Her Master's Hand Read online

  “You never told me what sort of witch you are,” Ashcroft told her, a stab of curiosity coming from nowhere.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  He squinted. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “If I ever knew, I don’t remember. I understand there’re different types and factions of wizards—papa told me that much. But he certainly didn’t tell me which particular type I was. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it.”

  Ashcroft shook his head. “But he still put the cuff on you. Did that come out of nowhere?”

  She shook her head. “No. He had threatened to put the cuff on me several times. I kept on thinking I could do spells without him noticing—just for fun. I’d gotten quite good at doing it unnoticed by him. But then when Damen came around courting, Hoel told him I was a witch. Damen asked Hoel to control me; he told him that witches would be hated by his people.”

  Ashcroft couldn’t help but laugh. “Yet Damen’s the one you think is a wizard?”

  “Don’t believe me if you want!” she snapped harshly, and he immediately stopped laughing. “I know what I saw! I know what he is! He wanted that cuff on me so he could control me!”

  Ashcroft chided himself for not letting the subject drop. He shouldn’t have goaded her. He let silence pass and eventually asked, trying to be conversational, “Your name has a strange meaning for a witch. Are you from the sea?”

  She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she merely said. “I’m a witch, not a mermaid.”

  Eventually, Maili fell asleep upon Ashcroft, noted by her head rolling back against his chest. He could breathe in her scent again. Smelling her made him feel like there was a memory just at the tip of his fingers, one he was having trouble grasping.

  He guided his arm around her waist to secure that she wouldn’t fall off while they made good time. Sunset came and then went, but he could still see by the light of the moon, especially because at this point the light was reflecting off of the sea on his right-hand side.

  Lights illuminated from windows in the far distance. Hoel’s palace looked very elegant, yet small, situated right at the mouth of the bay, lighted like a faerie castle and at the same time as impregnable as a Viking fortress. It looked appropriate for a god to be living there.

  Ashcroft shook his head and continued on the path, ignoring the nervousness that swirled around in his stomach. He had remembered this road because he had always avoided it in the past… now, there he was, on the way to face the dragon dead-on.

  A guard met him at the end of the road. The drive itself was fenced off, yet the guard at the gate obviously lived in the small adjoining cottage. He came out, looking grumpy to have been awakened, but then raised his lantern to see what Ashcroft carried. “My word! There she is!”

  “I am Ashcroft of Medwin, master of the Northland realm, archivist,” he told the guard. “I’m here to return the girl—”

  He realized that, as a wizard, he shouldn’t have introduced himself to a folk who have no trust of magi. Unfortunately, that moment of realization hadn’t come until after the guard turned mid-introduction and sprinted toward the palace as fast as his legs could carry him.

  “They don’t know I’m a witch,” she told him cockily. She sounded groggy, seeming to just wake up from her slumber. “Just in case you were thinking that you being a wizard would be considered old hat by now. They think I’m my father’s daughter.”

  He ground his teeth for a moment and muttered, “That would have been good to know.”

  “Would it have changed anything?” she asked with curiosity.

  “No,” he assured, even though that might have been just enough to make him not take her back to Hoel. He hadn’t thought, if Hoel had adopted her, he would have done so well to hide what she was from his own servants. How was it possible to keep what she was such a secret?

  “I’d run, if I were you,” she informed him simply, but instead of taking her advice, he ran her down the drive toward the house.

  While the guard ran down a steep hill to the bay, he raced along a lantern-lit path that gently sloped down the hill to the front of the palace. As he reached the front, the door suddenly crashed open and a very tall, very feminine silhouette shadowed the open door frame.

  It was the goddess, Anwen. Ashcroft smoothly dropped Maili down from the horse, then dropped to the ground himself and put his hands stretched out in front of him in the most submissive posture he could manage.

  There was clanking around him, as if guards were surrounding.

  This was good—if she was using guards to capture him, it meant that she wasn’t going to use any of her own powers.

  “Maili!” a womanly, ethereal voice thundered.

  Maili immediately simpered from next to him, “Mama, I—”

  “Get away from him,” she demanded severely. “Now!”

  The black little slippers that were next to his face stood their ground. “Please, mama… Don’t hurt him. He didn’t take me, he just brought me home.”

  Ashcroft nearly quaked with relief. He knew he would have been quite finished if she pretended she had been kidnapped to get herself out of a whipping. It was a possibility he hadn’t thought of until he heard the goddess speak, but now he felt a measure of gratefulness toward the little witch.

  There was a pause. “Get away from him,” Anwen finally repeated. Her voice wasn’t quite so terrifying now, however.

  Maili sighed as if everything was perfectly normal, merely irritating. “Mama, you don’t understand at all. There is no need for dramatics. Where’s papa?”

  “Looking for you with your new husband,” came a growling reply, the words coming in closer. Suddenly, shoes made of pink sea-pearl were in front of his eyes, and he could hear the two women embrace. “I was so worried about you, my love.”

  “Mama, please don’t be upset with me. I can explain,” Maili begged.

  “You’d better, that’s all I will say to you,” came the motherly, yet threatening, reply. “And you, wizard. What are you called?”

  “Ashcroft Medwin, my lady,” Ashcroft said, picking his face up slightly from the ground.

  “Ashcroft Medwin of the Northlands? That one? Or that Medwin in the south?” she demanded tensely.

  “Lachlan Medwin of the south has been dead for nigh twenty years now, my lady,” he said, deciding to leave out the fact that he was the one who killed his own brother. “My brother was… mad.”

  “I know,” she replied before puffing out a frustrated sigh and demanding, “Well, stand up so that I might have a good look at you.”

  Ashcroft pulled himself up slowly and looked up. He was stunned, suddenly realizing why it was that folk thought that Maili was Anwen’s daughter.

  Maili was a doll-sized replica of Anwen. Except for their eye color and the fact that Anwen stood at seven feet tall, while Maili was only probably five and a half, they looked extraordinarily alike.

  In fact, knowing that they were not related but looked that similar gave him chills from the sheer unnaturalness of it.

  Anwen stared down into him with her light green eyes flicking up and down. “We have no need for wizards here,” she told him. “But for bringing back my daughter safely, I offer you hospitality for the night nonetheless. Do not cast a single spell, however, or else I will put an end to you.”

  So he was allowed to stay, assumingly, until Hoel returned. He smiled politely and bowed his head. “Thank you, my lady. And I will not use my magic or do anything that would seem untoward,” he promised her. “I do not presume I am anywhere near as great as you or your husband.”

  “Good, because you are surely not,” she said crisply. She snapped her fingers and the guards, which were indeed surrounding him, raised their pikes toward the sky. She called a servant toward her and demanded he go and find Hoel and ‘the king’ and to tell him that Maili was returned to the palace.

  When the man scurried off, Anwen grabbed Maili tightly by her upper arm and then gestured another
servant toward Ashcroft. “See that Master Medwin is comfortable, then put a guard by his door. Alert me at once if he does anything… suspicious.” She gave him one more skeptical glare before dragging Maili through the front doors. It looked like she was hauling a naughty child off to bed, not a full-grown woman.

  “Master Ashcroft?” said a small, mortal servant who nervously stepped up to him. Ashcroft pulled his attention off of the women entering the house and looked down at him. “Follow me.”

  Ashcroft gestured for the man to lead the way, and followed, trying not to seem too excited. Deep down, however, he was reeling. He was really inside the home of the great Hoel.

  And he was going to live to talk about it.

  Chapter Four

  Maili was nervous as she awaited Anwen to enter. It had been awhile since Anwen had propelled her into her bedroom and ordered the maids to clean her and prepare her for bed. Afterward she had been scrubbed head to toe and dressed in a nightgown, but then her servants left her and she was now alone, sitting on the edge of her bed. There was nothing to do except pick at a cold plate of meats and cheeses that had been sent up from the kitchens, despite the fact that her stomach couldn’t decide if she was starving or wouldn’t be hungry ever again.

  She wasn’t sure how angry Anwen was; she hadn’t had time to judge before she was dropped off in her bedroom, but from the few moments she had with Anwen, she could guess that the only reason Anwen left her in the first place was so she wouldn’t kill Maili from pure anger.

  The door to her bedroom opened and closed and Anwen marched around the corner and into plain sight.

  Maili swallowed. Despite the hour she had away from Anwen, it was clear that she was still quite… pissed. Maili’s shoulders bunched and she backed herself up on her bed. “Y-You have to let me explain,” she said, trying to keep herself from stammering with fear. She realized then that Anwen had no desire to listen, only the desire to punish her.

  “Maili, you never know when to stop,” Anwen told her, everything in her tone giving way to exasperation and impatience.

  Anwen sat on the bed next to her and grabbed Maili’s arm. Maili screeched and pulled back, not that it did her any good; Anwen was a giant in comparison to herself. Within seconds, Maili was exactly where Anwen wanted her; over her skirted lap with Maili’s dressing gown pulled up over her waist.

  “Mama, don’t! Please! I beg you! Just listen to me!”

  Maili might have well been crying to something that didn’t have ears. Anwen began spanking her earnestly with her hand, which was something she hadn’t bothered doing in a very long time. Not that Anwen had ever hesitated to chasten Maili like a child; she’d been doing that since Maili had first been taken in. But normally Anwen used a paddle or a hairbrush. “Your papa is going to kill you when he gets home, and I don’t blame him! You are in for a world of pain! I have never been so humiliated in my life!”

  Although Anwen wielded no paddle, probably only because Maili was obviously bruised from her chastisement by Damen, her hand was not a relief. Maili began to scream in protest, kicking and flailing her arms around like a cat about to get thrown into a tub of water.

  She could barely gasp for breath even as she cried, “Mama! Don’t! Please!”

  She couldn’t tell Anwen she was sorry this time. She had been sorry when she’d drunk Anwen’s best wine, or broken her favorite vase, or not done any of her lessons, or pretended to be sick so she didn’t have to do her chores or classes. This time, she wasn’t sorry, not at all.

  “Damen’s an evil wizard who beat me! He’s trying to fool you! Believe me! I had to run for my life!” she bawled out. She had hoped that Anwen would stop spanking her and just listen.

  Instead, she got a snort full of disdain.

  “You and your stories. I’m sick of it, Maili! Stop telling tales and throwing tantrums just to get your way!”

  Maili’s hopes were dashed just that quickly. Now she felt anger boiling in the pit of her stomach. She might have told a small, white lie here and there, but she wasn’t known as a liar. Didn’t she deserve the benefit of the doubt? “I’m not lying!” she cried, and she was spanked even harder. She yelped and screamed, but it kept on. “This isn’t fair!” she screamed.

  Anwen continued to spank her, her hand coming down in firm, measured swats. Her voice was angry as well, yet not sharp and shrill like Maili’s was. “It’s not fair! We’ve given you everything, we’ve saved you, kept you; we took you in as family! And now when we match you up with a perfectly fine mate, you give us nothing but treachery and complaints! You don’t have the choice anymore! You are married, do you understand? It is done!”

  Maili began to choke on the air she was beginning to sob around. She was so overpowered, she didn’t even have the will to fight anymore. This was awful, and there was nothing to be done for it except to hope beyond hope that Ashcroft would meet Damen and that he would know a wizard in disguise as he claimed he could.

  It was a truly sad state of things, indeed, if Maili’s hopes all rested on a scarred, grumpy, know-it-all, unsociable wizard! What had her world come to?

  “Keep crying,” Anwen invited over Maili’s refreshed amount of cries. She had kept Maili from reaching behind her to shield her own bottom. Now, Maili’s face was close to the floor, her hand was pinned to the small of her back, and she was begging and crying insensibly. “Let the servants know what happens to naughty girls in this house! I won’t put up with it, Maili!”

  “Forgive me, mama!” she found herself pleading. She was done with pain. She couldn’t take this humiliation any longer. “Forgive me!”

  The spanking finally slowed, and the silence in the room seemed to be roaring to her, ringing in her ears. “Of course I forgive you,” Anwen finally told her, then let her up and folded her up on her lap.

  Maili, so thankful that her punishment seemed to be over, gripped Anwen’s dress. Anwen kissed the top of Maili’s forehead and stroked her back. “No more games,” Anwen told her.

  Maili, angry, hurt, and feeling the sting of injustice, merely continued to cry. She couldn’t argue, she couldn’t continue getting spanked. She needed air, she needed this respite. Anwen eventually put Maili down and then folded down the corner of the bed linens. “Come on, darling,” she said. “Get under the covers. You need your rest.”

  Maili sniffled, but crawled under the covers. Anwen pulled them around her body. “I hate to punish you, my dove, but you have to understand that things will feel better to you in time. This tragedy is only as large as you make it. Luckily, this offense was forgiven by Damen. He still calls you wife. He’s a very, very patient man. That’s one of the reasons why Hoel had chosen him for you; he’s temperate. Just don’t try to push him—he won’t put up with the insult of you refusing him forever.”

  Oh, if only it was so easy to get Damen to just denounce her. Maili knew that it would never happen. He knew that he was stronger, that she was a means to an end. Damen would have her in the end if he had any way to achieve it. The only true way to get him out of her life was to expose him to Hoel. There had to be a way to make her foster parents see the truth!

  Anwen bent over and kissed Maili’s cheek. “Sleep well, my darling.”

  That was easier said than done; this was the room where Damen spanked her to bruising for the sport of it. It was where she was nearly raped. Nothing was safe in this room. Damen might even be there when she awoke.

  It was truly a testament to how hard this day had been when she found sleep nonetheless.

  * * *

  Hoel read over the note in his hands one more time by candlelight. He found himself filled with both relief and exceptional fury. How could Maili have run away in the first place?

  “What news?” Damen’s eyebrow twitched with curiosity, though he was too well-mannered to try to look over Hoel’s shoulder or reach for the letter. It had been addressed to Hoel, and was in his wife’s fanciful, swirling handwriting.

  “Maili has been returned
home,” Hoel told him. “We should call back the men,” he said, nodding toward the forest. He told his man to shoot a lighted arrow up into the sky to signal that she’d been found.

  Damen’s eyes widened with surprise, and then he said, “Excellent. Is she alright?”

  “Yes, that is until I get my hands on the chit!” Hoel added with a low, animal-like snarl. “I am sorry for what she’s done to you.”

  “There is no need for apologies,” Damen said, bowing his head. “I’m only glad she is safe. I should have made sure that she was in a better mental state before I let myself fall asleep last night. You know how girls can be after their wedding night. I don’t think she’s well in the head—it seemed to be all quite a shock to her.”

  Hoel might have blushed, if his skin wasn’t a dark red to begin with. He hated that those in his belonging might be considered mad, though he couldn’t blame Damen for thinking so. “It’s true, women can be odd on their wedding night.” He recalled that Anwen was completely innocent in the marriage bed when she and Hoel had first been bound together. He had paid a fortune of gold for her, and Anwen had been less than happy about the match at the time.

  Now, Hoel believed he finally had his lady’s regard. It was hard at first—Anwen wasn’t used to living in this realm. She had come from the realm of Atlantis—it was gentler there, more intellectual and blessed. In comparison, Westeryn had seemed to her like a hard life indeed, although it was the one Hoel had been used to.

  “It’s all my fault,” Damen fretted, looking honestly ashamed with himself and shaking his head. “I’ll make sure to keep a better eye on her, to read her better in the future. I promise that she’ll grow to love and trust me. She’s just a little… uneager for me at the moment.”

  “That will pass,” Hoel agreed, pleased that Damen was so patient about the matter. Honestly, Hoel would have been mad as a hornet if it was Anwen who’d disappeared the morning after he’d first bed her! He would have held her under lock and key after dragging her back home by her ear.