Free Her Dangerous Visions (The Boy and the Beast Book 1) by Brandon Barr Page B

things to come?
    In the sparse shaftlight of the tunnels, the darkness closed in on her. Her father’s inability to see her leading the Hold felt like a betrayal. He had encouraged her at first, until the blight struck and his entire mindset turned. She had been preparing herself and arranging her life to be Luminess since she turned sixteen, and now, a month away from twenty-three, to be in between a yes and a no from her father at this stage was painful. She was isolated from the people passing her by in the tunnel who had more normal families and time for friendship. What had pouring herself into studying history and politics achieved for her?
    The gift of knowing and loving people long dead? A father unimpressed by her long hours of study and preparation? Was all the time sitting in on his judgments in the throne room a waste?
    At the very least, she could take hope in the fact that she wasn’t sitting idly by to let her father decide. The closer he came to his last days, the more pressure she felt to assert her power. Soon, she’d be meeting with Adulyyn in hopes of influencing the thirteen other Regents at their quarterly council.
    Still, she couldn’t stop. She had to do more.
    But first, a reprieve from the heavy burdens on her mind.
    Her bedroom was not her destination any longer. When she reached the guarded spire staircase that led to her and Savarah’s private quarters, she shut the oak door behind her and stared at the dimly lit staircase. To the right of the chiseled stone steps was a wall of blackness. A secret passageway lay beyond the shadowless dark, and it beckoned her, promising her things she craved.
    Sights that weren’t hers to see, and words that were not for her ears to hear. But…despite the voice in her head telling her to walk away, she couldn’t.
    With a sigh, she broached the passageway.
     

CHAPTER 8
     
    MELUSCIA
    Meluscia stretched out her hand to feel the cold stone at the end of the dark. Her fingertips found their mark, and she worked her way deeper into the crevasse until her hand brushed past a crack in the rock. A small opening. Blackness shrouded in blackness, cut off from the shaft light above. She wriggled into the narrow space. It was close to sixty paces of walking slantwise through the fissure, likely a lava run nearly as ancient as the mountain itself. Blindly hugging the wall, she traversed what she surmised was an old spy passageway.
    Slowly the space opened wider, and then light began to filter through small holes bored in the rock. A whispered voice inside told her to turn around and go back…that if she wanted to be a Luminess she couldn’t continue to lurk in this hidden corridor, but it was chased away by the dejection from her father, and goaded on by the distant Makers whose silence left her own shame unriled.
    Besides, the promise of what lie ahead fed an empty hunger that was never too far away.
    Voices echoed faintly as she passed illuminated slits in the rock. The openings fed into what were now the head servants’ rooms. Meluscia guessed at one time in this mountain’s history, they had been the rooms of foreign dignitaries.
    Meluscia counted the slits until she arrived at the eleventh one. She peered carefully through the opening. Warm relief tingled through her insides. She wouldn’t have to settle for her second or third favorite couple to quench her curiosities and longings.
    Mica and Praseme were both in their quarters, and to her delight, she’d caught them sharing a moment of intimacy…this was what she needed. This was what she craved right now. Amidst her crushed hopes, when she needed someone to love her and pick up her broken pieces, she could survive by living through the love of others.
    Praseme lay reclined in Mica’s arms upon a cushion of pillows, her tunic rolled up over her stomach. Mica’s strong hands traced slowly back and forth, up and down, over his wife’s barely swollen belly.
    Such an intimate moment. It was uncommon to