Читать книгу Rapture - Jacquelyn Frank - Страница 10

“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 moral law or the martial rules of those dimensions, he hunted them down and, usually, destroyed them. They were called Sinners, and the gods knew they deserved what they got if they did something to earn a warrior like Magnus on their trail.

But something had happened. She could feel it in a wicked, crawling sensation under her skin. Dae had no idea why she felt this way or what it really meant, but she knew that something had tainted the power of the man standing before her.

“Please, K’yindara, sit for a moment while I meet with Tristan. I will return as soon as I am able and we can finish our discussion,” he said, a soothing hand gesture toward her seeming to be an aborted move at touching her with reassurance, but he remembered in time. For the first time, it began to sink in to Daenaira that things were not at all what she had thought they were going to be.

“K’yindara?” she echoed numbly.

“Well, it will do until you feel ready to tell me your name.” He turned to the guard, who was staring at her with gaping curiosity. Magnus snapped his fingers to gain the guard’s focus, the sharp sound reproving all on its own without the dark scowl that accompanied it. “See Tristan into my office. I will be right behind you.”

“Yes, M’jan,” the guard said respectfully before bowing slightly and then hurrying out of the room. When he was gone, Magnus turned to look at her once more, his features shadowed with hard thoughts she wished she could hear.

“Take this time, K’yindara, to relax and reflect on the understanding that I am not here to hurt you. The details of your staying here will be our first topic on my return. Until then, try and rest easy.”

She watched him hesitate a moment, and then he turned and left the room at a clipped step. Daenaira exhaled a long, slow breath as she slowly began to take in the room around her.

“Holy Light,” she swore softly as she did.

The room was gigantic, really. Lined in dark maroon glass tiles with beautiful etchings, the walls and ceiling seemed to stretch above her and made her feel a little small in the middle of it all. She was in a bath. The floor that sprawled beneath her was patterned in a tight mosaic of maroon, jet, and golden tiles. The gold was an accent along edges of the surface wherever it was broken by objects or walls. Except for when it disappeared into the water of the enormous tiled bath sunk into the floor before her.

Bath was less appropriate than pool.

The huge expanse of water ran up to and then under the far wall, making her believe it was fed naturally somehow. She got up on her feet, wobbling in unreliable steps to the spot where Magnus had washed his face.

Holy shit! She had spit in the face of a priest!

“Oh gods,” she groaned. “They definitely let you burn in Light in the afterlife for something like that.” Not that she was a heavily religious woman, but she believed that much at the very least.

She shrugged it off nervously, realizing she couldn’t change anything now. Then she looked down into the water. It was glittering gold. Gold tile lined it completely, except where she could see little lines of jet demarcating a set of stairs leading down into the steaming pool right next to her. A shelf of tile had been constructed nearby, a little above water level, and here there were bathing products like soap and shampoo. Fresh cloths stood ready, as did the towels to dry off afterward. All of that hot water and space…just to take a bath.

She looked around and saw no sign of the bed from earlier, or the blood she’d shed. But there were two alcoves on opposite ends of the room. Hurrying as best she could on persistently unsteady legs, she made her way to where her sense of direction said she’d come from. Sure enough, through the alcove was an archway leading into a vast bedroom, furnished and decorated in midnight blue and gold. The colors, she realized, of a handmaiden’s uniform. The low bed was plush and beautiful, its coverlet made of rich velvet in midnight blue, intricate knotted designs embroidered around it in gold thread. Velvet and satin pillows filled most of the large surface of the bed, and she guessed she was supposed to fill the rest. There was everything else a woman could need. Vanity, dressers, a closet and clothing preparation area that included a steam ironing system and several bookcases. There was an adorable conversation area in front of a fireplace. A fireplace! Another one of those things only the wealthy could own because of the complications of venting such a thing in an underground city. Then again, if she was in Sanctuary, they were on the level just below the surface. Or, at least, they could be. Sanctuary was probably several levels on its own. The royal palace was also on the upper levels, as were the Senate and many of the noble houses and merchant services.

The city was miles wide and very deep, a convoluted arrangement of space, pathways, and everything a city needed. But every Shadowdweller knew that their entire society was run from this level. Religious, political, and financial. If it was key to their culture’s survival, it happened here. The only exception, she supposed, was the hydroponics factory in the very bowels of everything. Since it was the only place where light was used, it was locked down and secured and only those brave enough to work close to that many lightbulbs were allowed in. Of course, not while the lights for growing the foods they cultivated were on. That would be the equivalent of an accident at a nuclear plant for their species. Anyone caught inside when those lights came on would literally be toast.

Dae noticed a lot of bare surfaces on the shelves and little tables in the room. This included large gaps in the books on the shelves. The mantel was bare of any trinkets or décor. Anything of a personal nature or touch had been completely removed. This, she realized, had been a dead woman’s room. Magnus’s previous handmaiden. Dead six weeks, all sign of her packed up and shipped off, and now…now here she was, supposedly to take her place.

No way. Nuh-uh. Not her. She was a lot of things, but a holy woman wasn’t one of them. Besides, it was just the same as the past eight years! Handmaidens were servants to the priests they were assigned to. They waited on them hand and foot, as she understood it, like some sort of religious geisha, and were bound into that servitude for their natural lives. There was no leaving until…

She looked at those bare places again and felt a terrible sense of panic clawing up her chest. It was just a prettier prison, she realized. She’d been sold into slavery all over again, except this time it was publicly acceptable. Light, they even called it an honor and a privilege! Like an obscene lottery, women wept and screamed for joy when they were “chosen.”

How in Light had she been chosen? No one had even known she was alive except Winifred, Friedlow, and their twisted friends who also had slaves and had as much to lose as they did if they ratted them out.

“This is insane,” she whispered to the starkly lovely room.

She turned around to look at the exit on the other side of the bath. Shuffling and limping quickly across the room, Daenaira burst through the archway and into…

Whoa.

Three times the size of her large room, there was no mistaking that this was Magnus’s bedroom. Not for a minute. Firstly, there was an entire corner filled with sword racks and weaponry displays, as well as everything needed to care for them. Like the metal polish she had smelled on him earlier. Sharpening stones, hammers, cloths, and more. The displays were artwork in and of themselves, made of rich woods or marble. However, none of it compared to the weapons themselves. Whoever supplied Magnus with his weapons was a true artist. From scroll-worked pommels and woven wrapped hilts to gleaming etched metal in the finest, minuscule detail, she had never seen anything like it. The sheer variety was breathtaking, and she didn’t even know what half of the things were.

Checking if she heard anyone approaching, Dae figured it would be a while before he returned. After all, he was counseling the Chancellor. The very thought made her giggle nervously. Yeah, right. She was going to go out in public by the side of a man who counseled the royal twins. Drenna, what a mad idea! A handmaiden who cursed a blue streak, belched when she ate, and could sing bawdy limericks with the best of them, courtesy of the barroom her mum had run before her death. She’d practically grown up sitting on a bar rail and stool. She’d gotten drunk for the first time at the tender age of seven because some idiots had thought it would be funny to give her a drink every time her mother disappeared into the back room. Four years later her mum had died when one of the warring clans had decided to burn the place down because they knew they were losing the war and they felt like doing as much damage as possible on the way down. Then she had ended up with her “loving family,” and now here.

She walked to a glass display cabinet that seemed reserved for throwing weapons. Sharp metal gleamed in everything from the plain to the intricate. Shurikens, saw-stars, bolos, glaves, arrow-stars, clockers, and about a dozen she couldn’t even identify. There was even a boomerang, the inside edges of which had been made blade sharp, which meant you could only catch it on the outside edge or you’d lose a hand. Dangerous stuff. Deadly stuff.

She realized this meant Magnus probably knew how to use every single killing blade there. Light, there was even a case of handguns. The human weapons were deadly dangerous to use for their breed. The muzzle flash alone burned their retinas and blinded them, limiting how many shots they could get off with accuracy. It also burned if you didn’t wear gloves, she’d heard. It was why blades were the weapon of choice for Shadowdwellers, even in this technological age. A decade after the end of the war, however, swords seemed to be mostly a show of fashion. For the common man, at least. For men like Magnus, it was a calling.

Dae moved to a velvet-covered tray and couldn’t resist peeking under the cloth.

“Holy Light,” she gasped, folding back the fabric and displaying the silver tray and the wicked set of sai and daggers on it. They were breathtaking and just about the most beautiful weapons she’d ever seen—and growing up a bar rat in the middle of a war, she’d seen a heck of a lot. Licking her lips, she picked up the heavy steel with a sense of reverence. The leather-wrapped hilts were brand new, showing no wear whatsoever. The counterweights in the pommels were round and just heavy enough to perfectly balance the triple-pronged weapons. The long center prongs weren’t sharpened, although they weren’t usually meant to be. The two shorter ones, however, were frighteningly sharp points. That was odd, considering they were meant for guarding or to catch a longer blade. She’d always been told they were a weapon of defense more than anything, but certain masters could do anything with them they set their minds to.

Dae turned one in her hand, her fingers fumbling a little since it had been so long. However, after a minute she was twirling the weight back and forth in a nimble touch, just the way Crazy Conrad had taught her day after day as he had played around with her through several beers. She actually smiled when she remembered him laughing at her when she’d been seven years old trying to manipulate steel weighing more than her whole arm. But she had grown. Fast. And because she had played with sai and other sharp toys to the amusement of the warriors kicking back around her, she’d grown strong.

“You need a lighter weight.”

The sai dropped onto the tray with a crash and she whirled around to face the priest. Gods! He hadn’t made a single sound! It was astounding someone so big could move that quietly.

And then she remembered to be insulted.

“I do not,” she snapped. Then a bit primly, “I just need some practice.”

Drenna, she was a proud little thing, Magnus thought as her stubborn chin rose and she tried to look down her nose and meet his eyes at the same time. Interesting trick, he mused, considering he was a fair eight inches taller than she was.

And he wasn’t about to let her think she could get away with being stubborn unless she was right. She was going to need to defend herself in a great many ways in the future, and it was best she learned how to choose the best battles.

“A pound, at least,” he corrected her as he reached past her to neatly rearrange the tray she had disturbed and then cover it back up. “Heavy enough to guard, but a bit lighter so you don’t limit what you can do with it. You can use heavier ones to practice with to build your strength in your fingers and wrists, but for application, you will need custom made.”

“Custom made,” she echoed. She burst out in that snorty giggle and Magnus resisted the need to smile at the sound of it. “Yeah, I’ll run right out and order that.”

Sarcastic little thing, he thought.

“I will make them for you.”

That seemed to shut her up. She gaped at him, open mouthed and silent as she tried to find a comeback. He was beginning to think her mouth was going to be her best weapon. He watched as she looked back at all the arsenal around her and then set wide eyes back on him.

“You made all of these?” she demanded.

Not asked, demanded. She was damn bold for a supposed slave. He dreaded to think of the kind of trouble she had caused herself because of it. Although all he had to do was look at the collar around her throat that he had mistaken for common jewelry to know the answer. He supposed, though, that was the point of the thing. If it looked like a necklace, no one would question seeing it on her. No one would realize they were walking past someone suffering under bondage. Magnus had since noticed the red chafing around her wrists, and he realized she had probably been chained up during daylight sleeping hours.

“Yes. There is a forge beneath the school. I will show you sometime.”

“Yeah. About that…” She cleared her throat and wiped her hands nervously on the pitiful rag she was wearing as a sari. He’d never realized such a traditionally beautiful fashion could ever manage to look so ugly until he had seen this one. This city had its less fortunate souls, just as all cities did, but even their most impoverished people were finely dressed compared to this outfit. “Look, not that I want to go back where I was, but there’s been some kind of mistake. I mean, surely you can see I’m not handmaiden material.”

He folded his arms over his chest, leaning a hip against the weapons ledge next to him, and took his time perusing her tall, shapely young figure. She was lean and strong, her arms especially well developed for a woman, probably from some kind of hard labor. Her callused, rough hands supported that. She clearly hadn’t owned shoes in years, her feet coarse and dirty, and he’d glimpsed knees just as toughened. He was willing to bet she was sporting a few bruises as well, and not just from her tussle with the guards earlier.

The thought made him frown with dark anger. He owed that guard for hitting her. Oh yes, there’d be penance to pay for that. And if he found out that either of them had tried to mess with her sexually, he was going to have them castrated. He might even let her do it, since she seemed to have a taste for it. He grinned when he thought of the way she had made him aware of just how vulnerable he had left himself to her with the nudge of her foot.

“I see nothing of the kind,” he responded easily, moving away from her in order to search his maintenance drawer for something to cut that damn collar off. Just looking at the thing made him feel surly and jaded toward his own people. He had already sent guards to fetch her miserable relations, though he fully expected they had hightailed it by now. Still, it was daylight for the next few hours, and there was nowhere they could go outside of the city. He would find them. And when he did, they would suffer just as she had.

He’d bet they had been damned shocked when the guards had come to the door offering a bride price for a girl they weren’t supposed to have. Thank Drenna they had persisted. If they had left, he’d hate to think what those two would have been capable of doing in order to cover their tracks. The very idea made his stomach churn with righteous anger.

“B-but…” she stammered, showing insecurity for the first time, “I’m not…I mean, I can’t…I’m rude! A-and coarse.”

“Manners are learned, just like anything else. You are smart enough.”

“No, I’m not!” she argued heatedly, her hands on her hips as she grew angry at the compliment. “I’ve never even been to school!”

Magnus dropped the cutters with a crash and turned to face her.

She smiled smugly, and for a minute he thought she was having him on. Then he realized it was because she thought she had won her point. Which meant she was telling the truth. She had said something similar earlier, but he had thought…

Again, he didn’t have to touch her to know it was the absolute truth, although there was still that urge. Ever since Karri’s betrayal, in fact, he had found it harder and harder to take someone at their word without reaching to touch them in order to verify the truth. However, she understandably didn’t like to be touched, and he had already promised her not to do so without her permission. That would have to change quickly, of course, because priest and handmaiden came into constant contact with each other throughout the course of an ordinary day, but for the time being he was willing to take the time to earn her trust of touch.

“How old are you?” he heard himself asking.

“Twenty.”

Gods. She was a child after all. Yet there was cold maturity in her eyes, and it probably just felt that way because he was…what? Fifteen times her age?

“Can you read?”

“Of course,” she scoffed.

“Write?”

“Yes,” she sighed impatiently. “My mum taught me. I have street smarts, just no real book smarts. I never came to Sanctuary before today.”

“No. You were a slave before you came of age to go to school,” he realized. Shadowdweller children were home-schooled until they came to Sanctuary for lessons at age thirteen.

That also meant she had never had any sexual instruction. At least, not the formal instruction every ’Dweller had when they came to Sanctuary. Their culture believed everyone should be taught in the ways and pleasures of the body, unlike humans, for instance, who kicked their awkward birds out of the nest to learn the hard way. This meant that, for K’yindara, anything she had learned had been likely done by back alley or by force.

Magnus had to turn away from her at the thought before she could see the rage in his eyes. Light, he couldn’t remember a time when he had been so easily enraged. He knew it had something to do with his previous handmaiden’s deceptions and the way the shock of her betrayal had struck him so very low, and that ever since then his emotions had been a stormy sea of unpredictability. However, he had been a priest of Darkness and Light for nearly his entire life, and he had spent centuries learning tolerance and forgiveness. He could overcome this jaded rush to fury he constantly felt.

“Are you a virgin?” he asked, grabbing the cutters and turning to face the shock on her half-swollen features. Despite her injuries, however, he already knew how pretty she was. He had seen her face over and over again these past weeks.

“I’m not answering that.”

“Why not? It’s a logical question. You had no formal education, so no sexual education, and you’ve been locked away since you were twelve. I am only wondering if your uncle got to you, or perhaps someone else.” Though he doubted it, considering how hard and dirty she liked to fight. Still, as she had noted, there were always other ways.

And that was when he realized why she was being so defensive, why he could all but smell her anger and fear rising hand in hand.

She didn’t know.

“You’re not sure, are you?” he asked gently as he came close to her and showed her the cutters. She picked up her blood-black hair and hesitantly turned her back to him, watching him cautiously over her shoulder. “You think it’s possible you were violated while you were insensate.”

She was silent, and he saw her wince as he worked the cutters under the tight collar. With one strong squeeze, the cursed thing snapped off. But not before the broken circuit sent feedback through them both. She cried out and he cursed, but the necklace dropped to the floor destroyed. Magnus tossed down the cutters and quickly touched his fingertips to the slender length of her throat.

“Bituth amec,” he hissed softly when he saw the blackened, burned skin that had been hidden under the collar. Yes, as a Shadowdweller she would heal quickly, except perhaps for a scar, but that didn’t make this any less savage to him. “I have a salve for this. It will numb and heal. It will be gone by tomorrow evening.”

“Thank you,” she said awkwardly, trying to brush his touch away. However, Magnus caught her fingers in his and squeezed as he turned her around to look at him. There was vulnerability hiding in those tough, angry eyes of hers.

“Answer me. Do you feel it was possible that someone was with your body sexually while you were unconscious?”

“I’m not sure. I always thought I would be able to feel that, but we heal so quickly I—I’m not sure. I never came up pregnant and I was just thankful for that. Counted my blessings.”

Magnus knew it was the truth because he had compelled it from her. In this, he couldn’t be ignorant. He had used his power to hear her confess what she didn’t want to talk about, and he was sorry he had to, but it was better for her if they spoke of it now.

“No one will do that to you here, K’yindara,” he assured her softly. “If they try, they will answer to me, and trust me when I say people avoid having to answer to me.” He gave her a wry smile. “Provided they survive answering to you first, of course.”

That made her shoot him a sly smile, her quick eyes appraising him as though she were trying to figure out if he was all right. Magnus could see she wanted to believe him, but life had taught her to do otherwise. Then something occurred to her and she jerked her hand angrily out of his before stepping back from him. She was cornered, so she banged into a cabinet.

“That’s total lying bullshit!” she hissed at him. “You said I’m a handmaiden! Handmaidens are supposed to have sex with the priests.” She made a snarling sound, like a furious animal. “Oh, I get it. You’re making nice to me so when you’re in the mood later I won’t say no! Well, forget it! No, in advance! Prick bastard!”

She shoved away from her corner and stormed out of his room, but he quickly caught up with her in the bath and snagged her arm. He had to react swiftly, though, when she whipped around to hit him. He caught her hand tightly before it struck his face, and then he jerked her up tight to his body and went face-to-face with her as he tried not to feel the sickness racing through his guts in the form of dread.

This is where it had all gone wrong before.

“No. No!” he said through his teeth, giving her a hard shake to get her attention. “First of all, no one here has to have sex with anyone. I could be your priest for five hundred years and you could say no to me every minute of every day of those years and I would have to abide by that. Do you understand?”

She made a huff of disbelief. Then she quietly studied him, those sly, sultry dark eyes of hers narrowing on him as she tried to pick out lies and deceit in him.

“But that would mean you couldn’t have sex for five hundred years. I’m the only one you’d be allowed to screw around with, and if I say no, then you get nothing. For five hundred years?” She snuffled out that adorably sarcastic laugh of hers, and he would have smiled if he weren’t dreading every inch of this conversation.

“That’s right,” he agreed tightly.

“That’s bullshit.”

“That’s faith and religious law,” he countered sharply. “I do not pay lip service to my faith alone. I am, you will find, an extremely devout man. I did not become leader of this religious house because I liked to fudge the rules. I am here because I do not tolerate insubordination and sin from my followers. I can only tolerate it from those who have not taken religious orders. I will forgive—I am always open to those who genuinely repent for their sins—but I will not forgive easily and forgiveness is not achieved easily. People here work very hard for the pleasure of Darkness and the respect of Light. Those who don’t or who seek short cuts around the rules pay a mighty price for inciting my disapproval.”

The resonance of his voice was terrible, he knew. The power of his tone was one of his greatest tools, sometimes a stunning weapon. He could tell it was working as she stared at him with open surprise and wonder. And now, for the kicker.

“Now realize this, K’yindara, because it is so dire that you understand me. Are you listening?” He only continued when he saw her nod. “Good, because I want you to seriously think about what it means should that scenario happen in reverse. Five hundred years, K’yindara, with no sexual congress of any kind with any other man if I tell you I don’t wish to be with you. That means no sexual intercourse with anyone other than yourself for the rest of your natural life, because it is as much my right to say no for whatever reasons as it is yours.”

“Men don’t ever not want sex,” she observed meanly.

He should have waited, he thought with hollow realization. This was better done after some familiarity had grown between them. Some faith and some trust. However, it was becoming clear to him that his private life was already food for gossip in his own house. What he had once thought was between himself and a woman he had trusted for two centuries, was now spread as far and wide as it wanted to be…and probably inaccurately and for all the wrong reasons. This undermining of his strength and his position, he realized now, was the reason why there were traitors in Sanctuary.

“K’yindara, listen to me,” he said with a soft sort of warning he knew she would understand the seriousness of. He swallowed back all the residual dread and interfering flotsam of his mind. “I never had sexual relations with my previous handmaiden. There was never anything between us except for…the warmth and affection of a brother and his sister.” He all but choked on the description he had stupidly and blindly believed until six weeks ago.

Gods, he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to have another handmaiden. Not yet. He was too damn raw still. It was unfair to her and doubly so to himself.

But Drenna would not be denied. His goddess had plagued him relentlessly with visions of his new religious wife, driving him to distraction and making it impossible for him to do what it was that needed to be done to ferret out the corruption in Sanctuary. When Darkness had begun to show him dire danger and death cut across the face of his young maiden, he’d had no choice but to begin wooing her. He had stepped into Dreamscape, found her, and invited her to be his. K’yindara wouldn’t remember it, but she had agreed wholly and with an almost fierce enthusiasm.

“Wait. She didn’t let you touch her for two centuries, and you were okay with that?” Again, he saw her cynical disbelief. But even though she wasn’t the one with the power of truth, he was going to make a believer out of her.

“I would have been,” he said, meeting her eyes without so much as blinking, “but it wasn’t she who denied me, rather than it was me denying her.”

This was the second time he had made her gape-mouthed speechless, and he had expected something like this. He had been less than precise with Karri when he had explained his reasons for his self-denial, feeling it was a private issue and choice, the one thing he shouldn’t be required to share with anyone but himself and his goddess. It had led to disaster. This time, he was going to make it very clear so there were no surprises.

“Do not mistake me, K’yindara. I am a man with all the emotions and drives you might accuse me of, but I am also a being of higher reasoning and control. Lovemaking and sexual pleasures are quite beautiful and have a rich place in our lifestyles. There is no reason to shame such relations, or to fear them, when the right respect and admiration is involved. You would have learned all this had you been schooled. You would still be in school learning, come to think of it, at your tender age.

“But a long time ago, I made a personal choice not to bring the complications and extreme emotions of sexual relations into my relationship with my handmaiden. It was my belief that we are here to serve others more than ourselves. After hearing so many maidens and priests confessing to me in private of the troubles in their relationships with their religious partners, I had to ask myself how they managed to function clearly and selflessly through the night when they were obsessing over their home life. We are supposed to be different. Not a lot, but just enough above our followers to keep things clear in our minds and to focus on how to show them the best way through their lives. We are religious guides and mentors and fulfill dozens of crucial roles in this society. We haven’t the luxury of splitting focus or energy into selfish pleasures like sex.

“If it truly could be just about the physical release, then it might have a place, but it is impossible for two people to share such intimacy and then deny all the understandable emotion that comes with it. It is simply better, to my mind, to never cross the line in the first place. This way, no one has expectations, disappointments, or is hurt in any way, and focus can remain where it should be; on the well-being of Sanctuary and those who come here and need us.”

“And what about the natural needs of the body?” she asked him, her eyes narrowed in utter fascination.

“Masturbation,” he replied frankly. “A fair enough substitute.”

She nodded slowly, but he knew it wasn’t an agreement so much as it was her way of absorbing the information. “I see,” she said quietly. She stepped back, her mind obviously churning as she looked him over slowly. Actually, there was something discomforting in the way she assessed him. Magnus didn’t know why exactly, but it was as though she were pulling him apart by pieces with just the power of her mind. Then she came forward again, reaching out her hand, but hesitating with her fingertips only an inch from touching his stomach.

“May I touch you?” she asked, cocking up a thinly arched brow, a small smile teasing the corner of her mouth.

Magnus was shocked by the rigid scream of denial that locked through his entire body just then. It was so powerful it all but took his breath away. He furiously shook the weakness off, savagely wrenching control of himself back in hand.

I am in control of this, he told himself tightly. That faithless little liar will not have this victory over me! She will not own a single moment of triumph over me for what she has done.

“Of course,” he said, his voice even and calm.

She moved forward, her fingertips sliding over the smooth textured fabric of his shirt, the warmth of her touch quickly radiating beneath it and his next shirt.

Magnus knew the minute her palm came flush against him that he had just made a critical mistake.