Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
Needing a topic change, I make a face. “Speaking of guys…Felix. That’s weird.”
Kenzie grins, back to normal, even though she keeps eyeing me more than necessary. I’m pretty sure she’s trying to picture me two feet taller and deathly pale with a cloak and scythe. But as long as she doesn’t treat me differently because of my mother, she can picture me naked for all I care.
“It’s not weird,” she disagrees. “Felix is so fucking perfect for me, just like the rest of my quintet. I mean, it might be a bit weird for you since Felix once told me he thought of you as a little sister, so it could seem like I’m banging your big brother?—“
“Ew. No. Like I said, he was just an accomplice.”
Kenzie snickers. “Well, your accomplice had never even kissed a girl before he met me, let alone seen one naked. Who knew it would be so hard to seduce someone who gets turned on so easily? Getting that gorgeous caster into bed for our first time was?—“
“Stop.”
“—like trying to crack a really shy, really tough nut, but once I finally got him to nut, that man got super kinky super fast. Seriously, the first time Felix whipped out magic in the bedroom, he?—“
Oh, my fucking gods.
“Shut up before I find a way to smite you,” I warn.
She bursts into laughter. I shake my head, stubbornly fighting a smile. Finally, she stops cackling and wraps me in a surprise hug, still careful not to touch any of my skin.
“Gods, I am so happy you’re back. You have no idea.”
I blow at one of her wild curls so it will stop tickling my cheek. “The gods themselves couldn’t keep me from coming back to watch the next season of your favorite sappy forbidden romance show with you.”
“Actually, that show is super canceled,” she sighs. “I think every single TV show is. Now it’s all just news and livestreams of the shit going on. A lot of places don’t get electricity or wifi anymore, anyway. What’s left of the internet is so terrified and dismal that all I do with my cell phone right now is take filthy pictures of my quintet. They’ve gotten the hang of posing naked so I’ll have all these hot pictures to use as inspiration for painting. Felix in particular?—“
“
Kenzie,” I warn.
She laughs and then gets solemn quickly. “Seriously, though, the world has been going through a lot.”
She recaps some things, like the fact that some of the Garnet Wizard’s former acolytes, a prophet, and Felix figured out how to harness the Immortal Quintet’s life forces using the etherium pieces I contained them in. They created three shielding spells that require regular magical upkeep, but otherwise function like an invisible dome that keeps most shadow fiends out. One is stationed here at the Everbound stronghold, one is used for a safe haven in Europe where children and older people were sent from all over to be safeguarded, and the third went missing months ago.
Humans and legacies are fighting at the front lines of the expanding Nether, trying to stave off the worst of Amadeus’s forces. They’re led mainly by the Reformists now, since the Legacy Council fled like cowards as soon as the Divide fell and the anti-legacy Remitters have all but fizzled out. Some wealthy humans and legacies have created their own safe places, hiring others to protect them from the fiends on the loose.
“Things aren’t great, but they would be less dire if it weren’t so damn cold all the time,” Kenzie adds, grimacing. “Even with magic, growing plants or sustaining animals for food is harder during a never-ending winter. I don’t think Everett is making people suffer on purpose, but then again…gods, May. With how much he’s changed, I’m not actually sure. He’s a Reformist commander now, but he’s fucking brutal.”
So far, she’s mentioned Everett, Baelfire, and Crypt. But…
“Where is Silas?” I manage to ask through the sudden panic trying to climb out of my stomach.
She grimaces like that’s exactly the question she didn’t want me to ask. “The last time I saw him was on that battlefield six months ago, when he went kind of…well, super crazy. Crazy enough to try raising a bunch of people from the dead. I saw Everett freeze him so he couldn’t do that, but I haven’t seen or heard anything about him since then. Sorry, May.”
He’s fine. He has to be fine.
When repeatedly reassuring myself doesn’t help, I reach up to run my fingers over Baelfire’s mating mark, shifting aside the scarf. Feeling his trace on me is a small form of comfort.
Kenzie notices. “Oh my gods, that poor dragon. That must have been recent when everything happened, right? No wonder he went feral.”
My throat constricts as I remember Baelfire’s bright smile and his intense pride in the mark I left on his neck. He was over the moon about being bound together, but we were still in the fresh, newlybound stage when the bond was ripped away.
If his curse returned with a vengeance, and his dragon took over…
Nausea churns in my gut as that strange burning returns to my chest.
I’m going after my feral dragon soon. I’m going after all of them with everything I’ve got. Cursed or not, they’re always going to be mine.
“You were right,” I murmur, looking at Kenzie. “I shouldn’t have held back telling my quintet how I felt about them. They deserved to hear at least that much from me before everything went wrong.”
Kenzie smiles softly. “Well…now you have a second chance.”
Someone unzips the tent. I tense, but it’s just Felix, who steps inside with a solemn expression.
“What’s wrong?” Kenzie asks, brow furrowed.
He peers at me. “You did want to see Everett Frost, right?”
I grab the coat Kenzie borrowed, slipping it back on to cover my stained sweater. “Sooner, not later.”
“Well, things just got a bit more complicated than strolling up to Everbound Castle.” He holds up his arm until the thick coat slides back to show off a scrying brand. “Because I just received word on Commander Frost’s whereabouts. He’s in the middle of a massacre on the front lines about seventy miles east. Intel marked him as still alive an hour ago, but that’s a rough area known to be plagued by wraiths. We’ll go once we track down blessed bone?—“
“No,” I cut him off, storming toward the door as dread and adrenaline make me push through the injuries still staining me. “We’ll go now.”
And when I get there, my beautiful elemental had better be unscathed.
cZW
EVERETT
Ice blooms from each step I take, spreading over fallen Reformists and monster corpses as I pass them. Wind howls, so thick with snow that I can’t see three feet in front of me.
Underneath my ripped trench coat, blood drips heavily despite my body trying to freeze over the wound that I clutch from where an ally bear shifter clawed me earlier. Exhaustion helps me ignore the sparks of physical pain as I wander down Main Street through this abandoned town.
I’ve been awake for over three days straight, ordering Reformists around and fighting and killing fiends the same as I’ve done every day since Brigid Decimus appointed me to this station. She insisted I was someone people look up to. An influential figure to give others hope in a dark time like this.
What a fucking joke I turned out to be.
I love you.
I cough, pain ricocheting up my torso. Going through the motions for six months has left me psychologically, physically, and mentally depleted. Now, I’m just…empty. Injured. Unmoored.
Hopeless.
How long am I supposed to just fucking exist like this? I may as well be one of the Undead. Besides, no matter how hard I’ve tried to keep them safe, what’s left of my quintet is gone in every way that counts.
Squawk.
I nearly trip over a day-old corpse when I hear a raven caw somewhere nearby. Changing direction, I skirt around an abandoned car with busted windows. Now and then, shrieks and other inhuman sounds of fiends are carried to me on the wind. Beyond this blizzard, twilight is falling over what’s left of this razed town, which, ironically, used to be called Snowy Ridge. Now, it’s an active combat zone. I’ve been sending Reformists here weekly to maintain our hold.
The most recent troop was just massacred before my eyes—by each other, mostly. The wraith who got to them is still here, trying to find a way to get inside my head and feed on my fear.
But the wraith doesn’t stand a chance, because all my biggest fears have already come true, yet here I fucking am. Utterly alone as I walk without purpose, the nevermelt saber in my hand dragging loudly across the frozen road.
Gods, I’m so tired of this. Of everything.
A sudden wave of dizziness from blood loss sends me stumbling, the saber clattering out of my hands as I hit the asphalt. I cough again, grimacing as I roll over. My body isn’t able to keep the pain in my side numb anymore.
Killed by a wraith-crazed bear shifter. What an anticlimactic way to go.
But if I’m moments from the Beyond…
“Just let me find her there,” I whisper at the sky I can’t see, pretending like someone is listening to distract me from the doom closing around me.
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.