Rapture: The Shadowdwellers

by Jacquelyn Frank

“Thank you,” she shouted even as she ran out the door. The training halls were so distant! Frustrated with her sari, she stopped and scooped the back hem up and drew it up and forward between her legs and tucked it in at her waistband in front as she did when she was in fight training. It created makeshift pantaloons and freed her to run.

  “Sagan!” she cried out, even though she wasn’t even through the doors to the hall. She didn’t care if everyone stared at her. All she cared about was the single pair of dark, deep sienna-colored eyes that belonged to the penance priest she sought. Clearly, her entrance was enough to provide clarity of need. He never hesitated, stepping over the student he had thrown to the ground just before her entrance. He hurried up to her and she was already running back down the corridor. He followed at her heels, his longer legs easily keeping pace with hers.

  “What is it?” he demanded. “Is it Magnus?”

  “No. It’s much worse.” She breathlessly explained the situation, and Sagan’s features darkened into a storm of deadly, dangerous rage. He pulled a key from his pocket similar to the one Magnus had used earlier and had it at the ready as she led him to the door of the tutoring room. “Gods, I ran so slow!” she gasped, bending into the stitch in her side from her exertions through corridors, stairwells, and emotions.

  “Are you armed?” Sagan demanded. Dae reached for the glave snapped to his weapons belt and jerked it free. She nodded sharply. “That’s not for indoors,” he hissed.

  “Then I suggest you duck when I throw,” she shot back. She flicked her wrist hard, the bladed weapon fluttering open like a butterfly blade before it caught on its grooved spine and held its shape tightly.

  Sagan keyed the lock, and bracing all of his power into his legs, he crashed his shoulder against the bolt on the other side. It only took a second strike of his big body to make the wood splinter apart, but they both knew it was one strike too many. A man like Shiloh would move all too fast with a warning of even a second.

  They burst into the room.

  Chapter Eleven

  Magnus watched his best religious student in all of his years as a teacher pace in frantic upset. He had taken a seat, feeling far too relaxed and mellowed to join her in her tension of the moment, sitting loosely in one of the large chairs in her parlor. His entire body felt alien and calm, making him realize just how tensely he had been living his daily life for quite some time. He smiled to himself when he thought about how his new relaxation technique could so easily become an addictive pastime.

  “I don’t understand him. He’s never done anything like this before,” Malaya said fretfully, her hands twisting within one another.

  “Tristan was afraid he would—”

  “Not Tristan!” she interrupted him sharply, the snapping tone so rare for her, especially toward her priest. “Guin!”

  “Guin,” Magnus echoed carefully. Gods, he had to pay better attention, he realized. She must have shifted topics while he had been daydreaming about Daenaira, and now he was lost. He glanced around and noticed for the first time that Killian and not Guin was standing watch over the Chancellor. “He’s left you before,” he hedged carefully.

  “But not for a week! When has he ever left me for a week in fifty years?”

  “A week?” Magnus realized he was beginning to sound like a parrot. “Guin asked for a week off? Away from you? Leaving you in the care of others?”

  “You see! Listen to the way you’re saying that. You know as well as I do that Light would have to strike him down before he’d abandon his post! And then what he did…”

  Magnus could see the blush of heat that crept over every inch of her skin as she scrubbed a hand up over the curve of her shoulder.

  “What did he do, K’yatsume?” he asked softly, tension returning to his body as he sat up onto the edge of his seat.

  Malaya glanced over her shoulder at Killian, and then the door in the suite that had sealed a weary Rika away from them at his arrival. For Malaya to suddenly develop so keen a sense for privacy told him it was crucial he find out what had happened between her and Guin. Any disruptions to the natural order of their lives would only make it easier for enemies to pry them apart. The bond of Guin’s loyalty to his mistress was one Magnus had deemed unbreakable. What had changed? First Tristan had damaged their relationship, and now Guin had abandoned her to the care of others? No wonder she was so heavily upset.

  “I think I’m going to go check and see how Rika’s feeling,” Killian said suddenly, intuiting the reluctance to talk he inspired. Guin would not have cared. He’d have never entertained the idea of exiting the room. Then again, Killian realized Malaya was probably safer with Magnus than she was with him, despite his own formidable skills. So he didn’t hesitate to leave her alone with him as he knocked for Rika, who bade him enter.

  Malaya reached down for Magnus’s hand and led him into her own bedroom, adding another door between them and the keen hearing of their friends. Magnus leaned back against the door, folding his arms over his chest and watching as she returned to her agitated pacing. The full material of her skirts swirled like a whirlpool with every sharp turn.

  “What did he do, K’yatsume?” he repeated after a moment.

  She responded with a nervous laugh and that rubbing of her hand over her upper chest, shoulder, and neck. It changed his theory about it being tension when she almost seemed to be caressing herself, rather than trying to massage away tight muscles.

  “He…touched me and, um…I think he threatened me.”

  That she was confused and uncertain was quite obvious, and Magnus clung to that before letting a righteous temper run away with him. What she spoke of was among the worst of sins. Had she called him here to hunt? And of all people, Guin? There were very few Shadowdwellers capable of intimidating Magnus when he faced the idea of engaging them in a hunt, but Guin was by far at the top of the list. It was almost a tie between him and Sagan. Sagan might have made the art of war his entire existence, but Guin…Guin was a savage, cunning man who had that indefinable something that would always make him refuse to die even if his heart had been run clean through.

  The purity of hate and evil could push a being well beyond his endurances and the physics of natural law, but what powered Guin so ruthlessly was something else entirely. Stubborn and relentless, primal and merciless, Guin was a man who would rather die than give up, and would rather die with his enemy in tow than alone. There was no compromise.

  “K’yatsume,” Magnus said with very soft care, “it is very important that you explain those remarks to me with the utmost of care and precision.”

  Malaya stopped pacing and looked up at him with a startled sort of surprise. Magnus took a measure of relief in that reaction. It was clear she wasn’t expecting him to punish Guin, whatever his choice ended up being. She was, of course, too attached to Guin to see the matter clearly for herself, and the punishment of those who sinned was not within her purview. Unlike the law the Senate might try to impose on her, she had no control over temple law. She could choose to refuse the edict to marry because she was, after all, an absolute ruler. She could abolish the outmoded law with her brother’s agreement and ride the tide of traditionalist disapproval. But she absolutely could not tell Magnus whom he should and should not hunt down for the penance of their sins.

  She blinked and laughed, although it was a bit uneasily. “Really, M’jan, it’s nothing like that. It was…well, it was…”

  Damn! How in Light could Malaya explain what she didn’t understand for herself? But she had to figure out how, because she had seen that cautious tension in her spiritual advisor before.

  “I think he made a pass at me,” she confessed, that hot wash of sensory memory flooding over her again. Her breast still smoldered with the fire his coarse flirtation over her nipple had started. Just the idea of Guin—Guin, of all people—arousing her! That he had even wanted to touch her in the first place…But he had only been bullying her as usual, that was all. It was just another one of thos
e tactics he loved to use to throw her off-kilter. After fifty years, he was still able to mess with her mind completely. It was infuriating. “I’m sure he did it just to get under my skin, the rotten bastard,” she muttered to her priest. “Do you know what he said? He said that if I didn’t give him permission to leave, he was going to stay ‘really, really close’ to me. You weren’t there, but it was clear what he was implying! Can you imagine? Guin actually threatened me with…with…”

  “Sex,” Magnus supplied, his frown deepening as he tried to figure out what in Light Guin had been thinking. “Malaya, why didn’t he just ask you for a leave of absence without playing games?”

  “Oh, well…uh…he did, actually,” she said uneasily.

  “And you refused him?” Magnus lifted a brow in surprise. “Guin has never once asked for time, and when he finally does—and I remind you how often you have told him he could do so—you refused him?”

  “I thought he was going to go on a witch hunt! He asked me right after Tristan dropped that awful bomb on me. I wasn’t thinking straight. And he always has this way of tying me up into knots of temper, the way he harps at me. He doesn’t make sense sometimes. And he suffocates me! He’s all pissed off about the Senate dictating my life, and I think that’s because he resents anyone poaching on what he thinks is his territory. Drenna forbid anyone but Guin should have the right to tell me what to do!”

  “Malaya, the point is you pushed him to assert himself. He always accedes to you when you are in the right. He deeply respects you. When you are wrong, that is when he fights you tooth and nail. Granted, it’s his perception of right and wrong, but Guin does choose his battles carefully. I am not happy with him for putting unwelcome hands on you, however. That is absolutely unacceptable.”

  “Oh…well, Magnus, like you said, he was pushed to make his point.” Though it had been a very bizarre ultimatum to hand down to her. Why, what if she’d said yes to his offer of…?

  Malaya felt her whole body shudder at the thought, pure unadulterated heat pluming through her every blood vessel like a fast-rising cloud of toxins.

  She licked a quick tongue over her lower lip and met her confessor’s gaze.

  “And I don’t think you could call it unwelcome,” she said softly.

  Magnus stood silently stunned for a moment, but quickly recovered, his expression as neutral as always.

  “Like last time?” he asked her.

  She nodded, exhaling as if she felt enormous relief for admitting it to him. “Last time” had been a good many years ago. Over a decade. She had been just as confused and uncertain about Guin’s intent then as she was now. Neither of them doubted his loyalty, nor did they doubt his dedication in seeing her happy and healthy. Sometimes, though, he behaved in such wild, irrational ways that it left them both a bit baffled.

  But…now that Magnus had his relationship with Daenaira as a reflection, he considered that all of the hot temper and cold clinical extremes might be hiding something beyond the obvious. Regardless, though, it wasn’t necessarily his place to spell these things out for the monarch.

  “You know my advice already,” he said gently to her. “Meditate. Pray to Drenna for clarity, Malaya. Let Her guide your mind. Try not to shut yourself off with prejudice, and make certain you consider all aspects.” He paused, a small frown tugging at his lips. “Don’t let fear write the course of your actions. I have done this myself, and I regret the pain it has caused.”

  “Fear? You?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Yes, K’yatsume. When we have no trust, the vacant space that is left becomes filled with fear. Karri gutted me of my trust, and I glutted myself on the resulting dread. I am still in a war with faith and doubt even as we speak. But it is my war. The wrong of it came when it spilled out and hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. Whatever decisions you come to, be certain it isn’t fear guiding you. Despite his brute armor and monolithic strength, Guin can be hurt just the same as anyone else. Have a care.”

  “Magnus, you worry too much,” she said lightly, though there was a hint of unease in her tone. “I couldn’t hurt Guin. I need him far too much. I will find a way to please everyone the best I can, as always. The Senate, my brother, and Guin.”

  “You have forgotten someone, K’yatsume,” he noted quietly.

  “Drenna?” She laughed.

  “No, love. Yourself. Don’t forget yourself.”

  “Henry,” Daenaira said softly.

  The confused boy was sitting on the bed, knees curled to his chest and arms folded over his head. Naked as he was, there was a gangly, awkward appearance to his limbs, and he was, quite obviously, emotionally devastated. Sagan and Dae’s entrance only made matters worse for him as he tried to turn himself away from the embarrassment of his exposure.

  Daenaira wanted to move toward him, but Sagan held out a hand and stayed her. She realized then that the priest was right. Henry wouldn’t want a woman to baby and mother him at such a terrible moment in his life, so she went back to the door and closed it to give them privacy.

  The room was empty otherwise. Shiloh and Nicoya had made their escape, and Daenaira suspected they had used Shadowscape to get past them. Just the same, she kept careful watch around the small room. They could just as easily Unfade into the room as they had Faded out of it, and she didn’t see Shiloh’s weapons belt anywhere in sight. It meant he was well armed.

  Sagan moved up to Henry and caught up the boy’s clothing on the way.

  “Henry?” he spoke softly, his deep voice focused and steady, not reflecting concern or sympathy so much as it portrayed the sense of understanding and solidarity. “Did they Fade?”

  Of course Sagan knew this already. That wasn’t the question he was asking as he handed the boy his clothes. Henry nodded, rushing into the tailored fabrics as quickly as he could, his face burning with his shame when he looked up at Dae. Sagan slowly looked the bed over, as well as the boy himself in spite of his speed of dress. His redwood-colored eyes hardened into the aged invulnerability of those magnificent trees, a grim set to his lips.

  “Son, you know I have to ask you…to bear witness to any sins Nicoya and Shiloh have committed here today,” Sagan informed him carefully. “It takes a strong man to righteously accuse those in power above him. I understand it is a great deal to ask.”

  Henry nodded, his knees drawn back to his chest now that he was dressed. Daenaira understood Sagan’s approach to the boy, giving him an option that would help him to regain his sense of his manhood as he tried to cope with what his body had been subjected to.

  “They said it wasn’t a sin i-if they b-both agreed to it. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

  The sheer panic in his voice followed the way he looked at the penance priest in front of him. This, Dae realized, was how Shiloh and Nicoya had managed to victimize without ramifications. The fear of punishment, as with Tiana, kept them silent. But penance wasn’t so terrible that it was worth this type of fear, and Henry should know that at his age. It was really Shiloh he feared. Gods, when Dae thought about it, she could imagine all too easily how a penance priest like Shiloh could abuse his power to dole out punishment in order to control his victims. Now Henry was fearful and distrustful of them all, and with terrible cause.

  “Henry.” She spoke up gently. “No permission, no sin. Remember that, okay? If you gave no permission, the sin is not yours. It is theirs alone.”

  “But…but I wanted…she was so beautiful.” Henry looked at the wall, glaring at himself in the silvery reflective surface of the tiles. “I knew it was wrong. I fantasized about it so often.”

  “Fantasies are not sinful,” Sagan reminded him. “They are normal and healthy. It is acts alone that must be judged. What did you permit, Henry?”

  “She took me…i-in her mouth. It was…” He swallowed, flushing darkly. “I wanted that. I would never have done it if Shiloh hadn’t said it was okay. I swear, I wouldn’t have. But they’re my teachers, and they said it was allowed!”
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  “I know, Henry,” Sagan said with a nod. “And that is the sin that must be repaid. It was theirs alone, for taking advantage of you by misusing their positions in this school and by feeding you lies that led you to this pass. I am sorry you were hurt by that treachery. I promise you, though, they will pay for their sins.”

  “Especially Shiloh,” the boy hissed suddenly. “Especially him! I didn’t give him permission. I didn’t!” Tears welled in the student’s eyes and he scrubbed them away, frustrated when they came faster than he could erase them. “He waited until I wasn’t paying attention. Let Nicoya distract me. Th-then he grabbed me from behind and forced me on the bed…and Nicoya helped hold me! I couldn’t get them off me!” he ground out angrily. “Gods, it hurt! It was so much pain. B-but…”

  Henry stopped, heavy sobs ripping from his chest now. Now, Dae knew, it was time for mothering. Sagan slid aside and made room for her when he realized the same thing. She went to the boy and wrapped warm arms around him, hushing him gently as she stroked his hair. Soon he turned into her softness and comfort, gripping her so hard she could barely breathe. He was a strong boy and he must have fought with everything in his body. She looked up at the intact statue of Drenna, and for a furious moment wanted to know why Tiana had failed to help buy precious time. One crash of porcelain and Henry would have seen Shiloh behind him. Perhaps in time to understand and make some kind of escape or protest.

  But she knew it was an unlikely prospect just the same. Magnus had proved to her earlier how hard it was to escape a lesson in those rooms. She understood the principles, and they worked with those who were perfectly trustworthy, but Magnus had to realize that there was no trust in Sanctuary any longer. Not until he methodically removed the deception where it had taken root. If the top of the tree—like Nicoya and Shiloh and Cort—was rotten, you could bet it went down deep through the ranks all the way to the roots.

  What Sanctuary needed was Magnus at his most powerful. It needed truth as only he could find it. He could no longer afford to believe in blind trust because of their shared faith and callings. Not when lives like Henry’s were at stake. If not for Tiana guiding her to that hidden chamber, they could have killed the boy and made him disappear without a second thought.