Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I snort softly, my voice a scratchy rasp. “Dead tired. Nice one.”
They all roll their eyes at my loopy humor, but I can’t keep my own eyelids from slipping shut. Baelfire gingerly tucks me into the middle of the king bed while Everett hovers nearby, fussing over me. Silas and Crypt are quietly discussing getting more of the colorless plant—but they also haven’t stopped watching me, as if they expect me to give up the ghost any second.
“I’m good now,” I insist.
“Unless there’s a delayed adverse reaction,” Silas frowns. “We need to watch over you just to be sure.”
“You need sleep. Crypt doesn’t. He can keep watch and feed on my dreams while he heals.”
Silas is reticent about the idea but finally slips into bed beside me, curling an arm around my middle and kissing my neck. As soon as we’re touching, I realize how badly I needed to be close to my bound match. This casual intimacy that once terrified me now soothes something deep inside me.
It just feels right.
Baelfire slips in on the other side, resting my hand on his chest so I can feel his soothing heartbeat. It’s crowded enough in this bed that it might’ve triggered the remains of my haphephobia if I wasn’t so drained. Together, their combined warmth lulls me to sleep.
I’m vaguely aware of Crypt’s alluringly dark, ever-watchful presence in my dreams as he ensures I sleep deeply. Peacefully.
Until sleep evaporates completely when my senses sharpen to needle points like they always do whenever a shadow fiend is near.
Except I know this one.
It’s him.
My eyes snap open. I bolt upright, my pulse pounding. Ignoring Baelfire’s sleepy grumble of confusion and Crypt emerging from Limbo with a questioning frown, I bolt out of bed to turn on the lights in the room.
Everett startles awake from where he dozed off in the room’s cushioned wingbat chair. He’s immediately on his feet. “What’s going on?”
“We’re leaving.
Now. Get dressed so I can transport us,” I tell my quintet, flipping on the extra bedside lamps just to be safe and the light in the small closet.
“You’re still recovering from your almost-episode,” Silas protests, his dark curls mussed from sleep as he throws his legs over the side of the bed. “The transportation spell will be too taxing?—“
“I know my limits. I’ll handle it.
Get moving.”
When shadows linger in one corner of the room, I summon a weak, basic common magic spell to dispel them—but I can’t keep using magic when this next transportation spell will burn up so much of the life forces I’ve taken recently.
I just have to make sure I don’t dip into Somnus’s life force…but honestly, if that’s what it takes to get away from him, so fucking be it.
My matches share a shocked look in reaction to my apparent state of panic before they launch into a blind rush to get dressed—except for Crypt, who abruptly appears at my side.
“Darling? Tell me what’s?—“
He cuts off sharply, whipping around as he steps protectively in front of me, his pale swirling markings lighting up. Outside the window of this fourth-story suite bedroom, I glimpse a dark mass moving in the starless night before it vanishes.
I suppose it’s not surprising that the madness-inducing Nightmare Prince can sense a fellow fear-wielding being. My nerves begin to itch as they always have around this fiend.
Damn it.
I’m a fucking idiot. I should have transported us the moment I heard that news report.
Baelfire reaches for the bedroom door handle as if he’s going to grab something from another room. I cover the handle quickly to stop him.
“You can’t go out there.”
“A lot of our shit is in the other room, Boo. Clothes, food, cash?—“
I shake my head. “All replaceable.”
“What’s going on?” he demands.
The lights flicker, and for that small moment, I swear I have a heart attack despite the fact that I don’t have an actual fucking heart.
“Silas, cast an illumination spell. Now. One that leaves absolutely no trace of shadows in this room,” I instruct quickly.
Why? he asks telepathically, already pulling out his bleeding crystal and pricking his finger.
“He moves through darkness, even the slightest bit. He can’t be in any well-lit space,” I explain, slipping on the leather gloves I discarded earlier. Grabbing Pierce and the burner phone from the bedside table and stepping into my boots without lacing them up, I turn to shove a chair aside so I’ll have enough space for the transportation spell.
“He? He who?” Everett asks, frost crawling past his elbows as the temperature in this room starts to drop in accordance with his emotions.
Something scratches softly at the door, and a chorus of hair-raising whispers rises from somewhere in the hallway.
They all sound like him gone wrong.
“Maven, Maven, sweetest raven.”
The taunt grows angry.
“Remember our game of finder’s keepers?”
That voice sends that too-familiar prickle of apprehension throughout my body. As I always used to, I slow my breathing and repeat my mantra to myself.
I am nothing but deadly calm. I feel nothing.
Sangfluir
? Silas’s voice demands in reply to my thoughts, concern permeating his tone.
Baelfire’s eyes shift to that of a dragon’s as he growls, “How the hell does it know your name?”
There’s a loud crash elsewhere in the suite, and the lights flicker once more. The moment they go out completely, red light fills the space as Silas’s illumination spell takes hold. The metaphorical skeletal hand gripping my throat releases, and I immediately recite the words for the transportation spell.
“Hold on to me,” I demand as the scratching outside the door turns into a pounding, and his whispers intensify into shrieks like howling wind.
All four of my matches immediately touch my arm, shoulder, and neck—in Baelfire’s case, his arms are wrapped around me like he wants to be a shield.
Somewhere far in the distance of the dark night, a woman’s bloodcurdling scream splits the air before cutting off—and then the bedroom’s window shatters as a decapitated woman’s body is flung through it with brute force.
MAVEN
One moment, we’re being pelted by shards of broken glass, and then the spell kicks in, and the world turns inside out. When the transportation spell ends, we’re standing in the falling snow, surrounded by deep snowdrifts, thick, white-frosted pine trees, and gentle moonlight.
Baelfire swears and picks a shard of glass out of his quickly-healing shoulder before tipping my face to look up at him. Those amber eyes scan me for signs of harm before turning hard, unyielding.
“Maven. What the motherfucking hell was that thing?”
“A wraith.”
Exhaustion trickles into my veins from that transportation spell, but I glance up at the stars visible overhead through all the pine trees. I’m guessing it’s close to one in the morning here in Washington. This is where Lillian lived many years ago, and she talked about it often.
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.