Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I don’t translate quickly enough. “What?”
“Something on display. A part of you.”
On display like?—
Oh, gods. My heart sits on Amadeus’s mantle in his chambers within the citadel. Fuck, I forgot I told Crypt about that. If he was trying to track that down…
I need a heart, but going to Amadeus’s citadel to get that one back for any reason would be insane.
“Where were you, ima sangfluir?” Silas murmurs, and I realize he’s been studying me while I’ve been thinking. He reaches up to touch the blood amulet around his neck, as if that helps him maintain coherency. “Your body vanished as revenants do when their purpose is fulfilled and they pass to the Beyond. No one returns from the Beyond, yet you’re here. Aren’t you?” he checks with a genuine frown.
“I went to Paradise,” I explain simply. “And then I came back. I’m here, and I’m staying.”
Silas absorbs that before suddenly flinching to one side as if avoiding a blow. He swears and rubs his face. “Forgive me. I see things. No, I wasn’t talking to you. Shut up.”
He’s talking to the voices in his head again as Everett strides back into the courtyard. My elemental slows his approach, taking in Silas’s obvious bout of insanity before he sighs and looks at me.
“Are you sure you want to bring them? It might be dangerous where we’re going.”
He’s right. I know that. Silas and Baelfire’s conditions are rough to see, but gods, I just got them back. The thought of going somewhere where I won’t be able to check in on them easily is an immediate no. I just can’t.
“Good thing we’re all dangerous, then,” I reply.
Everett accepts my answer with a simple nod before he turns to face the courtyard, rolling his shoulders back. He concentrates, lifting his hands before the ice surrounding the couple hundred frozen ravens in the courtyard cracks or melts away.
Some of the ravens begin crowing and freaking out as they wing quickly away. Others slump dead out of the ice, and a few immediately flutter over to me, tipping their heads and checking in on me with their beady black eyes.
“There. You have your spies back,” Everett mutters, shooing one of them away from him before fixing me with a serious look. “But if any of them shit on me, they’re dead.”
When one of the braver ravens flutters to land on my shoulder, Silas squints at it. “Is there a raven on your shoulder, or is that in my head?”
“It’s real.”
“How do I know if you’re you?”
I can see that he’s starting to slip again, but his question is fair. Reaching up, I brush his jaw with my fingertips and hold his blood-red gaze.
“You’ll know I’m me because nothing will stop me from keeping you. Not even the tricks in your head. Whenever you’re not sure, just ask and I’ll remind you that…
tha galeath.”
I love you.
I expect saying it to be awkward, but it’s surprisingly right.
Silas’s pupils dilate as he lets out a breath. “You, saying that…this is in my head.”
“
Nach,”
I shake my head. “
Tha galeath.”
“Which means?” Everett prompts with a frown, looking between us.
Silas ignores him completely as his voice drops to the barest whisper. “
Tha ba’galeath thu semprah.”
I have and will always love you.
Despite the madness plaguing him, this moment feels pure as we stare at each other. It’s a lifeline for him—a way that he can know this is real. And for me, it’s what I wish I had told him before I fell on that battlefield months ago and left my ruthless necromancer to the hellscape of his own mind.
“Okay, that’s it,” Everett grumbles finally. “I’m learning fae.”
“By all means, scútráche,
” Silas replies without taking his eyes off me.
“Hey!” Douglas calls from the archway leading back into the castle, tapping a nonexistent watch on his massive, puffy green coat. “How about you gaze into each other’s soulless eyes later? Your pet dragon is wrecking the library and we don’t have all day, so let’s get a fucking move on.”
Silas frowns past me at the bounty hunter before looking at Everett. “You hired him? Why?”
“He’s loud but useful. He’s also right, this time. Come on, let’s go get Maven’s unhinged freak.”
Gods, I can’t wait.
Whatever Syntyche did to him, I’m getting my Nightmare Prince back.
SILAS
The voices are incredibly unhelpful as we navigate this cold, barren, grayscale city.
Watch out! Over there! they shriek.
I quickly check over my shoulder for the hundredth time. For the hundredth time, there is nothing but empty streets flurrying with snow and steeped in shadows, thanks to the thick clouds suspended over Manhattan. Ghosts drift past now and then, wandering as they search helplessly for their afterlives.
Aside from us, the only other living things here are the ravens watching us from various perches.
Something is coming for you, other voices giggle in my head.
We’re just trying to help.
We’re here for you. We’ll always be here for you.
They took you out here to kill you, you know, another giggles.
They never fucking shut up. Now they’re chanting, laughing, singing, whispering?—
“Weird,” Maven muses, and I could weep with gratitude that her voice finally cuts through the menaces living in my head. “We’re well behind enemy lines, but I don’t sense fiends nearby.”
“You can sense fiends?” Douglas asks from where he walks behind me. “You know what—no, of course, you can. Why the hell am I even surprised anymore?”
Everett, Maven, and whatever remains of Baelfire are walking in front of me. Even smeared in dirt and grime with his dark blond hair far more unkempt than usual, Baelfire looks like the dragon shifter I’ve known all my life. He’s even wearing only shorts despite the freezing temperatures, which is something Bael would do.
But instead of flirting with Maven or being annoyingly optimistic or anything else our dragon shifter would typically do, he’s just taking in our surroundings. His lips pull back from his teeth on occasion, and his eyes remain the telling slits of the dragon that lurks beneath his skin. Now and then, he tries racing off like a stray mutt that’s scented a cat, only to get yanked back by Everett so he won’t get himself killed by the fiends lurking in this abandoned city.
The shifter is gone. Only the beast remains! the demons in my head cheer.
Baelfire and I didn’t always agree, but the idea of him being utterly gone to his curse is…tragic. Aside from him being a necessary member of my quintet, I once started to trust the shifter. And other than Maven and myself, I’ve trusted so little in my lifetime that losing that possible future is unexpectedly depressing.
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.