Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana, #1)

by Jacquelyn Benson

Friar Vincente Salavert had never imagined that he would await holy martyrdom while covered in hives.

At that tender age, it had never occurred to Ellie that the life she wanted was an impossibility—that no amount of intelligence and determination would ever overcome the handicap of her gender.

“Children,” she asserted as she warmed to the topic, “are another weight added to the chains of marriage. They trap a woman in the most intolerable of circumstances, depriving her of any slim hope she might have had of intellectual freedom or achievement. Do you know that as soon as a woman even becomes engaged to be married, she is dismissed from the civil service? It’s one thing to be removed because you were arrested—”