Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
“What time is it?”
“Mid-morning. Worried you’ll miss the wedding?”
She pauses. “My father’s cousin had planned an outdoor wedding. They postponed it due to the weather, so I’m not going after all.”
Either she’s a very smooth liar, or I must thank Frost for buying us even more time with our keeper. “Then shall we lounge in bed for a few more hours?” I try, hopeful that she might be softening towards us after all.
Maven gives me a dry look. “Get out, Crypt. The fae mead left enough of a headache without you exacerbating it.”
Obediently, I move back into Limbo, but this suite is spacious enough that she can’t sense me anymore by the time I reach the front door. I watch, enraptured, as she rolls out of bed and immediately drops into a set of push-ups and other exercises. It’s clearly her wake-up routine, though why she’s pushing herself to do this when she told me herself about her headache, I can’t comprehend.
I turn to drift through the wall and give her space, determined to taste her dreams once again.
But the next time I do, I want them to be sweet dreams. And someday, she’ll be asking me to join her in her dreams every night. Someday, I’ll make her just as obsessed with me as I am with her.
MAVEN
After I shower and go downstairs dressed in my typical baggy attire, a gorgeously sleep-rumpled, shirtless Baelfire serves omelets and fruit for breakfast. He makes small talk about his shifter-centric classes at Everbound while I fail to keep my eyes off all his golden muscles. Meanwhile, Silas keeps giving Crypt long glares. I don’t know if he suspects that the Nightmare Prince took a joy ride in my subconscious last night, but he says nothing about it.
Neither do I. I’m still torn. On the one hand, the idea of anyone taking a look inside my head makes me want to tear out of my own skin.
But on the other…he stopped my most painful recurring nightmare before it got to the worst part. I haven’t rested that well in a long time, even if I’ll never admit that to him.
Still. From now on, I’m taking a dreamcatcher with me everywhere I go.
Everett joins us late for breakfast. The storm is no longer raging outside—instead, there’s a crisp layer of glistening snow covering as far as the eye can see outside the ostentatious inn. I appreciate the macabre beauty of a world frozen over.
With no storm, I could leave to carry out the hit.
I just…don’t yet.
They asked for a day, so I’ll stay for a while and slip out later. I’ll still have Lykoudis’s heart to Melchom before midnight.
“So, Crypt says there’s no wedding anymore,” Bael says as he follows my self-tour of the inn. Silas trails behind us, and Crypt is invisible somewhere nearby. Professor Frost is keeping his distance elsewhere. “I gotta admit, I was really looking forward to seeing what you would wear to the shindig, Boo.”
“This,” I lie easily.
He blinks, stopping with me when I pause to examine yet another long hallway. “You were going to sit through a wedding while getting swallowed up by that long-sleeved shirt and pants that completely hide how perfect your ass is?”
“Not all of us can walk around half-naked.” I look pointedly at his bare, muscular torso. The guy really is massive, and I’m starting to suspect he hasn’t bothered putting a shirt on because he wants to test my limits.
“You certainly could when it’s just us,” Silas drawls. “Though I’d prefer you entirely nude.”
“Agreed,” Crypt teases, appearing at the foot of the entry stairs as I walk back down them.
Everett’s impatient sigh from where he stands in the foyer with folded arms draws my attention. “We get it. You’re all beyond horny, and you refuse to leave her alone about it. Moving on, have we decided on today’s itinerary?”
Yet again, how unhappy he is to be here with me is oddly bothersome. The irony isn’t lost on me that if all my matches had been as indifferent about me from the beginning, they would have already appealed for a new keeper. I would be well on my way to accomplishing my mission and moving on.
Baelfire bristles at the professor, but Silas studies me. “We’re near a small town called Hope Falls. I learned they have an impressive display for the human holiday season, several historical sights…and an impressive greenhouse open to the public in the winter.”
I wasn’t lying when I told him I’m a botany aficionado. The greenhouse is genuinely appealing, especially because I won’t be stuck here with four legacies that I can’t stop thinking about trying to touch, thanks to the bizarre dream I had last night of the four of us.
Going to Hope Falls is a needed distraction from the lingering throb between my legs.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
I insist on driving Kenzie’s Mustang despite Silas’s attempts to take one of the two cars he and Everett brought. He doesn’t seem to trust the baby blue vehicle. Unsurprising, since he doesn’t seem to trust anything. After he lays a couple of protective spells on it, he gets in the passenger seat. Everett slides into the back, and Baelfire tries to, but it quickly becomes apparent he’s built too big for the older car.
“I’ll grab a shirt and meet you there,” he winks.
Right. Because a twenty-five-ton dragon won’t freak the humans out at all.
Crypt is invisible, but there’s no doubt in my mind he’ll be keeping up and watching, too.
Hope Falls is everything Silas said it would be. It’s a tiny human community covered in glittering snow with festive decorations on nearly every building we pass driving into town. It’s complete with an old clock tower atop a church, a town square filled with people chatting in earmuffs and puffy coats, and a collection of random historical New England monuments.
I park in front of a spot in the town square where there is an ongoing competition to see who can build the best snowman. As we watch, a massive shadow passes overhead, blocking out the sun before twisting midair. The sunlight catches on Baelfire’s gleaming scales as he lands somewhere just out of sight to shift back. I can’t help smirking as I watch a small child gawking so hard at the sky that she accidentally pushes her snowman’s head off when trying to stick a carrot in it.
Crypt appears outside the driver’s side door, opening it before I can. “After you, darling.”
Baelfire catches up with us quickly, but it doesn’t take me long to decide that strolling through the cheery streets of the cozy human town with them feels…odd.
For one thing, we don’t blend in well. People’s eyes keep shifting to us, lingering on the four disturbingly handsome men in my posse before looking away. Living so close to the Divide, I’m sure they see legacies often enough that we’re not outright freakish to them, but they’re obviously still uncomfortable.
But for another thing…I feel entirely out of place here.
They think I grew up somewhere like this, but it couldn’t be more alien to me. Honestly, I can barely reconcile this cozy atmosphere with the brutal way I was raised.
Everything is so wholesome.
It makes me sick.
We stop to tour the fabled greenhouse, which is also decked out in holiday lights, and pictures of a fat man in a red suit, which I don’t understand at all.
Silas glances at me as we pass a row of thriving orchids. “Did your adoptive father celebrate all the human holidays with you?”
Baelfire must have told him about that. “Not really.”
Unintentionally, my attention slips to the glass wall at the front of the greenhouse. Everett opted not to come in, grumbling about not wanting to freeze their plants accidentally.
“Ignore him, love,” Crypt murmurs, picking an orchid and offering it to me.
Immediately, a red-faced human woman bustles toward us, tucking a spade into her gardening apron with a huff. “Hey! The signs very clearly say no picking the flowers.”
The Nightmare Prince doesn’t bother looking away from me. “And I very clearly don’t care.”
She stomps toward him, ripping the orchid out of his hand and wagging it in his face. “I don’t care if you’re one of those monster spawn keeping this area protected! We work damn hard to keep this greenhouse nice, and your tattooed punk ass is about to get thrown out!”
“My ass is not tattooed.”
The woman splutters and looks at me accusingly. “Don’t think I don’t know how you monster groups work! You must be the whore they keep as a plaything. Get them out of here before they cause real problems, or else.”
The snarl that rips out of Baelfire’s throat is so threatening that she drops the orchid and steps back. Silas gives her a chilling stare-down while Crypt flickers and disappears, making her yelp.
This whole situation is oddly amusing to me. “Or else what?”
The woman blinks at me. “What?”
“You were trying to threaten us. At least make it creative. Maybe something like or else you’ll take that spade and shovel out our innards to fertilize the greenhouse,” I suggest helpfully.
Baelfire makes a choking sound. Silas laughs darkly.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.