Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
Kenzie covers her mouth, eyes wide as she pieces that day together, but Luka just stares at me. I can’t tell if he’s angry, dubious, or disgusted until he finally speaks again.
“In self-defense. Right?”
“You knew?”
The vampire shakes his head, shoulders slumping as he looks away. “I didn’t know it was you. Levi and I survived a lot together, but as we got older, I heard rumors about some things he started doing. I could never condone the shit he chose to do—made me fucking sick. He was digging his own grave. You were just the one to finally push him into it.”
Well, then. This isn’t how I expected this to go, but I’m not complaining.
I worried Kenzie would be hurt and pissed that I harmed her match’s family, but when I look at her, she nods in melancholic understanding. It’s quiet momentarily until Luka’s attention moves back to my stained shoulder.
He wrinkles his nose. “Your blood smells weird. It’s not exactly human, not monster, not fiend or legacy or…okay, what the fuck is that scent? It’s way too strong. You should cover that before other vampires catch it.”
I sniff my bloody shoulder curiously, but I don’t smell anything out of place.
Safe to say a heightened sense of smell isn’t a demigoddess thing.
Kenzie reaches out to touch Luka’s jaw, smiling gently. “Could you go check on Vivienne for me? She’s still helping take food to some of the newest refugees. And remember, we’re not breathing a word about Maven to anyone outside our quintet.”
Luka nods, kisses his keeper’s forehead, and leaves. It’s odd to realize that Kenzie and her quintet don’t have the ability to telepathically communicate, like mine did. I know it isn’t common, and it most often happens with powerful legacies that have been bound for a while, but it still makes my chest ache.
I miss talking to them in my head. If our bond was still intact…
It will be. I’m going to get it back. Whatever it takes.
Kenzie fills up a cup of water in the small kitchen sink, grabs a wrapped package from a tote, and offers both to me.
“That’s a protein bar,” she clarifies when I squint at the packaged food. “No meat in it.”
I thank her, sipping the water and unwrapping the protein bar to take a bite. My fingers and toes slowly warm up as she changes into regular clothes and sets the coat I loaned her on the desk in front of me.
And then the lioness shifter stares at me expectantly.
“This is the part where you tell me what the hell happened, May.”
“I don’t?—“
She holds up a hand. “This has been really, really hard, and not just because of the Upheaval. When you died, I was a fucking wreck. I spent months mourning you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t?—“
“I know you hate talking about anything more than necessary, but I deserve answers—and you already know I’ll take your secrets to the grave. So, please, please, please just talk to me. Where did you go? How are you back? What the hell is going on?”
I wait a moment to make sure she’s done this time before trying again. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh. Shit.”
I glance down at the cup in my hands, recalling the liquid gold dripping from my fingertips in my flashback. Something niggles in the back of my mind, like a memory trying to rise from the depths of a tar pit. I know Kenzie is serious about taking my secrets to the grave, so I decide to tell her what little I do know.
“I woke up in Paradise.”
She blinks. “Paradise?”
I nod.
“Like…where the gods are? The plane of existence that mortals can’t see or go to that floats way up in the heavens filled with a bunch of divine beings like angels and nature spirits and gods?
That Paradise?”
I nod again. “You can’t tell your quintet this next part.”
Kenzie pantomimes…I’m not sure. Putting on lipstick, maybe? When she sees my confusion, she repeats the gesture.
“Locking up my lips and tossing the key,” she explains, as patient as ever with the glaring gaps in my knowledge of the mortal world.
I take a deep breath to brace myself. “I learned that my father was a man named Pietro Amato.”
Her mouth drops open. “Whoa. Hang on, you’re the Pietro Amato’s daughter? My parents told me about him! They knew him way back in the day. So many Reformists still totally love that guy, and he’s only gotten more revered since the Reformist movement is so huge now, and—hang on, if he was your dad, who was your mom?”
“Syntyche.”
For a moment, I think I broke her. Then Kenzie coughs. “Come again?”
“Syntyche. You know, the goddess of reaping, memories, fear, dreams, death, darkness, souls…”
I could go on, since each of the six gods holds dominion over so many things, but Kenzie is extremely pale as she holds up a hand. She’s uncharacteristically silent for so long as she stares blankly at me that I get concerned.
“Kenzie?”
She breathes out finally. “Oh my holy fucking gods. Shit—sorry, I probably shouldn’t say stuff like that around you?—“
I snort. “Blaspheme all you want.”
“But aren’t you, like…one of them now?” Her voice is thin, and her wide blue eyes are almost frightened.
She’s nervous. Unsure of me, now that she knows the truth.
Damn it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I insist vehemently. “Whatever I am, I’m still myself.”
I describe it all to her. How my purpose was unexpectedly fulfilled during the battle, how I found myself in Paradise, and then waking up in Syntyche’s desecrated temple with only blips of memories returning through the scythe I now wield.
“I did something to return to the mortal realm,” I finish. “I just don’t remember what I did, or why it took me six months to return. Having no memories is absolutely fucking infuriating.”
Kenzie looks down at her hands, picking at her chipped nail polish. “Yeah. It is.”
Right. That was insensitive of me—she would know better than anyone else.
I study her. “Have you been able to rediscover much about your past?”
She nods. “Turns out, I was a shady bitch back in the day. But even though I can piece things together and even though my quintet has been incredibly supportive as I rediscover myself, it still sucks that I’ll never get those memories back, you know? Gods, I wish I had a magic memory-returning scythe,” Kenzie sighs. Then she wrinkles her nose. “Or, not a scythe. Something I’d actually use, like a badass paintbrush or something.”
The lioness shifter stares at me again, like I’m something new she’s never seen before. At first, I worry she’s going to treat me differently now that she knows my pedigree, but then she grins.
“So…you look almost exactly like Syntyche, huh? No wonder I always thought you were so pretty—you literally look like a fucking goddess!”
“Thanks for the sentiment, but you’re the only person who thinks that.”
“Oh, girl, no—I promise all of your guys would agree with me, plus anyone else with the capacity to appreciate actual beauty.”
Her mention of my guys makes me notice the burning in my emblem-less chest again. Being back even this long without seeing them feels empty. If Felix doesn’t return soon, I’ll find a way to sneak myself into Everbound Castle.
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.