Rapture - Jacquelyn Frank Shadowdwellers

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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

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