Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
Trust is for fools, my father hisses in my head.
Trusting you is what led to my death,
Maven agrees.
But no. That’s not Maven. My true blood blossom walks in front of me, scanning this area carefully as we get closer to Arati’s high temple.
She told me she loved me.
That was real.
This is real. I try to focus, carefully stepping over a multicolored snake before realizing it’s not there. Still, the blood amulet and ground artemesian blossoms I carry in my pockets seem to be helping marginally.
Feeling even the slightest bit more sane is a relief. I want to be useful to my keeper. I can’t be a psychotic burden to the woman I love.
Speaking of psychotic, we all stop in front of the abandoned temple wherein Maven has insisted Crypt will be found. The stairs leading up to the front doors are just as ornate as the rest of the exquisite temple of the queen of the gods.
I notice a few more skeletons nearby. There have been quite a few littering these streets.
“You’ll be a skeleton soon,” something hisses nearby. I almost stop to search for the source before realizing that, too, came from my broken mind.
We ascend the grand stairs leading up to Arati’s even grander temple. When Everett steps forward and tries opening the massive front double-doors, they don’t budge. No ice prevents their movement, so he finally steps back and glares at the entrance.
“I’ve always hated this fucking building,” he mutters.
Ah, right. Thanks to his horrid parents, he once received a false translation of a personal prophecy in this place.
But it’s interesting. He was always so mindful of the gods, yet here he is declaring his hatred on the Queen of Paradise’s doorstep. That haggard scar marring half his face must not only be physical.
“Let me try,” Maven says, stepping up to the doors and handing Everett Baelfire’s leash.
We all watch as she places her hands against the doors and frowns. Moments pass with nothing, until she curses and looks over her shoulder at Douglas.
“Help me get these open.”
“If it’s spelled shut, I may be stable enough to offer a hand,” I suggest, quietly desperate to serve a purpose for my beautiful keeper.
Her dark eyes connect with mine, and she shakes her head. “I’ll need your magic inside to get rid of the malediction. This door is different. Douglas knows what I mean.”
The ex-bounty hunter huffs as he moves to her side. “Yeah, yeah. Keep your mouth shut.”
I bristle with irritation at him speaking to her like that. Everett scowls, too, but steps aside as they focus on whatever magic is sealing this temple shut.
While we wait for them to figure out how to unseal the temple, I glance at Everett and then away.
“Tha’me a bhith air mo frirthadh.”
“I have no idea what you’re trying to say,” he reminds me.
Right. I pull the correct words from my messy mind. “You could have frozen me.”
“I still can.”
“I meant that it would have made the last mohsan sia
—six months,” I correct, “easier for you.”
Everett brushes snow off his shoulder, fixes his coat, and again pulls on the feral Baelfire’s leash to keep him from trying to wander off again.
“I considered it. Thing is, I don’t know what being frozen long-term does to someone’s brain.”
I almost laugh at the absurdity of him trying to preserve a brain as senseless as mine has become. Still, with Maven miraculously back with us, I have a newfound appreciation for the lengths Everett went to keep me alive, fed, and comfortable despite my self-imposed imprisonment.
It takes work, especially since the voices in my head are counting backward in fae at different intervals to confuse me for fun, but I finally get it out.
“I owe you.”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffs. “I don’t want a favor from a fae. Your kind are too crafty with shit like that. Just shut up and help break whatever spell Crypt is under.”
Only a moment more passes before Maven and Douglas finish, and the great double doors swing open. With the concentration they both seemed to be displaying, I expect to feel a tingle or awareness of their lingering magic as we all walk into the dusty, abandoned temple—but I sense absolutely nothing.
Odd.
Of course, it’s odd. This is a trap. This is where they take necromancers to be slaughtered.
They’re all conspiring against you.
Look! Behind you!
I whirl again, trying to see any threat, but there is none. There is only the mindless, feral creature occupying Baelfire who snaps his teeth at me when he catches me looking before sneezing blue fire.
Cold morning light illuminates this space from massive windows high above, highlighting the fact that we are utterly alone here, except for Crypt DeLune. He’s just as Maven described on the way here, trapped in various layers of a heinous-looking malediction.
I’ve never seen this incubus unconscious before.
Incubi need to feed far less than any other creature—they can survive for months, sometimes years, before they finally begin to starve. But the longer they go without consuming dreams, the weaker they become. If he’s been trapped like this for months, this monster-spawn’s strength has been wasting away. Weakening. Growing more vulnerable by the day.
Now would be the perfect time to end him, voices whisper in my head as we approach.
I stop outside the hostile runes encompassing the Nightmare Prince, studying the powerful, sinuous malediction he’s trapped inside as the others stay back a few steps. This is truly a terrifying spell to behold, so strong that my hair is standing on end and I can practically taste the acridity of the death magic woven into it.
There’s another magic in this, though. One I can’t identify.
“Yuck. Have fun, Crane. That’s one nasty malediction,” Douglas says.
I hesitate, looking at Maven as thousands of glowing frogs appear and hop about this space. Since no one else sees or reacts to them, I pretend I don’t see them, either.
“Your magic would be superior to mine here, given my condition. The destructive force of revenant magic could shatter this easily.”
My keeper pulls an adorable face. “Too bad we’re short a revenant.”
I’m surprised. If she’s no longer a revenant, what magic did she use at the doors to get in here?
Then it clicks in my murky mind. As a demigoddess, she has holy magic.
My attention slips to the bounty hunter, who’s glaring at me. He can tell I’m guessing why he was helping her with the door.
Intriguing. Perhaps Asher Douglas is a saint. That might explain why he has no quintet despite being four years older than I am. I doubt saints typically become soldiers of fortune, but what do I know?
Turning back to Crypt, I again touch Maven’s blood amulet around my neck for an additional dose of clear-mindedness. Whatever the state of her magic, she wants me to retrieve the incubus I once loathed from this wretched snare of masterly death magic, so I will.
Or I’ll die trying.
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.