“I don’t see how anybody would want to go talk with Ashcroft, who has all the humor of a cup of vinegar, when they could simply talk to the lady of the house,” he drawled, waving his wrist around before extending his hand to help her to her feet. She gave him the hand she didn’t burn, but she certainly leaned most of her weight on the leg she hadn’t burned with the cuff.
He looked down and clicked his tongue sympathetically. “Oh, you poor dear. Is Ashcroft keeping you prisoner here?” He picked up her burnt hand and inspected it, frowning. He brought her hand up to his lips, and it immediately felt better.
She sighed with relief, although her heart fluttered when she felt his lips upon her skin.
“How could he do this to someone as sweet as you?” he asked sympathetically.
“Easily. He doesn’t think I’m sweet,” she replied. “And I’m not,” she added with honesty. “And he thinks I would run away if he didn’t cuff me. And I might,” she informed. “And he thinks I’m a bad student, and I am.” She shook her head, amazed that she was telling a complete stranger all this. She looked back towards the tower just to gaze ruefully at it.
But he just smiled at her as if he hadn’t yet realized she was odd. “Do you think he’d let you go if you were a better student, then? Or maybe he’d like you better?”
She shrugged, but then stooped down and adjusted her cuff, which dug into her burnt skin. She winced. “Possibly. I don’t know. I’d like to think so, but it doesn’t matter. I’m simply not.”
“Oh, I could make you better. Much better. How would you like to have the knowledge of Ashcroft’s entire library in your mind in an instant?”
She looked back up at him and stood up again. She raised a dubious eyebrow. “If that was possible, he would have done it himself.”
The blonde wizard snorted. “Unlikely. Do you think he would really give up the ability to lord his knowledge over you for years? I don’t think you realize how much he enjoys this sort of thing—being the smartest in the room.” The wizard’s lip curled with obvious disdain. “No, he keeps his knowledge quite to himself—God forbid someone be smarter than him. Trust me, I know him too well.”
She tilted her head to the side, look him over. “Who are you?” she asked.
He smiled widely. “Lachlan Medwin, of the Western Realm,” he introduced with a bow. He looked up and winked. “Has Ashy told you about me at all?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re… you’re a Medwin? Are you related?”
Lachlan blinked a long blink. “Brothers, unfortunately.”
Charlotte couldn’t help being surprised, thinking at first that the two wizards looked nothing alike. But now she could see similarities. She just hadn’t noticed because the man before her wasn’t so heavily scarred, and was blonder and leaner. But they did have similar faces. Why wouldn’t have Ashcroft talked about him? Why wouldn’t her parents have mentioned in all their talking of Ashcroft never to mention his brother? The name was so unfamiliar.
Although, the man before her seemed nice enough—sympathetic and soft-spoken. And what he was offering was… well, quite generous. Too generous. “Well, say you do have such a spell. Why would you give it to me?”
“I can’t stand to see a lady so upset,” he explained innocently. “But it would be a trade. I can’t do this sort of magic for free. Literally, I cannot,” he explained. “Once word got out I did a favor without contract, I’d never hear the end of it!” That was the sound of a true Archivist. Contracts always had to be involved. Archivists would write a contract for everything. A trade would have to be made—a give and get.
She frowned. “I don’t have anything,” she told him. “I’m only nineteen, you see, and—”
“A kiss, then?” He pulled out a scroll from inside of his cloak. “A kiss in return for knowledge that might please that old conjurer?”
She bit her lip, blushing. “I… I don’t know.” She’d never kissed before. Although, he was handsome enough that the idea wasn’t repulsive. In fact, she found herself feeling flattered.
“You don’t think it would be worth it?” he asked, sounding offended. “It’s so much work and toil and heartbreak. All that can be avoided… And a little flower as delicate as you can’t be burdened with study day in and day out, like you were some Archivist and not the last Byndian!”
She thought about this, her head tilting to the side. “Just a kiss?”
He nodded. Suddenly, he chuckled. Probably because she looked nervous. “First kiss, then?”
She blushed. “Well… It’s… I…”
“You won’t regret it,” he told her. “There are worse people to kiss, I assure you.”
She smirked. “Alright—so…”
“You have to sign this first.” He passed her a scroll and a pen.
“Sign?” she asked wearily, but accepted them. She opened the scroll and looked upon it. “This isn’t even in English.”
“No, of course not. Only Ashcroft is untraditional enough to write contracts in ENGLISH—which isn’t his first language. Unseemly is what it is,” Lachlan said with a sigh. “But let me tell you—there’s no funny business. One perfectly chaste kiss for one magic pill. When you have it, walk up to his study where all his books are, and swallow it. Easy as that.”
“No small print, then, right? There seems like there’s a lot of words there.”
“Oh, it’s all legalese,” he complained. “But as you can see, none of the print is small. No funny business,” he repeated.
She bit her lip and, holding the pen awkwardly, signed it. The paper hardened and flattened underneath the pen. The ink came out like liquid gold upon the page.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose again as he pulled the page from her and rolled it up. He stood close to her, and gently put his hands on her waist. “You’re so beautiful,” he told her, gazing and brushing his thumb against her bottom lip. “The last Byndian—Queen of the Elements. So young.”
Having immediate flashbacks to the water demon, she faltered. “You’re not going to… eat me, right?” she said, suddenly taking a step back.
He chuckled. “No. I promise. No cannibalism,” he replied teasingly. “I’m just savoring the moment.”
“You’d better hurry before somebody sees you… touching me,” she replied awkwardly.
He brought his hand up under her chin and pulled it up towards him, lowering his lips to hers.
The kiss wasn’t at all chaste. It was devouring. He traced his tongue along her lips and drove it into her mouth; the hands around her waist dug into her dress and pulled her body close to his. She heard him moan, but she was too winded to do anything—her mind was racing.
To her own surprise, her body flushed hotly, the more shameful parts of her felt more shameful—they tingled with a feeling utterly foreign to her. Her nipples hardened, her breath panted.
But then he finally pulled away from her, leaving her looking up at him with dilated eyes. He brushed his thumb over her cheek and then pulled something out of his cloak. It was a small, velvet bag. “For you, my sweet,” he told her, pressing it in her hand and curling her fingers over it. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She blushed and shook her head. “N-no, I guess not…” she replied sheepishly, then looked down at the velvet bag in her hand. “Are… are you going to come inside?”
“No. My visit was to simply pay my respects to the head of the Byndian faction,” he bowed respectfully. He grinned as he straightened. “In fact, it would probably be better you don’t mention me at all. Surely, old Ashy wouldn’t see this as appropriate—kissing in the garden and all. Knowing him, he wouldn’t like the idea of instant results, either; it would only make him jealous. So say nothing. Wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.”
Out of nowhere, as if he had it behind his back the whole time, he pulled out the shawl that had gotten away from her, and pulled it over her shoulders.
“So… So you’re just leaving?” she asked
, her heart pacing.
“I’ll be back soon. Next time to visit Ashy, no doubt.” He grinned back. “But this will be our little secret.” He gave a playful tap onto the end of her nose, and then turned to walk away.
She just watched as he disappeared from the tree line, her cheeks still flushed, thinking that—even aside nearly being eaten by a water demon three weeks before—that was the single weirdest thing that had ever happened to her. She looked down at the velvet bag in her hand, grinned curiously, and then put it away into her dress’ pocket.
Chapter Five
Ashcroft grumbled and slammed down a book from off the shelf. Charlotte had, without a doubt, the shortest attention span on the planet, and she had the audacity to blame him for it! She called what he was teaching boring—she said that a lot, and he never understood it. How could magic be boring? How could history be boring? How could knowledge be boring?
He didn’t care to discover. All he knew was that if the next time she pantomimed her fingers turning into a gun and then pointed it at her own hand in the ‘too bored to go on living’ gesture, he was going to cut a switch. And he told her just that—she was being childish and insulting, after all.
And then she went off the handle. But she had been doing that more and more often recently—he was beginning to believe that he was beginning to grate on her. Hopefully she was still out in the garden, letting off some steam. And more importantly, letting him let off some steam.
“Trouble in paradise?” Moriarty asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Ashcroft placed his hands on his hips. “We’re certainly not in paradise. She’s a handful.”
“She’s trying her best to impress you,” Moriarty mentioned, fingering some chipped paint on the doorframe.
Ashcroft wasn’t even about to believe that. “Then she’s certainly not doing a very good job of it! It looks to me that she is trying her best to ensure she sleeps on her belly tonight. She knows how to push all of my buttons, and she does it every day. Sometimes she keeps me from even seeing straight.”
Moriarty pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, opening his mouth to say something Ashcroft had heard before. Ashcroft cut his hand through the air and denied, “No, I’m not in love with her. Stop it.”
Moriarty made a humming sound and lit his cigarette. “I’m just saying,” Moriarty began, as if he’d said what he wanted to say to begin with, “that wizards have trouble… getting together. This is a dance they do. I’ve seen this a million times. There’s a power struggle, a blow out, and then they either destroy each other or stick to each other like glue. That’s why there’s so startlingly few of you, despite the fact that you’re immortal.”
“I think you’re full of it,” Ashcroft rumbled, although come to think of it… For as many flawless human and elf romances he’d seen, he couldn’t recall any wizard relationships that had gone off without a hitch… But that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
Although… Come to think of it, even Ashcroft’s own parents didn’t meet under any sort of love story setting. His mother had tried to kill his father on several different occasions before his father was able to make love to her. The story had seemed odd when Ashcroft was a child—his parents were extremely affectionate and in love with each other. He couldn’t have imagined them any different.
Maybe there was some truth to what Moriarty noticed… No, never. She was his apprentice, his apprentice, his apprentice!
Moriarty shrugged and blew a lungful of smoke towards him. “It’s like listening to street cats get together. You don’t know if they’re making love or killing each other until you open up your sock drawer and there’re five newborn kittens crapping all over your brand-new stockings…”
“I’m offended by the insinuation,” Ashcroft replied aloofly. “She’s a baby, Moriarty. She’s nineteen. She hasn’t even hit her immortality yet. It will be another hundred years before she’s mature enough to take as a wife, and I wouldn’t, because I’m her guardian. Entrusted with her safety, her education… It would be wrong and inappropriate on so many levels. What would the Wizard’s Circle say? Or my faction?”
“I wouldn’t worry about either, Master.” Moriarty shrugged. “They’d simply titter about it for awhile like the delicious gossip it is, and then live with it. You might as well succumb now, because it’s clear that you’ll eventually pull your head out of your ass and realize that Charlotte’s a cute little tart that needs more than a teacher and a firm hand, if you know what I mean.”
Ashcroft looked at Moriarty blankly.
“Sex, Master,” Moriarty sighed like he was talking to a child. “You’re going to slip up one of these days, you know it.” He flicked his cigarette into the fire, then changed the subject casually just as Ashcroft was opening his mouth to argue. “By the way, where is she? It’s about time for supper getting on, and the house is far too quiet.” With that question, Moriarty sauntered towards the dining room.
“She’s outside,” Ashcroft informed, following Moriarty out of the room.
“What do you mean she’s outside? Outside doing what? And why?” Moriarty asked, turning around.
“Just raking leaves. I figured if she wasn’t going to study, which she’d quite decided she wasn’t, she could work with her hands for awhile. Try to feel what it’s like to be productive,” Ashcroft replied brusquely.
“She doesn’t have the energy to do that sort of work, Master,” Moriarty chided, much to Ashcroft’s disdain.
“She had enough energy to goad me this morning,” Ashcroft assured.
He had always thought he was a patient man when it came to teasing—he lived with Moriarty, after all. But Moriarty knew the line. Charlotte mocked the line. That morning, Ashcroft had been talking about one of the few protection spells Byndians used, in fact, and her response was, “Or I could just bring you along and you can just bore them to death.” What made him wheel her out of the room, however, was when he asked if she was listening and she shrugged and said, “Yeah. Can’t you see me yawning?”
Moriarty didn’t look convinced, however. “Master, trust me when I say: she doesn’t have the energy. You’re just going to wear her out. She’s going to come in here in even a fouler mood, which in turn will get you into a fouler mood. And do you know where that leaves me? In the middle of it.” He looked weary as he added, “And I don’t like being in the middle of it, Master. I’ll have you know that I find it utterly exhausting playing referee.”
Charlotte took that moment to step into the main foyer, and Ashcroft could immediately see that she looked a little… off. Her face was flushed, her cheeks pink, her eyes dazed and dilated when she rounded into the dining room. Even her stride was tender, as if she was favoring one leg over the other.
Maybe Moriarty was right... Again. Lately that man had been very astute. Maybe Charlotte didn’t have enough energy. Was she falling ill? Ashcroft’s eyes immediately rounded with concern. He’d nearly forgotten that Byndians were one immortal race that nearly had no constitution at all—they could become ill even after they reached immortality—they normally lived near herb wizards just to utilize that race’s skill at creating health potions; and the herb wizards had abided that because the Byndian’s power of the Earth made plans grow faster. “Charlotte?” he said, stepping up to her and immediately putting a hand over her forehead. “Are you alright?”
She nodded, looking up at him with dark, yet innocent eyes. “Uh huh,” she replied, but it didn’t really sound like she was listening.
“You have a fever,” he decreed, rubbing his knuckles across the side of her cheek. “I’m sending you to bed early tonight,” he promised.
She snapped out of the daze upon those words. “No, I’m fine.” She flinched away from his hand, looking as if he’d hurt her feelings. “I’m not a child. I can take care of myself.”
“Well, obviously not because you’ve gotten yourself sick,” he seethed. He took a deep breath. “Why don’t you just let me take care of you? I wan
t to be nice to you!”
“Oh, and you’re doing a great job.” She rolled her eyes and sat down in the chair across from Moriarty, who was already filling his water glass from the wine bottle on the table, who was muttering under his breath, “And here we go…”
Ashcroft stood there, completely dumbfounded. He found himself swallowing before shaking his head. “I don’t know how someone so pretty can be so spiteful.”
“And I don’t know how someone so ugly can be so insensitive.” She waved towards Moriarty and said, “Moriarty can afford to be an asshole because he’s at least attractive. You’re just a curmudgeonly old hermit who wouldn’t know what nice even looked like if it came up and bit you in the ass! Let me give you a hint-a-rooskie: it doesn’t have anything to do with cuffs that burn my skin off or forcing me to go out into the cold and work until I have blisters on my hands.”
He did his best to keep any sign of hurt off his face, making sure just an expression of rage kept on.
He remembered when he was a boy a dragon tamer was a guest at the Archivist citadel. Young Ashcroft had followed the man around like a puppy until he saw the tamer’s arm eventually get burnt badly from the elbow down. Ashcroft was only seven at the time—he was scared senseless for a second or two, but the man never lost control of the dragon and got the giant reptile to submit to him within moments just by tightening the reins and slamming its boulder sized head into the ground until the dragon got tired of the struggle. Ashcroft remembered the man winking at him later and slapping him on the shoulder, saying, “If you let a dragon get away with burning you, you’ve just made him your master. He’s a cruel one, and will burn you all the more. But if you take him by the reigns right then and shorten the leash, he’ll realize that you’re the one in charge, and he’ll respect you for it and serve you better.”
It was clear—Ashcroft wasn’t going to think she was in charge by letting her burn him. He was going to have to shorten her leash and make her heel. “I have had it, Charlotte. You’ve run me out of nice,” he warned. “Now you’ll to see how not nice I can be.” With that, he turned heel and marched from the room.
Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson Page 8
