Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (36 page)

Alice shook her head slightly. “No, I need time to think…” she said, and actually
gestured for the hand of Charlotte, accidentally showing that she wanted Charlotte to make the decision for her.

Ashcroft lightly pushed Charlotte farther out of Alice’s reach and said, “My dear girl, there’s no time. We must get underway
to get that contract annulled before Charlotte starts to suffer
.
” He looked up at Moriarty and nodded, “Get us ready. I’ll send word at once to the Circle.”

*
*
*

“Are we close?” Alice asked Ashcroft, probably because Moriarty had taken off early on the fastest horse to seek information from the Wizard’s Circle. 

Ashcroft had been dosing, or at least had been so in his own thoughts that he realized that he hadn’t been paying anyone any attention at all for the last few hours. He looked straight at Alice, and then glanced out the window. “Yes,” he said, realizing where they were. “Very.” He glanced down at Charlotte, who had fallen asleep and now had her head in his lap. He smiled softly and petted the back of her neck.

“It’s very important you survive, you know,” Alice mentioned in a queenly way that was unlike her. She lifted her chin. “God knows what would happen to us if something happened to you and Morry… She’d lead me right over a cliff.”

“You are in control of her,” he said, referring to her title.

To this, she made a
pfft!
sound with disbelief. “Maybe in name, but not in action. She’s more of a leader than I am. She doesn’t take orders lightly… She doesn’t take recommendations or advice lightly, either… And one thing she did not like at all was when you told her that I was her ruler.”
She had digested what was so wrong with Charlotte after Ashcroft realized her contract was going to be considered by the Wizard’s Circle to be invalid, and she realized that through it all, Charlotte did not like to be anyone’s underling, even if being so would save her ass.

“
G
uardian,” he corrected despite the fact that they both knew he
meant
‘ruler’. He frowned. “It’s true enough. And thank God it’s true—by now Charlotte and I would have been saying our goodbyes if not for that. It was a good turn of fate that Moriarty took a shining to you—for us, at least. Though even if you weren’t,” he added kindly, “Moriarty would have chosen very well. Congratulations on your betrothal.”

“Thank you,” she said with an embarrassed grin. “Now let’s see if it happens. Same with you and Charlotte—when do you plan to marry her, by the way?”

“I guess I have your permission then?” he replied teasingly.

Her green eyes twinkled with amusement, and she looked very like Charlotte for a moment. “You need my permission?”

“Technically, I’ve been quite out-of-bounds,” he admitted, and lowered his eyes with shame for a moment. “I was supposed to be her protector, her teacher… And then I ended up bedding her. Still, I couldn’t help but love her. She pulled me towards her like gravity… That’s the only way to describe it.
Gravity
—it seemed unnatural to resist it and took too much of my energy when I tried.”

“Well, you have, had, and will have, my permission. Not that I think you need it.” She winked and glanced out at the weather as it began to rain. She couldn’t help but let out a giggle. “Oh,” she said, “poor Moriarty!” She glanced back. “So why else aren’t you marrying Cholly?”

He sneered at the nickname slightly, but then smiled. “I want her immortal before I do,” he simply said. “And then I will marry her promptly when she recovers from her change. But I’m sentimental. I want to start my family on my wedding night, and it’s better for appearances, anyway… Politics.” He gave a tortured sigh. “You’ll see what I mean when you meet the Wizard’s Circle. Half of them are men that would make your toes curl and the ones that
are
tolerable are as gossipy as a woman’s sewing circle… And she’s not at an appropriate age. I don’t want our relationship under scrutiny for the rest of our days; it will not do.”

There was a long beat of silence. “Do you think Lachlan will abide the summons? Will he even show up?” she asked.

“He’ll show,” Ashcroft said for certain. “He cares about appearances, too. He would love to supplant me and take my place. He’s been trying that since we were children. Never did set well with him being the younger child. I constantly had to watch my back. Sometimes when I did I got dragon on my snout.”

“Is that what happened?” Alice said with interest. “Moriarty would never say what happened to you. I figured it must be private.”

Ashcroft puckered his brow, and consciously tried not to touch his face. “I should be used to the scars by now,” he apologized for his meekness. “But I liked the looks of my face before. I was quite vain in the day.” He gave a wry chuckle. “My brother disappeared when he was eighteen from the citadel. I thought he was just going to get some adventuring in. Instead, he fell in with a sky demon—who he killed off not a century later when he had learned everything he cared to learn from him about harnessing lightening and controlling whole armies of dragons… And I got in his way when this village I was visiting stood in the path of his destruction.”

“Why doesn’t the Wizard’s Circle do something about him?”

His eyes brightened slightly, happy to relate the several reasons. “Because
he has
contracts on the most of those who would care about his threat… And most of them don’t even care… Their factions mainly live on Earthside or within another WorldRealm. They could care less about the troubles of the Otherworld and particularly the Halcyon Plains of it, which is essentially the hemisphere of the world where we live.” He shook his head, “No, no. We must rely that they care about the law, at least. They would care about our contract, but they don’t see what he’s done otherwise as
illegal
within our order.”

The carriage slowed down to nearly a halt and the very, very wet Moriarty came in, looking like he had been saved from a flood. He was panting heavily. “Damn rain… Damn horrible bloody weather for a duel,” he grumbled as he sat down next to Alice.

“What have you heard?” he asked, as Moriarty should have al
ready ridden ahead at the wizard Gwrtheryn’s
Palace down by the Hatchet Cliffs.

Moriarty rubbed his hand over his wet face. “Well, almost everyone has come at your request. They’re all stirred up and a-titter,” he assured.

“Did Johns make it?” Ashcroft said, hoping to have at least one wizard who agreed with him about the dangers of Lachlan present.

“Johns is doing most of the tittering,” Moriarty said with an eye roll. “But I have it on good authority from him that he saw Lachlan’s party approach near at hand, coming from the West Gate. He seems to have gotten your message.” He grinned and his fangs glinted with mischievous delight. But then he looked down at Charlotte, who was facing away from him and her head still rested entirely on Ashcroft’s lap. “Is she ill?”

“No, sleeping,” Ashcroft assured.

It was as if the world wanted to argue, for as soon as the words left his mouth, horrible, deafening thunder roared so heavily and sharply around them that Alice and Moriarty put their hands over their ears. Ashcroft’s whole body winced.

And Charlotte didn’t wake.

Moriarty noticed immediately; his body going ridged with concern as he looked at her, and then he looked up with nervous worry at Ashcroft, was so alarmed that he was sure he felt a tightness in his chest.

Ashcroft tried to roll her body quickly over so that her face was peering at the carriage’s ceiling. “Charlotte?” There was no response from her. He opened up her eyes and instead of any sign of color—either white or her iris’ blue, nor the large blackness of her pupils, all he saw was silver.

“Charlotte?” he cried, worried. He knew that Lachlan’s curse would do this—it was what happened with Lachlan’s kissing poison. But he had never seen it work this quickly, and so quietly. Normally the dying would die miserably and very slowly. It was as if Lachlan quickened the poison on purpose.

He put his hand over her mouth, and lo, he felt she was at least still breathing. He checked her pulse—it was nearly non-existent.

“Is she…?” Alice asked, sounding like she was trembling.

“No, she’s alive,” Ashcroft assured with a growl. “Barely.”

“We’re just over a mile away from the Palace,” Moriarty assured, swallowing. “Do you think she can make it?”

“I don’t want to find out,” Ashcroft said, and barked for the driver to stop the coach. As soon as it stopped, he jumped out, clutching Charlotte in his arms, and got her up on the fastest horse, who didn’t look too happy about another ride at all, and kicked his heels into it.

He was going to kill Lachlan. He never had such passion to do it in all his life—although he came close when Lachlan clawed most of his face off. But all he could think about now was what must have happened. How alone and frustrated Charlotte was probably feeling—tired and weary and trapped… And how Lachlan surely approached like a handsome, mysterious stranger willing to save her from her plight…

Surely, Ashcroft didn’t feel too bad about having punished her from not reading the contract she so willingly signed, but he could understand the appeal Lachlan must have had. What he didn’t understand was how Lachlan could look at a young girl as innocent-looking and harmless as Charlotte and delve into her mouth and then forsake her to such a horrible fate.

When he reached the palace, he grabbed Charlotte down with him and rushed her through the doors. “Johns!” he yelled, knowing that Johns was one of the better healers who he was strongly allied with.

Johns, who was sitting down with a mug of ale, jumped up from his seat when all the other twenty-some-odd wizards gazed at him with interest as Ashcroft came into the room and pushed everything off of the first table he came across to lay Charlotte upon it, since all the couches had bodies seated in them. He’d broken several ornaments by doing so, but then he didn’t care. He checked Charlotte’s vitals again. Still, she was alive.

“What’s all this about? Is this your
apprentice
?” he asked, surprised. He looked her over like a man who was more impressed by her beauty than by the fact that she was quickly dying.

“Lachlan’s invoking a kissing poison on her for breach of contract,” he explained, and watched as Johns opened one of her eyes and looked down at it, grunting with concern.

“So this is who’s causing all the bother
!
” Johns said, and looked over at a servant and asked for particular herbs. As the servant was disappearing, he looked into Charlotte’s mouth and saw that most of her tongue and throat were also turning into a metallic color. “And put a quick step into it, too,” he added to the servant, whose brows wriggled with concern.

“Contract or no, you would never find one of MY apprentices kissing anyone I didn’t approve of,” a witch behind him mentioned snootily to her neighbor on the sofa. “They have a sense of propriety and
shame
.”

He ignored the witch because Charlotte’s body was shuddering. “Stay with me, Charlotte,” he both ordered and begged at once.

There was more thunder outside.

“Horrible day for travel,” grumbled a wizard in the room.

Finally, a servant ran in with the herbs Johns had ordered. The servant must have ran as fast as he could to procure them, but Johns still yanked them out of the lad’s hands and began tearing up and crushing the ingredients in his hands, sneering at the servant, “About bloody time! Move slowly enough? I should put a whip to your back!” He stuffed the herbs into Charlotte’s open mouth, then closed her lips with his hand and incanted over her face.

When Johns finished the incantation, he frowned with a shocked expression on his face at first. He looked up at Ashcroft, as if to say something apologetic, which made Ashcroft shake with fear.

But Johns was interrupted when Charlotte’s eyes fluttered open. They were still silver and mirror-like, but the small traces of her irises were visible underneath. She groaned both quietly and miserably.

Ashcroft let out a sigh of exhausted relief, holding her hand and then pressing her knuckles to his lips and then his forehead, where he left them, finding even the coldness of his fingers soothing on his flushed face.

There was silence behind him until he heard voices titter,
“…I do suspect that he’s sleeping with her.”

“Ashcroft’s basically a
monk;
there is no
chance at all of that
.”

“Look at him! He’s sleeping with his apprentice!
Or at least he wants to.
”

“Well, that would explain why he didn’t just kill her himself to protect his own interests. Rather than go through all this
trouble! Pulling me all the way out here. He’d better be sleeping with her, is all I can say, and it better be the best thing he’d ever done.”

“Quite scandalous, I say. I’ve never heard of such a thing. That’s why I believe the sexes should always be apart. Witches teaching witches, wizards teaching wizards… Or else, you get all this drama!”