Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
“Don’t draw attention to her,” Silas warns Kenzie quietly.
I hear Baelfire snarl nearby and blink blearily over Silas’s shoulder in time to see the dragon shifter send Crypt flying into a table. Food flies everywhere, and glasses shatter. Students yelp as they try to get out of the way.
“Fucking asshole!” Bael roars dramatically, effectively drawing the attention of every legacy in the dining hall.
Crypt picks up the nearest chair and throws it at Baelfire. It smashes to pieces against his back, but the dragon shifter is barely fazed as he tackles the Nightmare Prince, destroying another table while nearby legacies scramble away. Several pissed-off hirelings approach, shouting at them to knock it off.
In the chaos and destruction, Silas lifts me up and races from the dining hall, taking the nearest exit. Two legacy hirelings posted outside the door yell after us, telling him to stop. But a blast of white fills my vision before suddenly, Everett is right behind Silas.
“Do you have it?” the professor demands as they turn a corner.
Have what?
My world is turning watery.
“Yes. Let’s pray this works.”
Silas shoulders his way into one of the school bathrooms, his panic-stricken scarlet eyes dropping to me. I want to tell him to calm down since this happens all the time, and it’s really not that fucking big of a deal, but the acute pain is making my vision darken, and I have no air to speak with.
He passes me to Everett, who cradles me like I’m made of spun glass. Silas reaches into a pocket void, a common spell that strong casters use as an invisible storage space. He withdraws an elixir bottle full of colorless liquid and…a giant fucking needle.
Oh, joy.
In general, needles don’t bother me because they’re too much like miniature rapiers for me to not like them—but I was constantly injected with experimental magical mixtures for months on end while Dagon was toying around with my biological makeup. If Silas plans on sticking me with that thing, I’ll make sure it ends up in one of his gorgeously taut ass cheeks instead.
One of them says something, but the words are too warped to make out. Finally, everything fades away as my soul falls out of this plane of existence.
There are no images sent from Amadeus this time. Just cold oblivion.
My condition made itself known immediately after I entered the mortal realm. The first time I expired and revived like this, I assumed it had something to do with the necromancers getting too ambitious when creating me. There’s only so much a human body can take when being turned into a monster, so I decided it was just a fluke in my design.
And ever since that first time, my revival times have varied. So I can’t tell if it’s minutes or hours later when I’m violently returned to my body, jolting awake with a gasp.
“Shit! Are you in pain? Is she in pain? Do something,” Everett says frantically from somewhere beside me.
Someone shushes him and adjusts a blanket over me. “
Sangfluir?”
Opening my eyes, I find that we’re in my room. Silas takes one of my hands and kisses my fingertips, his crimson gaze trained on my face.
“How do you feel?”
Weak. I try to sit up, but as usual, my bones are like cold lead after reviving, so it takes a couple of tries. Once I’m propped up against the headboard, I squint out the window. It’s dark outside.
Fuck. How long was I out?
And even more importantly…
I look back at Silas. “Tell me you did not inject me with that shit while I was unconscious.”
He looks down at my hand, still grasped between both of his. I expect my body to start breaking out in hives or a cold sweat, but there’s nothing besides a slight curl of apprehension in my gut. In fact, something about it is…comforting. His fingers and hands are covered in countless little scars from casting, and I’d like to kiss every single one of them.
“I did. But there was a good reason for it.”
Silas explains how reverium helps Crypt and how Crypt brought a colorless herb back from the Divide that Silas has since been developing into an elixir to help me with my episodes. But then he sighs heavily, pulling at his hair as if the voices in his head are tormenting him.
“I’m a fool. It didn’t work on you—of course it didn’t, because I developed the elixir with blood magic and not necromancy.”
Everett does a double take. “Necromancy? Why would you have to…”
When understanding crosses his face, I nod. “Only death magic can heal the dead.”
“You’re not dead,” he snaps, his arctic blue eyes penetrating.
“I’m not exactly alive, either,” I mutter, then frown. “Where are Baelfire and Crypt?”
They exchange a glance that I don’t like. Immediately, I try to get out of bed, gritting my teeth against the lethargic heaviness of my limbs. But Silas gently grips my upper arms to keep me in place, shaking his head.
“They knew causing a scene would get them in trouble. As I said, Crypt is as invulnerable as a cockroach, and even if the Immortal Quintet is pushing things, they wouldn’t dare kill Brigid Decimus’s miracle youngest son. It would cause too much of an uproar. They’ll both be fine, and getting you out of there was worth it.”
I stare at him, then at Everett. Then I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my temples. I’m exhausted from that episode, but now all I can think about is how Crypt returned in such terrible shape and the look of agony on Baelfire’s face when he was hit by the silverblend spell.
If either of them comes back hurt…
My throat tightens.
Caring about others leads to pain. That’s another thing I learned early on when I grew attached to my first caretaker. She was killed in front of me for saying the wrong thing to one of Amadeus’s favorite necromancers, and at only four years old, I became terrified of experiencing that loss ever again.
So when Lillian was brought in to meet me six months later, smiling gently and speaking sweetly, I refused to talk to her. I pushed her away. I was a brat to her for months, hoping she would stop coming to take care of me every day so I wouldn’t have to be afraid of losing her, too.
But no matter what I did to repel her, she always returned. And years later, when Amadeus thought I’d outgrown a caretaker and decided it would be amusing to make Lillian fight in his arena, I took her place every time. I took any beating or punishment they thought she deserved for simply existing. I did anything and everything I could for her because how the fuck else could I possibly repay someone for loving me when I make it so hard?
It’s no different here. These legacies are mine, so I have to protect them.
Even if that means facing the entire Immortal Quintet at once.
But when I try again to get out of bed, Everett places a cool hand over one of mine, catching my eye. “I’ll go. I can get answers quickly.”
“I don’t want answers. I want to kill anyone who touches any of you four that isn’t me.”
His face softens into something tender, and he scoffs softly. “So territorial. All you need to do is rest, Oakley.”
“But if you get in trouble, too?—“
“Then I can get right back out of it with my pretty face.”
He smiles at me reassuringly, and with a start, I realize this is the first time I’ve ever seen Everett Frost smile.
And he has dimples.
Fuck. Seriously? This is not fair. His looks were already catastrophically perfect, and now this? The gods really don’t know how to rein themselves in, do they?
I want to protest more, but Silas gently presses my shoulders back into the pillows. It’s like I’m half-melted in this state because I immediately feel sluggish and drowsy, my eyes drooping.
“Rest, sangfluir.”
“No.”
“Such a stubborn keeper,” my blood fae laughs lightly, kissing my fingertips again. “As I’ve told you, I have no issues with being an asshole. Fighting dirty is my forte. Please don’t make me mix a sleeping draught for you, Maven. You know I’ll do it.”
I glare at him. But then, just like when he was threatening the changeling…I understand him on a level others perhaps don’t. He’s just doing whatever it takes to accomplish what he thinks is best. I do the same thing, so I must begrudgingly respect his cutthroat ways.
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.