Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
The soul-crushing grief. The unspeakable emptiness day after day, existing in a world she no longer occupied.
I choke on it all.
CRYPT
When Maven sees me fall to my knees, she pauses the ritual and moves to my side. Her perfect fingers gently trace the markings on my neck.
“Crypt?”
Gods above, her voice.
When I was numbed, it was just another noise—but now I shudder as rivulets of feelings continue to bathe my monstrous soul. It’s a baptism of previously detained human emotions that quickly suffocates me.
The lifelessness on Maven’s beautiful face as Frost wept over her. The psyches I demolished to drown out the loss. The terrified victims who ripped each other apart as I watched. Feeling dead inside while I took vengeance on the gods who dared allow my darling to be separated from me.
I try to inhale, but it’s too much. I’m asphyxiating on emotions.
“Breathe,” my keeper murmurs, holding one of my hands as I finally start to catch my breath.
“Promise me,” I begin raggedly once I can look her in the eye as myself. “Promise that you will never again go where I can’t follow.”
Maven’s gaze is unexpectedly soft compared to her words. “Fuck promises. I’ll make you a godsdamned vow. From here on out, I’ll be your muse. No matter what fate has in store, you won’t be able to escape me this time.”
Gods above.
Yes.
Despite the emotions still stifling my every thought, I rise to my feet to stand across from the stunning demigoddess I ache to belong to. She picks up where she left off, using bronze dust to finish the complex runes surrounding the holy symbol on the altar.
She holds her hands out for mine.
I have no clue if this ritual will work within a memory, but I’d gladly sell my soul to find out.
Taking Maven’s hands, I watch, transfixed, as she utters words I don’t understand. She’s hell-bent on getting this right as she recites from her memory. Towards the end, she switches to English.
“This I vow in all dreams pure
Muse-marked soul forevermore
Bind to me his consciousness
Life or death, this union bless.”
Glowing light surrounds us, soft and warm as ardor burns in my chest. For a moment, it becomes painless heat until my subconscious ripples around us.
I feel the unseen change. It’s a sudden completion of my soul, a connection to something so powerful, dark, and lovely that for a moment, I can only gaze at Maven with profound obsession closing up my throat.
My love.
We’re not bound again—not yet—but I don’t need to hear her thoughts to see everything I’m feeling reflected on her face.
My muse smiles at me.
That’s it. I can’t stand not touching her for another second, so I vault over the bronze-dusted altar to dip Maven, kissing her deeply as her fingers tangle eagerly in my hair.
The moment her hands are on me, a new, strange feeling buzzes pleasantly through me.
Peace, I believe they call it.
Her tongue teases mine as my heart pounds. I nip her lower lip before straightening to rest my forehead against hers.
“Do you have any idea the things you did to me without even a pulse in your pretty neck?” I demand breathlessly, reaching up to cradle her face.
“If it’s any consolation, I loved you just as obsessively from Paradise.”
I freeze, trapped in her eyes as a dangerous dose of obsession spikes my blood pressure. “Repeat that for me, love.”
“When my purpose was fulfilled, I went to Para?—“
“Not that. The other thing.”
The far more important thing.
Maven knows what I want. She has the same slightly uncomfortable expression she used to get whenever people became too emotional around her, but she meets my gaze, understanding how important this is to me.
“I love you,” she whispers. “In life or death or in between, you’re all mine.”
“Oh, my dark, twisted, darling,” I laugh darkly, nearly swaying from the elation of those pretty words. “Brace yourself. You’ve no idea the monster you just created.”
She grins as if that’s the best news she’s had all day, kisses my chin, and takes a deep breath as if to brace herself.
“Time to get out of here. I’m shit at holy magic so far, so hold on.”
Holding on to her will never be an issue again.
A moment later, glowing light floods my mind, I can sense something shatter, and we’re both suddenly yanked out of the nightmarish spell I’ve been tangled in for what feels like years.
I wake up.
The only times I’ve woken up in the past happened after getting knocked unconscious. I’ll certainly be waking up this peacefully more often now that I have the option to sleep whenever Maven is resting. Shaking off slumber is a foreign feeling, and it takes me a moment to find that I’m flat on my back on a marble floor, staring up at the ceiling of the high temple of Arati.
“She better be right behind you,” Frost’s voice warns crisply nearby.
Sitting upright despite the weakness in my limbs, I frown at the way my head feels. Is waking up always this…cloudy?
Taking in my surroundings, I see that Maven is unmoving beside me. Limbo is weighted down so heavily around her that I tense, checking her pulse.
My muse is breathing, but she’s in one of the deepest sleeps I’ve ever seen. Exhaustion from whatever she just did to free me has her practically anesthetized.
Crane sits in the closest pew, head down between his hands as he mutters at the voices he hears. Still, he’s far more coherent than the last time I saw him in his iron enclosure.
Frost moves from leaning against the temple wall to adjusting the collar of his coat six times as he watches Maven with growing concern. I grew accustomed to his notable scar in the months following the Upheaval, but I was extremely numbed then. It certainly makes for an impression now.
I’m distracted from his face by nearby growling. Leaning back and squinting, I get a better view of Decimus chewing on the arm of a wooden pew. He’s not himself, but seeing him here and shifted out of dragon form is a relief.
Hang on. A relief?
How worrisome. Since when did I get so invested in the welfare of these pricks?
“
Fuck.
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.