supposed to be doing.”

Unexpectedly, her voice softened. “You put up a good fight, soldier.”

“Yeah?” I lowered my elbow and peeked over my arm.

“Oh yeah ,” she said in an extremely patronizing way.

“I don’t love your tone.”

A smile tugged at her mouth. God, she was acting weirder than normal. I side-eyed her, my paranoia kicking into overdrive. I wanted to demand she tell me what she wanted from me—why she could never let me go.

Courtney walked over to the washbasin and wet the rag hanging there.

Returning, she sat at my side, bending over me to dab at a cut above my eyebrow.

“What tone would you prefer? Oh yeah. ” The way she said those two words was borderline indecent, and now I really didn’t love her tone for the way it made a hard thrum of desire pound against the inside of my skin.

I swatted her hand away. “You are the worst caretaker. You’re, like, a care taker . You take all the caring away.”

“Au contraire.” Her smile dripped with venom. “I’ve arranged for the best physician in the land to see to your affliction.” She snapped her fingers, and a gaunt-faced man wearing a slouchy red hat and carrying a bowl entered. “Gird your loins, Bryce,” she said.

The physician walked closer, closer, closer.

I shrank against the headboard. “Why are my loins in need of girding, Courtney? Are my loins in danger? Courtney? ”

“It is time for your bloodletting,” the physician intoned. He reached into the bowl and plucked out a slimy black leech. With a crazed expression somewhere between reverence and fascination, the physician lowered the leech toward my naked chest.

A strangled sound left my mouth. I leaped out from under my blankets and hid behind Courtney. “You absolute tonsil stone ,” I snarled into her ear.

“Look at that,” she said. “He’s healed. A Christmas miracle.”

Looking disappointed, the physician let the leech plop back into the bowl.

“We won’t be needing you anymore.” Courtney waved the physician out of the room before turning to face me. “This was the saddest cry for help I’ve ever seen.” Scooting closer, she knelt beside me and went back to dabbing at the scrapes that covered my body.

I caught her wrist. She was so close that, when she looked up, I could feel the air move past my mouth as she inhaled.

When I told Courtney to have some compassion, I didn’t expect she would listen.

Yet she’d helped me in her own twisted way by getting me out of bed when I felt bad.

I couldn’t bear it. Her caring about me made me feel happy, and all my happiest memories were drowned by the hurricane of misery that followed.

“You and I are gonna save the fucking world, Bryce,” she said, a grit to her voice I’d never heard before.

I didn’t know what had brought about her new determination, but in that moment, I believed anything was possible, so long as it was proceeded by the words you and I in that resolute tone of hers.

My bedroom door opened for a third time, and Amy hobbled in. “Lady Courtney, you are going to miss the council meeting.” He looked between us. “Bryce, glad to see you are feeling better. You can join us. I imagine we will talk long into the night!”

Long, boring council meetings were a favorite hobby of the castle’s inhabitants. You could make a comment on the weather, and they’d call a council meeting to order to discuss what implications the day’s forecast might have for the next seventeen harvest seasons.

“What’s the meeting about?” I asked.

“Our general, Theodora Thimblepop, has gone missing,” said Amy, and Courtney’s spine went rigid. “She was apparently swiped right off the streets last night as she was doing her rounds.”

“Another kidnapping?” Courtney asked in alarm. “Shit. Where’s the king?”

“Do not fret,” Amy said. “He was safe in his chambers. Servants are alerting him to the news now.”

“He’s been there all morning?” Courtney asked, and I shot her a look. Did she suspect him?

“Yes, the dangers his kingdom faces have put such strain on his constitution, and he needed rest.” Amy looked between us as Courtney continued to absentmindedly dab at my brow. “Lady Courtney, why on earth are you tending to Lord Bryce’s wounds? We have an infirmary for such things.”

“No reason.” Courtney’s face flushed bright red. “Amy, someone told me today that heroes used to be very hands-on when it came to hearing the people’s concerns. Is it true Chosen Ones like Edna Johnson were allowed to make friends?”

Amy waved a hand. “Who told you such nonsense?”

She bit her lip. “No one. I just heard it… in passing.”

“Utter hogwash,” said Amy. “When I summoned Edna Johnson, she mingled with the citizens, but only because it was necessary to keep them calm while she and I worked to deliver the people from calamity. Now the Evil One is trying to destroy the utopia we created.”

“What calamity?” I asked. “Did this Edna person face the same Evil One we’re going to have to face?”

“No, of course not,” said Amy. “Now come.” He teetered closer. “You must share your plan for stopping the kidnappings and vanquishing evil with the council.”

“What if we don’t have any plans?” I asked.

Wringing his hands, Amy perched himself between us on the bed.

“Of course you have a plan. Why, if you search your memories, I’m sure you’ll find the solution to all our problems has been with you for months.

Chosen Ones always hear voices or see visions or have dreams that they forget about until the precise moment when they feel all is lost. Then they remember their premonition, and everything becomes clear. ” His watery blue eyes gazed up at me.

“Courtney’s had some really interesting dreams lately.” I couldn’t resist throwing her under the bus after the leech incident.

“Not true,” she said quickly, flashing a demure smile.

Amy turned to me. “What about you, Bryce?”

I hesitated. While my dreams lately hadn’t exactly contained illustrated step-by-step IKEA-style instructions on how to destroy evil, they had been…

intense. If there was any chance revealing them could help us get to the bottom of the kidnappings, wasn’t I obligated to reveal them in hopes Amy could translate their meaning?

“I’ve had a few dreams,” I confessed, feeling my hands grow clammy. “Maybe Courtney shouldn’t hear them, though. They aren’t fit for the ears of a… lady.”

The smile melted from Courtney’s face as she gave me a long, calculating look. “You’ve had dreams?”

“I prefer to call them nightmares.”

Amy nodded wisely between us. “Ah yes. Oftentimes such visions can be disturbing.”

“Especially when Courtney’s in them.” My face heated.

“What was I doing in your dreams , Bryce?” Courtney hissed.

“Praising my name, mostly,” I said dickishly to hide how desperately I wanted to melt into the floor.

She snorted. “Then your dreams are the most fantastical thing to happen to you.”

I leaned back, propping my arms behind me on the bed. “We literally stepped through a portal and wound up in a world straight out of a dungeon master’s fever dream.”

“My statement stands.”

“If Lady Courtney was praising your name, perhaps it is a prediction that you are the Chosen One, and she is indeed your henchwoman,” Amy mused, but neither of us was listening.

Courtney narrowed her eyes. “Tell me about one of these dreams.” The challenge in her voice told me she thought I was lying.

Figuring I might as well get this over with, I leaned forward so I could see her past Amy. “In my dreams, we’re at the big-box store where you work.”

“Hot.”

Amy gasped. “You were hot in your dreams? That could be a sign of a drought to come.” He started mumbling about stockpiling food and alerting the council while I continued.

“We’re arguing,” I said, “really going at it, me yelling, you just… talking like you always do, one zinger after another without batting an eye. That shit makes me angry and inspired , like… you make me want to be a better asshole.”

“Wooow.” She drew out the word, brows high. “I’m so damp right now.”

“Don’t use damp in that context. I’m begging you. Anyway, we’re arguing, and I yell something, and you deadpan something back, and it takes me a second to register that you said, ‘Are we going to fu—’?”

Amy stopped muttering and looked up with interest.

I dropped my voice. “You said, ‘Are we going to do this or not?’?”

Courtney peered around Amy. I wished I could see into her brain, because her expression was unreadable. But if eyes were the windows to the soul, Courtney’s opened into an empty void.

“And then?” she asked.

“And then I say, ‘Well, yeah, I guess so.’ And you yank me forward and kiss me right there among a bunch of sink displays.”

“And then?” Amy whispered, literally on the edge of his seat, suddenly overly invested in our lives.

I cringed away from him. “That was it.”

Amy stood. “This is very troubling indeed. Why, I cannot make heads nor tails of it. What does it mean? Kissing and arguing? Should we be wary of those closest to us, for they are our enemies? Or perhaps our enemies are actually our friends.”

As usual, Amy’s input was exceedingly unhelpful. I’d apparently shared this mortifying tidbit for nothing.

Before I could rise, though, Courtney caught my hand. “And then?” she whispered.

Her piqued interest was more gratifying than I wanted to admit, and my embarrassment morphed into profound smugness. Maybe she’d run away this morning not out of disgust, but because she’d actually been tempted.

I leaned in. “You pull me to the break room, and you yell at me to take off my clothes, and I yell at you to take off your clothes, and then we both yell at each other to shut up.”

She swallowed hard. “And then?”

“And then we shut up.” I stood, her hand falling off me.

“If you want to know more, you’ll have to find out for yourself.

” I added that last part because I knew she would never, ever take me up on the challenge.

I only hoped to tease her apparently desperate libido enough that, by the time we got home, she’d happily move away as quickly as possible, lest she succumb to my apparent charms.

“Come.” Amy waved a hand over his shoulder. “We must tell the council about this.”

There was no way I would be discussing my sex dream with the council for the next six hours.