Free Queen of Song and Souls by C. L. Wilson

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.
    Horrified to be caught daydreaming—and by a Primage, no less—Melliandra gasped. "Forgive this worthless umagi , master." She scuttled out of the way, dragging her cart with her. All the while her mind worked at a frantic pace to gather every fragment of dream and whisper of thought that belonged to Melliandra and shove them securely back into the tiny private space she'd somehow managed to create in her mind to hide the time she'd spent with Shia.
    That tiny space had grown over the last few months and more thoughts had crowded into it. Hopes had blossomed, and her first timid wish