Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
The darkness is filled with shouts and screams, and the ever-present mist barely conceals the bloodshed that has already begun in this haunting forest. I can sense death nearby, thick and potent, as it awaits hungrily for more victims.
If I closed my eyes, it might feel like I’m back home.
But closing my eyes would be stupid since an incomplete quintet is already rushing through the trees towards us. One has a sword, one wields the wind, and the shifter is already in bear form as she leaps through the air.
My hand slips into a concealed pocket on my pants. I’m ready to grab the dagger there and end anyone who comes close, but a blinding flare of red magic has my hair standing on end.
The bear drops dead from Silas’s spell, blood gushing from where it’s been split clean in half at the torso. The wind elemental is also knocked backward, slamming into a tree trunk with a sharp cracking sound.
When the legacy with the sword lunges forward, a wickedly sharp rapier made of ice forms in Everett’s hand. He moves with the sly, practiced speed of a fencer, his ice blade piercing through the gut of the legacy. Immediately, they’re encapsulated in solid ice, just like that cheeky siren at the ball.
It all happens so quickly that it takes me a moment to realize Baelfire is tensed in front of me like a massive shield of muscles, scanning for the next imminent threat with his eyes shifted into the slitted pupils of a dragon. Admittedly, he actually looks pretty terrifying when he’s on edge, especially with the faint glow under his skin, like there’s fire trapped inside him that wants out.
No wonder they’re considered top-ranked legacies. They’re not bad at this.
I mean, they’re sloppy, but I would be lying if I said the frigid deadliness in Everett’s movements didn’t do something for me. It also affects me more than it should when Silas lifts up his hand, licking away his own blood with a drag of his tongue, the barest flash of his fangs reminding me that those appear when he loses control.
I wonder what they’d feel like buried in my skin. I bet it would hurt so deliciously.
Pulling myself out of my moment of distraction, I clap slowly. “Brava. Now follow me. The cemetery is this way.”
I turn to lead them, but Silas interrupts me.
“First, Baelfire should end that wind elemental. A kill will give him more control.”
Baelfire hesitates, glancing at the tree where the wind elemental is collapsed unconscious in a wheezing pile, probably with several broken ribs.
“No. Leave him be,” I say immediately when I read the apprehension in the set of Bael’s jaw.
Silas gives me a stern look. “If you’re worried about sparing Bael’s innocence, don’t be. He’s killed plenty—all of us have. But if he doesn’t end a life soon, he’s liable to shift out of control, which puts you in even more danger. That’s not fucking happening.”
He tries to turn away like that’s the end of this discussion. But I grip the front of his shirt and yank him down to meet my eye again, not bothering to hide my true strength or the anger on my face. It makes his eyes widen fractionally.
“No, what’s not fucking happening is making someone take a life that they’re not sure about taking. I get it. You’re a cutthroat asshole with no qualms about ending a deserving opponent, no matter what condition they’re in. We’re similar in that way,” I parrot his words from last night with an eyebrow raise. “But Baelfire’s dark side isn’t quite as pitch black as ours. So if he isn’t comfortable killing a defenseless enemy, then I get the final say, and I say leave him the fuck alone.”
Roughly releasing the front of the startled blood fae’s shirt, I start toward the ancient cemetery. I’ve been there plenty of times in my wanderings through Everbound Forest. It will take us at least twenty minutes to get there, which doesn’t leave much time to refuel my magic to perform a search spell for the changeling.
Baelfire catches up to my side. “Damn. You’re fucking hot when you’re bossy. Do I need to step out of line to get my turn? You know I love being good for you, baby, but I can try being a brat.”
Unexpected heat blooms in my neck, and something pools low in my stomach. The thought of punishing any of them sexually makes it really hard to think straight.
Baelfire inhales sharply, and I know he’s scenting my arousal. “Fuck,” he groans.
“Keep it in your pants,” Everett snaps.
Bael grumbles something about frozen blue balls that I don’t fully catch because an agonized scream splits the air of the forest nearby. We all go silent and still as we wait for the potential threat to emerge from the dark mist.
All that emerges is a baby manticore, which hisses and scales the nearest tree.
“Disappointing,” I sigh.
Silas tips his head. “Is it? Do you enjoy watching our more monstrous sides in a fight, sangfluir?”
Apparently, I do.
But I haven’t been in a good fight in ages, and I’m itching to spill blood. Of course, I only want to hurt people who truly deserve it, and I still don’t want other legacies to catch on to the fact that I’m stronger than they are. That would draw the attention of the Immortal Quintet before I’m ready to start picking them off.
So, I’ll have to temper the darker urges that were ingrained in me.
For now.
Suddenly, another scream sounds much closer, and I sense another wave of death just before a cluster of legacies steps out of the trees. All seven of them are on high alert, with one of them bleeding heavily from their side.
I realize with a start that the heavily bleeding one is Monica—the empath atypical caster I met at Harlow’s sadly-not-a-murder-rendezvous the other night. She slumps slightly onto one of the guys, who bares his teeth at us.
“It’s the lottery quintet!” he snarls. “Take them out, and we’ll eliminate the highest-ranked legacies at Everbound!”
That’s enough for the rest of the legacies to launch forward with shouts and flares of blinding magic. These legacies don’t seem to be matched together, so I assume they’ve formed a temporary allegiance as many legacies do.
Silas takes on two casters at once, Everett is attacked by a water elemental and a vampire, and Baelfire begins wrestling with a wolf shifter. The guy supporting Monica releases her and simply runs away, abandoning her to stumble backward in terror. I can already tell that the gushing injury on her side is fatal. But hearing her cries as she disappears through the trees calls to my human side—the often-dormant part of me that drove me to make the blood oath for those who needed it.
Monica might be an atypical caster, but she’s far more human than I’ve been in years. I’m not part of their fluffy asscaster support group, but I can’t just let her die in these woods.
The fight distracts all my matches as I take off after the atypical caster.
“Monica!” I shout, jumping over a fallen log and sidestepping a smoldering corpse as I continue in the direction she ran.
She ran fast. Really fast. Was she using magic to try to get away?
Finally, I stop in a clearing, taking in my surroundings quickly to avoid any nasty surprises. But I’m still taken off guard when I see Monica sitting on a nearby rock…with a smile on her face.
I’m just close enough to see that her pupils are square.
Fuck. I really hate this changeling.
Immediately, I whip out a throwing knife, but I barely have the hilt in my leather-gloved hand before blinding light smashes into me, sending me careening. Hitting the ground hurts, but I can usually take hits like no one’s fucking business and walk it off.
But this time, I can’t move.
And it dawns on me. That was a paralysis hex just now—a potent one. If I had magic in my system, I could rip the hex apart in the blink of an eye, but I haven’t refueled. So now I can’t turn my face away from pressing into a surprisingly green section of grass.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t fucking move.
If I had my heart, it would be crashing in my chest. But even though I can feel my thundering pulse and breathe and bleed and feel like any living thing, my shadow heart is undetectable, a reminder of the monster they turned me into.
Except right now, I don’t feel like a monster. I feel…helpless. It’s been a long time since I felt this way. Trepidation claws at my chest.
Sierra titters, “See? Told you it wouldn’t be hard to get her alone.”
A guy’s voice snorts. “Nah, that was fucking easy. Thanks for your help, Mon—didn’t expect you to volunteer to help us like that.”
“It was nothing. We all want to get rid of the lottery quintet, after all,” the changeling says sweetly in Monica’s voice.
I’m going to fucking kill it once I get out of this.
“So this is the unmemorable little bitch everyone got so worked up over?” another of Sierra’s guy friends scoffs, and all of my senses are thrown into panic when I feel hands turning me over.
At least now I can see, but it’s not a pretty sight. Sierra stands over me with a victorious sneer on her face, with two guys leering alongside her and the changeling off to one side, smirking in a nasty way I’m sure the real Monica never could.
“Damn, she’s a butterface,” the taller guy with dark hair says, and the panic doubles when he reaches out and squeezes one of my cheeks hard enough that it might bruise.
The other guy, a blond, frowns. “You think? I think she could be really cute if she put in more effort. It looks like she’s wearing a fucking tarp, though. And what the hell is with the gloves?”
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.