Her Dangerous Visions (The Boy and the Beast Book 1) (21 page)

Meluscia let go her father’s hand. He’d said it plainly. The words she’d feared all along. Valcere would be the next Luminary. The candlelight continued to flicker at her father’s head, but the flame of hope inside her was nearly smothered by his words. The Regents’ Council…the letter she’d sent to King Feaor…would these matter any longer? If King Feaor requested her, would her father deny him? Had her maneuvering been in vain?

“The Regents are meeting today,” said Meluscia angrily, fighting to hold back her tears and rage. “A delegation will arrive tonight. What then? What if I am favored by the majority?”

Her father closed his eyes. “They will not choose you. For the same reasons that I have given. If I could live another five years, to see you wed and with children…you would thank me then. You were meant for another kind of life, Mel. Not the life of a Luminary.”

She stood; anger she hadn’t known existed rose from deep within. Unwanted tears ran down her face. “Savarah can comfort you. You’re not the father I want to remember. Your failure to reason with your own daughter explains why the Hold is in the mess it is.”

Meluscia glanced at Savarah and noted a shadow of a smile. Then she was moving toward the door, her head dizzy with rage, and her heart as cold and barren as a winter storm.

_____

SAVARAH

“Your blood daughter’s words are as sharp as my arrows,” said Savarah, “And just as accurate.” She drew her hands to rest behind her back.

Trigon looked at her uneasily. “You know as well as anyone what we’re fighting against,” he said, his words sounding coarse. “I’m surprised you are encouraging her.”

“Why? Because I’ve seen the horrors of patrol? Because I’ve heard the chief woodcutter’s reports? The real reason you won’t put her on the throne is that you’d rather die than make peace with King Feaor.” Her eyes held fixed on the man who had shown her compassion so many years ago by bringing her into his family. She’d never loved him. Never pretended to. It hadn’t been a role she was capable of playing, but now, a seedling desire inside her whispered otherwise. The man whose kindness to her she’d repaid with a slow death, and numerous lies and half-truths. Could she, in her own way, show him some form of kindness in return before he died?

The type of compassion she could muster would feel like a fistblow to Trigon’s frail state of mind. But if she could spare the kingdom’s ruin with a few harsh words, that was all the kindness she could offer.

“You trust certain men far more than you should,” continued Savarah coldly, “and you surround yourself with useless councilors who howl the same song, Valcere being loudest. You are a fool if you choose him over Meluscia.”

Trigon’s face was pale, as if a phantom stood before him. “What is this?” he said in a quiet, hollow voice. “Six years you’ve ridden with me. Never have you spoken like this.
You
know more than Meluscia will ever know. I will not have her appeasing the man I suspect of poisoning Rhissa and I.”

Savarah bent her head down close to Trigon’s. “And what if you’re wrong?”

“You saw the note Harcor found.”

“A ploy,” said Savarah, agitated. “You must have considered the possibility.”

“Ploy?” wheezed Trigon. “By whom?”

A part of Savarah felt pleased at his ignorance. The note, accompanied by years of worsening reports from Harcor, and the disguised work of brutal Praelothian warriors, had brought the Hold and the Verdlands to the brink of war. And all involved were as blind as ever.

“Who would benefit most from this conflict?” asked Savarah.

Trigon’s eyes moved to the ceiling, her words working slowly through his brittle mind.

“The answer shouldn’t take you this long,” snapped Savarah. “Isolaug, the enemy you’ve all but forgotten. The very one Meluscia, your
ignorant
daughter, is concerned most with. Do you think Isolaug is so dumb a Beast that he would forget you?”

“He sends his Nightmares to our lands—”

“A distraction,” interrupted Savarah. “Answer in your mind these two questions. Is there anything King Feaor gains by poisoning you? The wrath of the Hold—that is all! On the other hand, is there anything a power lusting spirit gains by pitting his two neighboring kingdoms against each other?”

Trigon closed his eyes, his rasping breaths passing through cracked lips. “Why on my deathbed do you come up with these far-fetched theories?”

Savarah bent closer, placing her hand stiffly on Trigon’s shoulder. “Your daughter does not share the bad blood you or Valcere have with the Verdlands. Send Meluscia to King Feaor as your delegate. Appoint her as Luminess Imminent. You have always respected my instincts, do so now. Bring peace to your people with this one last act of your life.”

Trigon looked at her arm where it stretched up from its resting place on his shoulder. “What if you are wrong? What if I am sending my daughter to a murderer?”

“The skirmishes between your woodcutters and King Feaor’s farmers kill ten or twenty every week. You would deny your daughter the chance to bring peace? She is willing to die for her people. Are you willing to let her?”

Trigon stared at the pile of blankets. Silence thickened the room but for his wheezing. Savarah waited, irritated, but knowing patience was what Trigon needed as her words of warning made growing sense; he stumbled over them now in his mind.

“Take my hand,” he finally said.

When she did, he rasped, “I have just received a letter from King Feaor asking that I send one last peace delegation before I pass. He has asked that I send Meluscia. With all my heart, I loathe even the slightest chance that he should act treacherously against me.” Trigon glared darkly up at the ceiling. “Promise me this. If I do decide to send my daughter, you must go with her and see that she is kept safe.”

Savarah smirked. “Gladly. I would give my blood to the ground before I allowed a drop of Meluscia’s to leave her veins. That is my promise to you,
Father
.”

She stood and left Trigon without another glance. She had squeezed out the smallest minutia of emotion. She felt weak. Foolish. The promise she had given Trigon was not an entirely empty one. She would protect Meluscia as far as she could, but only to the point where it served her purposes. She would not delay her revenge against Isolaug.

There was much killing yet to do, and her thoughts turned to Osiiun. Her heartbeat quickened.

She felt fear, and she hated him for it.

CHAPTER 21

MELUSCIA

Meluscia stood on the upper plateau, arms folded across her chest, watching the sun slip behind the horizon at Black Thorn Peak. The hem of her dress blew in a relentless east wind that carried a breath of ice from the glacial peaks to the west.

Her thoughts wavered between searching for something she could do to sway her stubborn father’s heart, and between the ominous conclusions that she had failed, and that everything she’d hoped to accomplish as Luminess would go unchanged. The safety of her people would continue to be jeopardized by Valcere’s bitter animosity toward the Verdlands.

The possibility of friendship between the two kingdoms would be a lost hope. The forces of her kingdom would continue to focus on the wrong borders.

The memory of skeletonized bodies heaped around a cooking pit arose like a phantom from the past. Bones, both small and large, ravens hopping about, picking them clean.

Her hands curled into fists as tears fell freely down her face.

Anger rose within her, pure and focused, and it traveled beyond her father, beyond Valcere, out over the distant mountains, toward Praelothia, where merciless cruelty sprang from the hand of that vile Beast, Isolaug.

Betrayer of man and Maker.

A clamor arose behind her and she turned.

A pair of soldiers accompanied four familiar faces. Heulan, the falconer called Dolostone, and on his heels were Mica, and Tanaclast.

Meluscia wiped her wet eyes with the sleeve of her dress and awaited, frozen, unable to move as a cacophony of emotions tugged within.

“My Lady,” called Heulan. “A letter from Regent Adulyyn’s Falcon. It has the seal of urgency.”

Mica stopped before her, concern lining his eyes, which shone bluish-grey. Clearly, he and everyone else noticed her flushed cheeks and the marks of tears.

“A letter for you, My Lady,” came Dolostone’s wind-bitten, voice. He held out a small rolled letter.

She took it from his hand, and squeezed the letter tight as if it held a verdict of either life or death.

“Tanaclast,” Meluscia called out, her eyes on the young woman. Meluscia’s fingers ached to open the letter, but first, she had to know. “Have you just come back from your journey?”

“I arrived at noon today. Went straight to your father and gave him the return letter. Mica and I searched for you, to inform you that I had completed the errand, but we were unable to find you until now.”

Meluscia stared in disbelief. Tanaclast had given her father the letter at noon? He had said nothing of it.

She swallowed, the significance of those facts gripping her like fingers constricting her throat.

Her eyes turned down to the letter in her hand. She broke the seal and unrolled the tiny parchment. Her eyes devoured the short note quickly.

The paper crinkled as she crushed the letter in her hand. She looked up, at the blurred faces before her, the wind whipping the loose strands of her hair into her wet eyes.

Dizziness hit her like an earthquake and she nearly collapsed.

Mica caught her as she fell and held her in his arms, but she was consumed by the voice in her mind. It read the letter again, and again, as if she could not grasp the words.

Dear Meluscia. I feel I have failed you. The council majority was not swayed by my enthusiastic appeals for you. I couldn’t convince a single undecided Regent to vote in your favor. The final count was eleven to three.

My sincere regrets,

Adulyyn

LOAM

The inner suffering of questions and doubt are sustenance to the soul tuned to eternity. Bring before me a man or woman whose mind is free of such contemplative troubles, and I will wipe their dumb smiles away with a word from the Makers that hits like a horse hoof to the head. But, bring before me one plagued by questions and doubts, and I will reach out my feeble hand and take their shoulder in my grip and give them a word of hope. That is my calling. To bring doubt to the undisturbed, and comfort to those whose minds are a sea athrash.

-Fragment from
Rheum the Heretic: Speaker for the Gods
, Library of the Royal Quorums, Anantium,

“
. . .
Farmer or not, the girl is of the highest priority. Break protocol. Throw the procedure books into the sea. Whatever it takes. Acquire the farm girl, quickly, as if your job depends on it.

-Higelion, Magnus Empyrean of Sector 54 (Archived transmission to Karience, Empyrean of Loam)

CHAPTER 22

WINTER

Winter woke early and wriggled further down into the warmth of soft sheets and heavy blankets. The fabric had a sweet spice scent that pleasantly singed her nose. Such a smell she could never have imagined. It was strange. The luxuriously warm blankets, the lavish red and white velvet of the room décor, the rich aromas. All of it.

She brought Whisper’s jar out from under the pillow where she’d hidden it for the night. She’d successfully managed to keep her tiny companion close without anyone seeing it. Tenderly she fingered the jar, but didn’t dare let Whisper out.

Her thoughts turned toward all that the this day held. If the Baron wasn’t deceiving her and her brother, she would be leaving her farm hovel behind today for something else just as unimaginable as this lush bedroom. Something stranger, more exotic. The thought brought her upright in bed. The possibility of it all made her grin.

Suddenly she laughed aloud to herself, a giddiness washing over her.

A heap of items beside the door drew her out of bed. She padded over to them and knelt in her silk sleeping gown, the lush material tingled warmly against her skin, just as it had when she donned it last night before slipping into the oversized bed. The items on the floor were hers. It appeared everything she owned had been taken from her room in her and Aven’s hovel and placed at the door. Beside her belongings were several empty bags.

Was it possible the Baron had really arranged for her and Aven to join the Guardians? It seemed incredible that they would acquire farmers who knew nothing of the wider world, and had no skills outside their trade. There must be a lie embedded somewhere in what the Baron said. Perhaps he would make it appear to the farmers as if she and Aven were leaving on a Guardian starship, when really they would be taken someplace else. To another land baron. Or simply cast out on the road to fend for themselves. The latter option would suit her just fine.

She found her sling pack among her belongings as well as her collection of feathers. One she placed in her hair, the others she wrapped in cloth and placed in the pack.

A noisy bird’s call sounded from the open window beside her. She was reminded of the garden just outside. She’d looked out upon it before she’d slipped into the warmth of the bed last night. Torches had lit its path, illuminating the foliage and fronds with their warm fire. If it were not the Baron’s fortress, she would have liked to have gone out and explored the garden. It was a shame.