Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I should have realized my blood magic would nullify whatever effects Crypt’s plant would have had on Maven. I need to find someone whose magic will work with her. Perhaps she must make the elixir for herself with her necromancy, or…maybe I need to find Pia. After all, the prophetess mysteriously healed my keeper after the Matched Ball.
Someone needs to ask that prophetess questions. I’m suspicious of her, but I won’t know any peace until I help Maven fend off her condition.
You want true peace? You only get that one way, another voice sniggers.
She can’t break your curse. She is a waste of time. You know what you must do to escape us.
“Shut up,” I whisper miserably, squeezing my eyes shut to bury my face in her dark hair.
The ringing becomes unbearable, and my vision darkens as the madness takes hold. And this time, when I shake off the insanity, I’m straddling Maven with my hands around her neck.
She stares up at me with wide eyes, her hands poised and surrounded by dark magic, but she’s not moving to stop me as this situation smashes into me like ice water.
I’m…hurting my keeper.
I’m strangling her.
I cry out in horror and break away from her, bile burning its way up my throat before I lurch away from the bed to expel anything left in my stomach. I fall to the floor, tugging at my hair as the voices’ mocking laughter echoes in my head.
I was just hurting my blood blossom because of them.
They’re right. There’s nothing left of my mind, anyway—I’m absolutely fucking insane, so if I’m hurting my keeper, I can’t let myself exist. I can’t keep posing a threat to her.
The ringing hasn’t subsided, so I can’t make out whatever Maven is trying to rasp from the bed. I stagger to my feet, trying to get to the door. I can’t even fucking look at her. If I see marks from my hands around her neck?—
Just like the marks that Gideon probably left, a voice in my head crows.
She’ll look at you like you’re him now.
More nausea threatens to escape. The voices in my head were just taking advantage of Maven’s most traumatic memory. And my hands were around her neck.
What have I done?
What have I fucking done?
“Silas!”
A flare of dark magic slams the door shut just as I open it, and then Maven grasps my arm and turns me around. I was right. She has bruises around her throat. A sound of devastation breaks from me, but she stubbornly grips my jaw to force me to meet her gaze.
The moment I see her determined, beautiful eyes, free of the hurt and hatred I should see there, I drop to my knees to bury my face against her stomach.
“
Sangfluir.
Sangfluir, im altha echair a
?—“
I’m babbling nonsensically in fae, but she starts stroking my hair.
“Shh. Breathe.”
Maven stays in place, fixing my hair while she waits for me to calm down and stop shaking. How vulnerable I must seem right now—how absolutely fucking weak. She should be ashamed to have me in her quintet. Why is she comforting me? I just hurt her despite promising I never would.
I cannot fucking believe I hurt her. The shaking gets worse.
“I can’t live with myself,” I whisper brokenly. “I can’t live with the voices anymore, Maven. They’re right. I can’t?—“
As the voices’ laughter and ringing fade from my ears, I go silent when I realize my keeper is singing softly. It’s an old, traditional fae lullaby I heard constantly as a very young child. It warms my chest immediately.
She’s incredibly off-tune, yet I’ve never heard anything more beautiful.
“How do you know this?” I manage.
“Lillian used to sing it to me.”
I don’t know who Lillian is, but hearing the rough scratchiness of her voice makes me desperate to fix what I just did. I reach for the bruises on her throat, determined to erase them, but despair fills me again when I remember I can’t even fucking heal her.
Am I truly so useless to the woman I love?
She frames my face with her hands. “It wasn’t you. It was your curse.”
“That’s no excuse. You just woke up to your greatest fear. I deserve death—no, death would be far too merciful for me now,” I grimace.
“First of all, that is hardly my greatest fear. If someone did strangle me, I’d revive and gladly repay the favor. Second of all, this isn’t a big deal. Some people enjoy choking. Kenzie says it’s kinky.”
Gods above. How is she joking at a time like this?
I cover my face. “Don’t make light of this. Please.”
“If you insist. Come here.”
She leads me back to the bed. I don’t want to sit down with her. What if my sanity ebbs again, and I do something far worse? I should retreat to my private dorm and wallow in self-hatred, where I pose no risk to her. There’s plenty of hard liquor there I can try to drown my sorrows in.
“Silas. Sit.”
“I need a drink.”
Maven considers that. “Okay. Sit first.”
I do, but I keep an arm’s length between us. I feel wretched. Haunted. I will never fucking get the image of me choking the life from her out of my broken head. I always knew what my curse would be and always anticipated hating the feeling of slipping away, but this is far more torturous than I ever could have imagined.
I’d loathe the gods for doing this to me…but then again, they gave me my blood blossom.
So, even if I hate them right now, I’ll always be in their debt.
Maven huffs and scoots closer to me on the bed. At first, I think she’s going to offer sweet words or offer empty assurances that she’s all right, even though I can see the motherfucking bruises.
Instead, my soul nearly leaves my godsdamned body when my vicious little keeper withdraws a concealed knife from her pants and drags it across her palm. I shout in alarm, but then the intoxicating scent of her blood slams into me, and I go dizzy with hunger.
Her dark eyes sparkle with daring. “You said you needed a drink.”
“I—I can’t…” My mouth aches. My chest is on fire, my heart thrumming with desire and terror. She can’t let me do this. “No, I just hurt you. I won’t do that again.”
Maven’s hand is now dripping, and she rolls her eyes before raising a red finger and wiping it gently across my lips. My tongue darts out on instinct, and?—
Holy gods above.
I’m on her in an instant, my fangs burying into her hand as lust and cavernous hunger roar through my veins. I immediately have her pressed against the bed beneath me, trapped. Maven’s sharp inhale vaguely registers, but I’m too far gone from her breathtaking flavor to do anything except feed.
All magic tastes the same to me.
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.