Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
My inner dragon snarls and hisses, furious that I would force an inferior substance down his throat. Agony pierces through my brain before I’m shoved hard into that corner of my mind where I can’t function. I can’t see and can’t think clearly, but I do know one thing: I just became a danger to Lillian.
Shit. What if I turn her into a chunk of charcoal?
What if I burn the entire fucking castle down?
Let me out, I growl at my beast.
He growls mindlessly back. I fight against him with all I have, panic taking over as I once again realize just how helpless I am like this. If I stop fighting him for a moment, I’ll disappear into my own head and never be found again.
I’m trying like hell to break free before my inner dragon hurts Lillian, but then the taste of blood fills my mouth. I can tell my dragon is biting hard, ripping at something, and then?—
Ouch.
The vague nothingness I’m stuck in disappears as pain cuts through the dragon’s hold. I startle and blink back to myself when I realize that I was just flung back into one of the stone walls by a violent blast of bright red magic. Silas is in this Everbound hallway now, gingerly helping Lillian get to her feet.
She’s bleeding profusely from one of her shoulders since I apparently bit it repeatedly like some deranged, feral animal.
Maybe because I basically am one.
Godsfucking damn it.
I spit out the taste of her blood as my head pounds, my dragon throwing a world-class fit about the pain keeping him from being in control.
“I—I’m so fucking sorry, Lillian,” I manage to say.
Even though she’s putting pressure on her shoulder with strain on her face, she’s quick to smile reassuringly at me. “You didn’t mean to. And luckily, Asher is extremely gifted with healing. He’s been resting in the apartment he claimed since you all returned last night, so I’ll just swing by and ask for his help.”
“We’ll take you there,” Silas offers.
I’m not surprised he doesn’t offer to heal her himself. He’s been finicky about using his magic, what with the voices in his head and seeing things and shit. Grimacing through more splitting pain in my head, I wipe blood off my chin and fall into step on Lillian’s other side as we walk her to wherever Asher Douglas has been staying in Everbound.
“Sorry,” I mutter again.
“I’m more upset about the spilled hot chocolate,” she teases brightly.
Feeling like a piece of shit for hurting such a nice human, I glance over her head at where Silas stares straight ahead with shadows under his eyes. The fae looks like he didn’t sleep a wink after his insanity drove him out of all the fun with our keeper last night.
“You could’ve asked Crypt for help sleeping,” I point out. “Or better yet, you could’ve asked Maven to ask him. He would never say no to her.”
“I would’ve, but the dyspeptic unicorns wouldn’t let me leave my old dorm room.”
“Oh, right,” I laugh. “Forgot all about those pesky, deceptive unicorns.”
“Dys peptic,” Silas corrects, like that’s the real problem here. He swats at something beside his head and glances down at Lillian as we turn another corner in this freezing castle. “I need to ask you for a favor you may not agree with.”
“Why wouldn’t I agree with it?” She stops in front of a dorm room door, knocking quietly with her uninjured arm.
“We need you to spend time with Maven while we…retrieve something.”
Lillian looks between us as she puts what we’re asking for together, and then she laughs. “I’m sorry, but you want me to distract Maven? Surely you boys know your keeper better than to think that will work with her. She’ll figure out something is up immediately.”
Silas and I exchange a glance. Lillian is right that Maven is sharp as hell—but we’re going to get her heart back from Dagon, and there is no motherfucking way that necromantic creep is getting anywhere near our keeper again.
Leaving my mate for even a few hours is going to suck ass, but she’s safer here at Everbound than anywhere else right now. Which is why we’ll need help keeping her here, just for a while.
The door finally opens, and I snort at the sight of a sleep-rumpled, yawning Asher Douglas. “You look like shit.”
His attention skips to Lillian’s bloody shoulder and back to me. “You look like the feral dickhead who just took a bite out of a defenseless human. Come in and sit down, Lillian.”
She slips into his room and perches on a small wooden chair near the fireplace, checking the bites on her shoulder. Silas and I follow her inside, and I quickly examine the tidy space. It’s so clean that you’d barely suspect anyone was living in this dorm, except for the fire in the hearth and a gun being cleaned on the table.
Douglas’s eyes glow green as he begins healing Lillian’s shoulder, rolling one of his own after a second and shooting me a glare. After a second, Lillian relaxes with a soft sigh, tipping her head to smile at him.
“Thank you, Asher. I hope you’re feeling better after everything that?—“
“
Stad cantare ad’ihm!” Silas shouts, whirling to glower at the empty kitchen with blood magic dancing on his fingertips.
“Si,” I prompt quietly, gripping his shoulder so he’ll stand down. “There’s no one there.”
His breathing is rapid until he finally drops into one of the spare wooden chairs near the fireplace to rest his head in his hands.
“It would only be for a few hours,” he rasps, clearly talking to Lillian again as he deals with whatever is happening in his mind. “You know we wouldn’t leave ima sangfluir’s side unless we deemed it absolutely necessary.”
Lillian studies him thoughtfully. Douglas finishes healing her and yawns again before folding his arms.
“You’re seriously trying to ditch her for the day? In case you forgot, the last time your psychotic keeper got pissed off, she massacred most of the fat cat legacies with a smile on her face as her demon chickens pecked out everybody’s eyeballs. I wouldn’t ask for round two of that nasty temper if I were you.”
“Her temper is perfect,” I snarl as a rush of anger makes blue heat flicker under my skin. “Mine is the one to watch out for, so keep your motherfucking mouth shut when it comes to my mate. Besides, we’re not ditching her, we’re just going to get her heart so?—“
Silas quickly sits up and kicks my shin to shut me up. Good thing, because I don’t know who does or doesn’t know about Maven’s missing heart.
But Lillian must know, because her face transforms with realization as she rubs her now-healed shoulder. “Oh. I almost forgot he still had it. But if you go after it, you’ll be traveling way too far into the reach of the Nether if it’s still where it was?—“
“It’s not,” Silas clarifies. “Dagon has it now.”
She gets very pale and whispers a prayer to Arati. To Douglas’s credit, he doesn’t bother asking what we mean by it, or who Dagon is. Instead, he goes back to cleaning his gun like we’re not even here.
Lillian stands and regards the two of us very seriously with her bright blue eyes. “All right. I’ll distract Maven as well as I can, because frankly, I don’t want him near her ever again. He’s—he’s just…a scútráche,” she finishes with surprising bitterness.
Silas’s brows go up. It looks like he’s trying not to smile, which makes me think that’s some kind of fae curse that took him by surprise.
“You really did teach Maven her fae,” he muses. Then he stands to open the door for her. “We’ll take care of the scútráche.
Thank you, Lillian.”
She smooths her bloodied outer jacket, looking between us one last time. “All right. But please come back safe and unharmed, because if you don’t, she’ll never forgive any of us.”
“We’ll be fine,” I assure her, smiling. “Thanks again for the suppressants. And sorry again about biting you. When we get back, I’ll make dinner for all of us to make it up to you.”
“If all the people who are trying to get into Everbound to meet the demigoddess herself haven’t destroyed the place by then, that is,” Asher Douglas grumbles from the table.
Lillian says goodbye to us one more time and leaves. Silas is zoning out again despite his tight hold of the blood amulet around his neck, pupils blown as he mutters in fae under his breath. Not liking that he’s in such bad shape with this mercenary asshole to see it, I decide to suffer Silas’s wrath later and toss him over one of my shoulders to stroll out of the dorm.
Everbound Castle is completely empty. No Reformists, no mercenaries, nothing. It’s starting to weird me out until Crypt appears out of fucking nowhere, startling me. He’s leaned up against the hallway wall, smoking leisurely while his markings continue to light up.
“Frost had all his Reformists sent to stay in Halfton last night. No one but the Baird quintet is allowed in while we’re away.”
“Good,” I grunt, shifting Silas’s weight on my shoulder slightly as he starts rambling in fae. “Where’s Maven?”
“Still fast asleep in Frost’s bed after the rounds we put her through last night,” the Nightmare Prince smirks before pushing off the wall to walk toward one of Everbound’s nearby courtyard exits. “Frost is this way, waiting for the Nether caster to get here.”
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.