“You enjoy this far too much,” Rikiar rumbled. She was afraid he was going to stop, but he did not. He spanked long and fairly hard, until her rump glowed red and she no longer felt quite so irritable and frustrated.
When he stopped, Aisling was panting and squirming over his lap, her bottom quite sore, but her temper much more settled.
“Are you ready to apologize to Helsa?” Rikiar ran his palm over her heated cheeks with an affectionate touch in which she could feel his forgiveness.
“She is the one who should be apologizing to me,” Aisling said. “She hit me for no reason at all.”
“Helsa never hits anybody for no reason,” Rikiar said. “Maybe you should try to understand the reason.”
“You’re taking her side because she is beautiful.”
Rikiar’s brows rose. “If beauty were the measure of truth, I would choose your side, Aisling. But this is a matter of right and wrong and you, my darling, are so far in the wrong you would not know the right if it smacked your gorgeous bottom.”
Aisling lost the battle not to smile, even though Rikiar was once more swatting her. He thought she was beautiful. He thought she was more beautiful than Helsa, even.
“Now, are you ready to make your apologies?”
“Yes,” Aisling finally said. Rikiar wasn’t going to stop insisting and his insistence was beginning to become quite painful.
“Come along then,” he said, helping her to stand and right herself.
They returned to the ring, where Helsa was no longer alone. She had her arms wrapped around someone, a woman with very short dark hair who was wearing the same sort of leathers a man would. The short-haired woman was not nearly as tall as Helsa, but had a pretty, good-natured round face covered in a smile.
“Who is that?” Aisling asked when they were still at enough of a distance not to be heard, and for Helsa not to have noticed their approach.
“That is Dalon,” Rikiar said. “Helsa’s wife, or close enough to it.”
“But Dalon is a woman.”
“She is,” Rikiar said.
Aisling cocked her head to the side and looked up at Rikiar. “A woman may marry a woman?”
“I do not interfere in love,” Rikiar replied. “If two women or two men wish to be bonded, that is their affair.”
“You didn’t tell me Helsa was a lover of women.”
“It did not occur to me, as she will not be your lover, but your tutor. Do not worry. Unlike Mara, Helsa has the discipline to keep her tongue away from your sweet honeypot.”
Aisling blushed. “That’s not what I meant…”
“Isn’t it?” Rikiar was teasing. A broad smile was spreading across his handsome face. Aisling much preferred that to his scowl. She wished he would kiss her, but it was not the time for kissing. It was the time for apologizing and feeling foolish.
“Helsa!” Rikiar called her name, causing her to draw away from her partner and cast a glance in his direction. “I have your student.”
“She did not wish to be my student,” Helsa said, turning with her arm still around Dalon’s shoulders. “She was very clear about that.”
Aisling tried not to squirm visibly as Rikiar, Dalon, and Helsa’s gazes fell on her. A princess was supposed to be graceful and aloof wherever she went, but Aisling felt more like a naughty peasant caught stealing apples.
“Aisling was mistaken when she told you that,” Rikiar drawled, putting his hand on the small of Aisling’s back and pushing her forward so she might face Helsa more directly. “She would like to apologize.”
“Sorry,” Aisling said, feeling the dearth of her apology, but not knowing what else to say. Her tongue seemed too large and too awkward to speak more eloquently.
“For?” Rikiar prompted her.
“For being disrespectful and rude,” Aisling said, wishing the ground would just swallow her up. She could feel Dalon’s curious gaze on her too. There were three people, all witnessing her prostrate herself verbally before Helsa. Aisling did not like it. Though she had not spent much time with people in the palace, those she had spent time with knew proper respect for her position. Even in Ravenblack Village, Mara usually respected her position. Rikiar was undoubtedly higher than her in the food chain, so Aisling did not mind obeying him, but this Helsa and Dalon? In Aisling’s old life, they would have been servants, lower ranked protectors. She would never have had to apologize to them. Being humbled in such a manner was quite unpleasant.
“Put your hand out.”
Helsa repeated her earlier order and Aisling’s heart skipped a beat. Now Rikiar would see how mean the warrior was. Deciding to obey Helsa, Aisling put her hand out and was unexpectedly rewarded when Helsa took her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of her reddened knuckles.
“I accept your apology, Lady Aisling,” Helsa said. “But you must learn that in this ring, I am queen and executioner.”
“Executioner?” Aisling squeaked.
“Try not to frighten her,” Rikiar drawled. “All Helsa means is that while she has you for these lessons, you must obey her as you would obey me.”
“Oh,” Aisling said. “Very well.”
It was not as ‘very well’ as all that of course, but Aisling was intelligent enough to know that further argument on the subject was not likely to go in her favor.
“You are not happy,” Helsa observed when Rikiar had departed. “Do you truly not want to learn the handling of a blade? Or how to protect yourself? Do you think there will always be a man about to save you?”
“I know there will not always be a man about to protect me,” Aisling replied. “I also know, even if there is a man to protect me, there may be more men who wish to harm me, against which one man can do nothing. I did not come to this place by chance. I was kidnapped and sold here.”
“And you are in luck that it is Rikiar who purchased you,” Helsa said. “For there are many men who would have done unspeakable things to your beauty. Every woman should know how to protect herself and her brood.”
Aisling nodded in agreement. It was the easiest way to stop the lecture that she did not disagree with so much as have complete and utter disinterest in. Protecting oneself was a fool’s game as far as Aisling was concerned. Fate held everyone in her hands and decided when they should slip through her fingers. Poking about with bits of metal only made it more likely that you’d fall off fate’s palm and tumble into oblivion; at least that was how Aisling saw it.
“I’m just here for the pretty things,” she said, feigning a simple smile.
Helsa snorted. “Then we will start with a pretty blade.” She procured an iron dagger that was not at all pretty according to Aisling’s tastes. It was too plain and brutal looking. Even the leather-wrapped handle failed to attract her interest.
“The best way to avoid cutting yourself is to keep your body away from the blade,” Helsa began to explain.
“So I would imagine,” Aisling agreed dryly. Really, there was very little to all this fighting. The pointed end of the blade went into one’s assailant. Pretending it was any more complicated than that was a waste of time.
Helsa lowered the weapon and fixed Aisling with a dangerous look that made the tingling from Rikiar’s recent spanking increase several fold. “Am I boring you, princess?”
“Well,” Aisling said, trying to be diplomatic. “It is a fairly simple concept, is it not?”
“The concept is simple, yes. The execution is not so easy.” Helsa flipped the dagger over in her leather-clad hand and offered Aisling the hilt. “Do your worst.” She stood back and waited for Aisling to do something. Aisling had no earthly idea what that was supposed to be.
“You are unarmed.”
“I am never unarmed,” Helsa smiled. “Go on, show me how simple it is.”
“I have no desire to harm you,” Aisling said, feeling the unfamiliar weight of the hilt in her hand.
“You will not harm me. That I promise you.”
“The blade is sharp.”
“It is,” Helsa agreed. “Now, try to attack me.”
She may as well have told Aisling to grow wings and take to the skies. Aisling did not have an aggressive bone in her body. She had absolutely no intention of trying to attack Helsa.
“Perhaps this is too much for a princess,” Helsa sneered, reaching to take the blade from her. Aisling’s temper sparked. She lifted the handle just as Helsa reached for it and through some twisting movement she did not entirely understand so much as instinctively perform, managed to cut through the back of Helsa’s gauntlet and scratch along the top of her wrist a good three inches.
Helsa’s gauntlet fell to the ground. The woman herself drew back with an expression of surprise. Not pain, Aisling noticed, just surprise. A thin trickle of blood began to seep from the scratch. Helsa smiled.
“Perhaps not too much after all,” she admitted.
“I am so sorry!” Aisling dropped the knife and went to her knees, quite horrified at what she had done.
“Do not apologize,” Helsa said. “You did as you were told. I was the foolish one, to reach for a blade rather than waiting for it to be offered.”
“I cut you,” Aisling said, addressing Helsa’s boots.
“You did more than that,” Helsa said on high. “You drew first blood. Not bad for a spoiled little princess.”
Aisling looked up to see that Helsa was smiling. The warrior reached down, offering Aisling a hand up.
“Never apologize for doing as you were told,” she said, drawing Aisling to her feet. “Now, shall we review the lesson?”
“I don’t want to,” Aisling said. “You said I wouldn’t hurt you, but I did. You’re bleeding.”
“It’s a scratch,” Helsa said. “You didn’t hurt me. I hurt myself.”
“Word games don’t change facts,” Aisling replied. “I hurt you. I didn’t even mean to.”
“Now you will learn to do what you did by accident on purpose.”
“I don’t want to.” Aisling crossed her arms over her chest and stood sullenly.
“One step forward, two back with you,” Helsa sighed. “Never mind. You can watch. Go sit down.”
Aisling went and sat down on a wooden bench. Dalon took her place with Helsa, though first she bent her head and pressed her lips next to the wound, kissing it better. Aisling smiled a little. Helsa and Dalon were very sweet together and Helsa’s expression softened a great deal when she looked down at her partner.
Then they began sparring. Aisling was entranced. She had occasionally seen men training from her tower, but they were so far away she could barely make them out. Seeing the dance of war so close was quite thrilling. She had always imagined fighting as being a brutal bashing, but there was a sinuous quality to the way Helsa and Dalon moved. When one went high, the other went low. One went left, the other went right. They were working with bare steel and did not seem to be deliberately avoiding one another, and yet they remained completely unscathed even as metal flashed and occasionally sung when meeting its partner.
She noticed too, how beautiful the women themselves looked. Aisling had only ever known one kind of female beauty, the kind that was cosseted and powdered and painted, the kind that slept in silken sheets and was concerned with the minutest details of appearance. Helsa and Dalon each had their own kind of beauty, an athletic appeal of strength and vigor and valor that was most entrancing.
“They’re good, aren’t they?” Mara rested her elbow on Aisling’s shoulder. Where she had been lurking, Aisling had no idea.
“Yes,” Aisling agreed.
“I see Dalon is ahead,” Mara gestured toward the gauntlet on the ground.
“No,” Aisling said, feeling a little proud. “That was me.”
“It was not,” Mara guffawed. “You are such a liar, princess!”
“I am not lying,” Aisling insisted. “You can ask Helsa herself.”
“I will,” Mara said. “And if you are lying, I will tell Rikiar and he will thrash you.”
“You do not have the authority to have Rikiar thrash me,” Aisling replied. “And it was me.”
“Was not,” Mara replied.
“Are you two bickering, or paying attention?”
Helsa had stopped and was scowling at the pair of them. When she began striding in their direction, Mara curtsied quickly and made an exit, leaving Aisling to Helsa’s displeasure.
“This is a lesson, princess,” she said. “You will mind it.”
“I was…”
Aisling stopped talking when Helsa lifted her gloved hand. “I do not wish to hear your excuses,” she said. “Stand up and turn around. Put your hands on your knees.”
Aisling sighed, but obeyed. She was not at all surprised when Helsa lifted her skirts, nor was she strictly surprised when the warrior’s hard, leather-clad hand stung her cheeks. She was, however, somewhat startled by the fast burn unleashed upon her tender hide. Leather on skin was much more formidable than skin on skin, Aisling discovered as she yelped and danced in place, her bottom wriggling red as Helsa spanked her over and over again, holding her in place with one hand bunched in her skirts, holding them high and out of the way almost as if they were a tail.
“You will pay attention to all lessons,” Helsa lectured. “I do not give them for my benefit, but for yours, understand?”
“Yes!” Aisling squealed her agreement. Making matters worse was the fact that she could see Mara peeking out from behind a nearby tree. Mara deserved this spanking, not she, but she was taking it for the both of them.
Helsa stopped and cupped her hot left cheek with one hand. “I do not care what servants and strays come about the place, you must mind me.” She lifted her hand away and returned it with a hard slap that echoed around the ring—as did Aisling’s plaintive cry. “I have no time for the spoiled or the lazy. When you are with me, you will do as you are told, you will work hard, and you will learn—or else you will feel the consequences.”
She slapped Aisling again, this time on the other cheek. It went a long way to evening up the burn Aisling was feeling, but also made her anguish double. Rikiar’s spankings were often hard and long, but they felt quite different than Helsa’s. Maybe it was because Rikiar showed her kindness. Maybe it was because they were attracted to one another. All Aisling truly knew was that standing for her spanking and receiving it from a thoroughly merciless warrior woman was much more painful than she liked.
Tears began to collect in the corners of her eyes and run down her cheeks. It didn’t make any difference. Of course, Helsa didn’t care about tears. If Helsa didn’t care about bleeding her own blood, why would she care for the tears of a princess?