But Shia had been ripped apart in childbirth, her lifeless body thrown down the refuse chute to be eaten by the savage darrokken that lived in the den caves at the bottom of the pit. And when the woman on the table opened her eyes, Melliandra’s impossible hope faded. Black eyes, not blue. Dull and dazed from the effects of the drugs and Mage spells used to make her docile and receptive to mating. Just as well, Melliandra thought with an unexpected surge of pity. The stud set upon the woman had clearly been one of the wild ones. -. the kind who sank his teeth and nails into a woman as well as his mating organ.

"What the jaffing hells are you waiting for, skrant? Get to work." Turog swung his massive paw again, but this time Melliandra was quick enough to duck. She dragged her cart of cleaning supplies into the room and suppressed her unexpected surge of emotions with ruthless determination. Emotion was a sign of weakness in Boura Fell. Blank, unseeing eyes, ears deaf to the screams of the suffering, and a heart devoid of caring were the only ways to survive here.

Still, she couldn't keep from watching out of the corner of her eye as the black-garbed umagi attendants released the heavy leather straps binding the woman's wrists and ankles and helped her to her feet. The woman's knees gave way, and she would have tumbled to the floor if one of the attendants hadn't caught her beneath her arms and held her upright. The other umagi draped a blanket around her—which Melliandra knew was more to keep one of the High Mage's precious female breeders from catching a chill than any attempt to preserve her modesty—and led her out the door.

Melliandra listened to the sound of their departing footsteps, counting the steps and calculating the distance before the slight muffling indicated a turn down another corridor. The new woman was being taken to the garden, the deceptively beautiful chamber that looked like a natural paradise but was, in feet, the prison where the High Mage kept his most valuable and magically gifted female breeders.

A prickle at the back of her neck warned her that Turog was watching, and she promptly snapped her attention back to her chores, dunking a clean cloth into the bucket of warm, soapy water and attacking the mating table with it. Though Turog behaved like every other lumbering, thick-necked bully who guarded the lower levels of Boura Fell, he was more observant than most. And meaner. The High Mage chose the men who guarded his breeders very carefully.

Despite the bruises and bite marks on the woman's body, her mating hadn't been one of the most violent ones Melliandra had been summoned to clean up after. There were only a few smears of blood on the table and almost none on the floor. Within ten chimes, the room was spotless and ready for the next unfortunate participant in the Mage's breeding program.

Melliandra gathered her supplies, loaded them on the cart, and exited. As she passed the corridor leading to the garden prison, her veins hummed with the desire to make the turn. The woman who'd just been taken there was one of the new prisoners, someone whose skin shone with the same silvery luminescence as Lord Death and his mate.

Someone new enough and magical enough to perhaps still retain memory of her life outside Boura Fell, perhaps even information Melliandra could use to her advantage.

The desire to head down that corridor was so strong, she fought to keep her body from making the turn. It was as if something or someone in that room were compelling her with a power almost as strong as the one the High Mage of Eld used when he took command of her body and bent her to his will. But she knew the compulsion didn't come from someone else. It came from within. She wanted to go down that corridor. She wanted to visit the newcomer, interrogate her, discover everything she knew about the world above.

Melliandra's muscles clenched in protest as will overrode want. She couldn't go. Not now. Her earlier reaction when she'd entered the mating chamber had roused Turog's suspicions, and she could feel his gaze boring into the back of her head.

She pushed the cart a little faster, forcing herself to walk past the corridor. The High Mage was gone for at least two days, and Turog would head back to the barracks hall when his shift ended in four bells. She would come back then and sneak into the garden room to visit not just the new breeder but all the women held there. She hadn't seen them since Shia's death.

Losing the first person ever to treat her with kindness had left an ache Melliandra had never known before and couldn't seem to quell She'd shed the first tears of her life over Shia, felt the first consuming burn of rage.

Nothing had been the same since then. There was a hole in her, a yawning, painful emptiness she couldn't seem to fill.

Every night, she dreamed. Not the dull, spiritless gray dreams of an umagi, but dreams filled with vibrant color and emotion. Dreams that made her wake each morning with her hands curled into determined fists and the ragged square of folded cloth beneath her head soaked with her own tears.

She dreamed of Shia singing softly as she brushed Melliandra's hair... of Shia's torn, lifeless body tumbling out of the refuse cart into the pit of slavering darrokken... of Shia's child, the tiny, bright-eyed infant in whom a piece of Shia still lived.

Most of all, she dreamed of watching the High Mage die in torment... and of the day when she, Melliandra—with Shia's son cradled in her arms and the Mage Marks that made her a slave completely erased from her soul—would step out of the cruel, sunless gloom of Boura Fell into the glorious freedom of the world above.

"Get out of my way, umagi."

The curt snap of a masculine voice shattered her unintended reverie, and a swirl of blue silk filled her vision. Primage! Realization splashed over her like a bucket of icy water.