Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
Aside from searching for Crypt, I’ve spent months looking for my sister and worrying about what I would find.
And my father must know it, because he has that gotcha look on his bleeding face.
I narrow my eyes. “What about her?”
The doors of the elevator ding softly, but I don’t take my eyes off Alaric as he lifts his chin. “I’ll tell you where she is if I walk free.”
I weigh my options as snowflakes pepper the air around us. The odds that Alaric is just throwing Heidi out as a bluff are extremely high. He knows how protective I am of her. And whether I like it or not, the odds that Heidi has actually survived this long with everything going on are…
Low. Nauseatingly low.
Heidi isn’t a fighter like most legacies are born to be. For one thing, she’s a type four empath, which is the most extreme and rare level of empathic abilities. I was relieved when my sweet, sunshiney sister finally admitted to me she would rather never attend Everbound and instead pretend to be a human.
During the Upheaval, she would have struggled to defend herself on account of the skittish, non-predator animal living inside her.
But even though it’s unlikely, if there’s a chance she survived and could be out there…
I glare at Alaric, moving the point of my sword to hover beside his ear. “Forget walking free. You’ll tell me where she is or?—“
“Or what?” my father spits, still shaking and gripping his chest where his heart hurts. “As you pointed out, your sick, twisted keeper already took my quintet away. I have no safe haven left. If you kill me, you’ll never know where she is. There is nothing you can threaten me with, you hideous fucking disgrace.”
Someone growls nearby. That confuses me enough to barely glance over and realize that Baelfire, Crypt, Silas, and Maven have ventured into this frozen penthouse. Baelfire is the one growling, his teeth bared at Alaric. Silas is staring at the bare wall like it’s the biggest danger in the room, and Crypt is holding…fingers?
Oh, right. That freak made a promise to Maven. Gross.
Meanwhile, Maven’s dark eyes are on my father, angry and unforgiving, but it’s like an anvil lifts off my chest. Fucking gods above, I just can’t breathe whenever I’m not around her. Remembering her tied to that stake, ridiculed and filmed and laughed at as gasoline was poured over her head?—
Searing anger makes me turn back to Alaric and swipe my sword.
His ear comes off. He screams.
I leave his other one intact so that he’ll hear my furious demand. “Where is she?”
“II won’t tell you,” he chokes out. “Frosts do not?—“
I slash across my father’s other cheek, and he howls, clutching his ruined face. Tired of this slow process, I toss aside the sword and haul my father up by his blood-soaked lapels, slamming him against the frost-patterned glass wall overlooking the gray cityscape outside.
“Last chance,” I warn him, years of anger at the way they mistreated my sister welling inside me. Despite the debilitant they gave me, frost begins to climb steadily up my forearms as my curse reacts to my anger.
Alaric coughs blood in my face on purpose, trying to distract me. Past me would have fallen for it, but if he thinks blood is going to put me off now, it means he’s not getting the fucking message. Releasing one of his lapels, I slam my elbow into Alaric’s face, satisfied with the crack of his nose as he shouts in pain again.
“You’re right. I can’t threaten your quintet or your safe haven, so it’s a good thing you still have what you really care about—your own damn hide,” I point out. “You think I’d let you walk away after you fucking broadcasted humiliating my keeper? No. You have two choices. Tell me where my sister is, and I’ll make it quick. Keep annoying the hell out of me, and I’ll drag this on, kill you anyway, and rip this entire place apart until I find clues—and I know there will be something, because
Frosts always keep impeccable records,” I mock his voice.
He glares at me, but it’s unimpressive thanks to the blood, gashes, and pain all over his face. “You’re really going to kill me? Your own father? You son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not my fault Mom was a bitch. Now choose.”
Alaric seethes for a long moment before looking defeated. Maybe it’s from losing his quintet, or maybe it’s because I bested him, but his shoulders slouch as he stares at me.
“She showed up over a month ago, looking for safety. It’s the way of legacies and Frosts to cull the weak, and we couldn’t have her weakening our safe haven.”
“What the hell does that—” I begin.
“We turned her away—her and that little human friend of hers who brought her here. They were left to the fiends outside my safe haven to fend for themselves.”
Horror and fury hit me so hard and fast that I freeze up as his words sink in.
He turned her away.
My parents fucking turned their own daughter away.
If Heidi had been desperate enough to come to my parents looking for safety, they would have treated her as they always have—like someone with no significant value. She’s not a powerful legacy, and my mother, being the appearance-obsessed woman she’s always been, wouldn’t have wanted people here to find out Heidi was their daughter.
If they refused to take in Heidi left her to fend for herself?—
There’s no way she survived. She’s dead.
My sister is dead.
My lungs feel like they’re collapsing. Oh, my fucking gods. I failed her. I was too caught up in my grief after losing Maven to think clearly. I failed to protect her from our family. She probably died terrified and alone in some horrific circumstances, and?—
Too late, I see the gleam of freshly summoned ice in my father’s hand. It’s sharp as a dagger, and he’s already thrusting it up toward my chest when something blurs between us, roughly knocking me aside.
Glass shatters. Alaric shouts as he’s tackled through the window by none other than Baelfire.
Who is now falling to his own death.
Maven shouts in frantic alarm, and that sound makes my chest clench painfully. I’m still in shock when Crypt swears and races forward to leap out the window next, dropping into Limbo immediately.
I scramble to the edge of the penthouse, my heart pounding as I watch Baelfire’s careening form getting smaller the further he falls. Godsdamn it, he can’t shift to save himself. Even a shifter can’t survive a fall from this distance?—
But like a blip, Crypt appears, grabs Baelfire, and then they both disappear before hitting the ground.
I exhale, relief flooding me so quickly that I get lightheaded.
When I hear Maven breathe out in equal relief beside me, I realize how closely and fearlessly she’s standing next to the ledge. I immediately grip her around the waist to pull her away from danger. Silas is still zoned out in his insanity, etching runes into one of the shards of ice nearby and whispering to the voices in his head.
Maven protests my fussiness, insisting she’s fine, but I’m too busy taking stock of every inch of her. She’s covered in gasoline, dirt, blood, and soot. Her wrists are red from how tightly they tied her to the stake, but despite the rips and tears in her straitjacket and clothes, she’s okay.
“Everett,” she murmurs, making me realize she’s been repeating my name as I’ve been analyzing any tiny nicks or cuts on her. She cups my face, making me look at her. My chest squeezes again, seeing the gentleness in her gaze. That boundless concern. “Are you okay?”
“You just had your identity revealed on live television. You were laughed at and wrongly convicted, and then you were almost burned at the stake for the entire remaining world to see,” I point out angrily. “Of course, I’m not fucking okay. I need to get you back to Everbound. Back to safety. If Douglas is still alive, we’ll have him transport us back immediately, and I’ll send a team here to raid the place for anything useful, including the etherium shielding?—“
“I meant your parents,” she interrupts gently, glancing at my mother’s motionless body. “I know your relationship with your family wasn’t ideal, but…”
Oh. She thinks their deaths are upsetting me.
At one time, years ago, I would have been heartbroken. Back then, I thought family meant family, no matter how cruel, and people owed each other just for sharing blood. In a warped, manipulated way, I loved my parents and their quintet and did anything I could to make them happy. To be a perfect heir.
Now? I haven’t had them twisting my arm in so long that I can see why Silas and Baelfire and even Crypt constantly criticized my family while we were growing up.
Whenever my parents took me to the Decimuses to “make allies” with other strong legacy children, I pretended not to notice how different Baelfire’s family was from mine. Still, he never missed the chance to point out how awfully my family treated me in comparison. A long time ago, before it ever entered my mind to go off on my own, Silas was the one who first suggested I get myself emancipated early.
They knew. It took years, but I get it now.
I shared blood with the Frosts, and I looked like my father, but I’m not them. And now that my sister is gone, I have only one person to mourn and no family to speak of.
I’m…whatever my quintet is.
A mess, basically.
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.