Rapture. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ was clothed in the dark violet uniform of a temple priest.

      Chapter Two

      “Well, somebody fucked up,” she informed him with her usual snide attitude. “I’ve been a slave for the past eight years, and today I was sold to someone else. I assume that would be you. You can call it a dowry or what have you, but it’s still buying and peddling flesh without that person’s permission!”

      Magnus wanted to reply, but he was so infuriated he didn’t dare speak. He looked at the collar once more, as well as the anklets he had only just noticed under her skirt when she had pressed one to him. They were plain gold rings at first sight, but with ominous dread he looked closer, lifting her hair and seeing the circuit lock in the back.

      No one has touched me appropriately in eight years.

      That tidbit of information and others like it were beginning to fill in the picture for him. He realized he had touched her again without asking and quickly dropped her hair and backed off.

      “Tell me that is not a hurish,” he demanded of her. “Hurish are for controlling cattle. Livestock. Not people!”

      “Well, it was all the same to my aunt and uncle,” she spat back at him. “I guess they left it on for you as a gift. The remote is probably around here somewhere.” She affected looking around herself. “No? Maybe the guards have it.”

      “They controlled you with electrical impulses?” Magnus had never heard of anything like it. Not in his society! The Nightwalkers were supposed to be advanced, sophisticated people. The Shadowdwellers were, unfortunately, considered the most juvenile of all supernatural species because their culture was still only a decade past picking themselves up out of the ashes of civil war. That, and they were tattooed with a centuries-old reputation of being mischief makers, causing a whole lot of trouble to the rest of the world. However, he and the reigning household had spent thirty years cultivating a newer and more ordered version of their society. They had dissolved the infighting clans, elevating good leaders into the renewed political body of the Senate. Everyone in the city was provided for. Education, shelter, heat, food, religion. As with any society, he knew things slipped through the cracks, but…

      Slavery?

      “No,” she retorted tartly. “They used electrical impulses to keep me on the property. They used electro-shock to fry discipline into my ass. Ask your guards if you don’t believe me. They watched Winifred do it to me right before we left.”

      Magnus didn’t need to ask. If there was one thing he was knowledgeable of, it was the truth. Truth, in fact, was his special gift. With just a touch, he could compel the truth from anyone. It would replay in both their minds with impartial sight. Even those who didn’t know they were lying to themselves couldn’t hide from his power. Although he wasn’t touching her at the moment, she was radiating the bald honesty of what she was saying in a rather beautiful sort of defiance that fed the truth into him with force.

      He reached a hand toward her, saw her almond-shaped eyes narrow the tiniest fraction, and stopped to bend closer to her.

      “Can I touch you to take these evil things off you?” he asked her softly.

      “Are you really a priest?” she asked with suspicion as she looked over his uniform. She was searching for some kind of flaw that would reveal a deception, he realized.

      “Yes. I am a priest. And you, little spitfire, are going to be my handmaiden.”

      That made her laugh. She started with a soft snort, but then belted out enthused amusement that might have made him smile if he wasn’t so appalled by all he was seeing and learning.

      “Okay, first of all, I am clearly not religious material, M’jan…um…”

      “Magnus. M’jan Magnus.”

      He watched that hit her like a gut punch, and this time he couldn’t help smiling a little when she giggled in a fit until her face flushed under the smooth cappuccino coloring of her skin. She brushed back the heavy length of her peculiar-colored hair with one hand while she waved the other in her face as if to help herself take in oxygen.

      “Okay, baby,” she gasped, still laughing so that her eyes sparked and glittered with her humor. “If you were going to pick someone to pretend to be, why in Light would you pick the head priest of Sanctuary? I mean, come on! Magnus is the most powerful priest there is, both politically and physically, I’ve heard. He runs everything and is practically married to Darkness Herself!” Here the humor stopped cold and she slowly stood up to give him a positively evil look of hatred, proving all of her laughter a lie. “And M’jan Magnus has had a handmaiden for two centuries. He certainly doesn’t need another, and he certainly wouldn’t want it to be some low-born piece-of-filth slave girl who never went to school in her life!”

      So much rage.

      Magnus had never seen so much anger in the blood and spirit of a woman as he did when he looked into this troubled and magnificently powerful young girl. Slave? No. She had never capitulated, so slave was not the term for her. Captive, perhaps, but this woman was no man’s slave.

      Yet, she had offered herself to him.

      “My handmaiden died six weeks ago,” he said simply, feeling nothing would be constructive in elaborating on those circumstances with her. In fact, the less she knew, the more it would content him. At least for now.

      “Died.” She echoed the word, folding her arms under her breasts and creating a shelf that held her in enhanced shape. Magnus let his eyes drift briefly, but he took in the entirety of her curving body. He suspected she was thin for her generous height, but just the same, she curved like a back-mountain highway. There was a cut and sweep to her waist that accented her hips and, he suspected, her backside as well. He couldn’t see at the moment. Between that and those rather hefty breasts, he realized this was definitely a full-grown woman he was dealing with.

      He had thought she was younger.

      “There’s got to be—”

      She was cut off when someone cleared a throat nearby. She jumped in her own skin, and without thinking, Magnus reached out to settle her with a calming touch on her arm.

      “I asked not to be disturbed,” Magnus snapped at the young guard.

      “Apologies, M’jan Magnus,” he said quickly, touching a spread palm to his heart and bowing with deep respect. “Chancellor Tristan has arrived, requesting an emergent audience with you.”

      Daenaira sat down hard, grateful the chaise was still right behind her.

      Magnus turned to look at her, those strangely compelling eyes of gold telling her so many things in one sudden jolt she felt as if her brain was on overload.

      Truth. It was the truth. He really was M’jan Magnus, the greatest priest in all the history of Sanctuary, leader of the great temple of Darkness and Light. Her eyes dropped to the katana secured to his waist in a weapons belt. There was a pouch in the rear holding a set of bolos. On the opposite hip there were two other hard leather pouches. These, she suspected, held some sort of hand-thrown missiles like saw-stars or shurikens.

      Magnus was also renowned in their world for being the most ruthless warrior protector of the ’scapes. Shadowscape, Dreamscape, or Realscape—any ’Dweller who violated СКАЧАТЬ