Dragon Thief Read Online Free PDF Page A

Frank . . .
    Actually, I had known that as soon as the supernatural hangover had hit me. It had been exactly the same as the last time I had switched bodies, when I had become the princess in the first place.
    Now, with my head clear and my pursuers nowhere in sight, it was the first time I had a chance to clearly think about it. Once I did think about it, I had to stop because suddenly I realized how much taller I was. It had taken some getting used to being the princess, being short and having everything in the world seem to grow in comparison. This was more disorientating. I looked down and felt a surge of vertigo staring down from a height about a foot above where I was used to. Every step my throbbing brain told me I was in danger of toppling over.
    I stopped and leaned against a building, closing my eyes. I unconsciously reached up between my now nonexistent breasts for the necklace.
    Nothing was there.
    I opened my eyes and confirmed that the Dark Lord’s wedding present was nowhere to be seen.
    â€œCrap.” My unfamiliar voice came out in a puff of fog.
    The fullish moon stared back down at me. I repeated myself.
    â€œCrap.”
    Of course it made sense now that I wasn’t drunk off my ass. The enchanted necklace came from the Dark Lord Nâtlac, and the demon-god bastard dealt with souls as a specialty. There was a pretty good chance that he was responsible for the spell that originally displaced me in the princess’s body in the first place. I didn’t even need to imagine any particular malice on his part—and this was a deity who was made of malice and inconvenient suffering. If Nâtlac just wanted to give me the opportunity to be male again out of whatever goodness existed in his nonexistent heart, would he give me something that would magically transform the princess’s body into a guy? Or would he give me something that just took me out of the princess and dropped me into some random victim?
    The answer to that was distressingly clear to me now that I wasn’t under the influence of two-thirds of a bottle of bad wine.
    This goes on the list of my less intelligent decisions.
    At least my demonic benefactor had made a point of telling me that the effects of the enchantment would be temporary.
    I spent a moment feeling sympathy for the prior occupant of this body. He had probably just suffered a wrenching transition back into the princess’s body back in Lendowyn. I can only imagine what the aftereffects must have felt like when experienced in a body already saturated with alcohol.
    I shuddered a bit.
    But, now that I thought about it, I probably did the guy a favor. After all, he had been on the verge of being beaten to a pulp, and now he could be sick in the privacy of the princess’s chambers, complete with featherbed. He may have gotten the good end of the deal. When things wore off and we switched back, he would be safely away from Weasel and company.
    And, now that my head was clear, it sank in.
    I was a man again.
    I patted down my clothes, feeling my new body in near disbelief. I didn’t seem any older than I had been before I’d been princessified, and if anything I felt bigger and more muscular—though that may have just been a contrast with the princess’s body. The new parts certainly felt much larger than I remembered.
    I found a belt pouch containing a small pile of coins.
    â€œWell, stranger, you owe me for saving you from that fight.”
    If I was right in assuming this enchantment would last only as long as my opposite number wore the necklace, then I had only a limited amount of time to enjoy this.
    I started looking for an open inn.
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    What else should I have done? I knew I had made a bad decision, but would it have become a better decision if I had ignored the main reason I’d made it?
    One of the reasons, anyway.
    Besides, if you were expecting to hear some tale of existential angst