Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
“Maven.” Lillian’s voice stops me as I walk toward the door.
When I glance at her, she looks more ardent than I’ve ever seen, as if she’s trying to communicate something important but doesn’t know how.
“The gods haven’t forsaken us. That’s why you are here. You are a long-awaited blessing—I wish I could tell you just how important you are, little raven.”
Right. Because the freedom and lives of thousands rests on my doomed shoulders.
No fucking pressure.
I leave without another word. Two hours and several close calls later, I make sure the coast is clear before limping out of a cave mouth toward the misshapen, ancient stone buildings. By this point, I’m trailed by a handful of murmuring specters who gravitated toward me when I passed them in the twisted woods on the way to this compound.
No fires are lit here. The place appears silent and empty.
Amadeus doesn’t bother posting guards at any of the human compounds because everyone knows that if they try to leave, there is nowhere safe to go. The fiends that run amuck in this realm will devour them long before they can make it to the Divide.
Even if they did make it that far, humans aren’t strong enough to survive passing through that thick barrier of magic into the mortal realm—not without extreme magical interference from something like a lich. It will have to be thinned and weakened significantly for the mortals to get through when the time comes for my gambit.
In the meantime, they feel safest in their compounds, where the permanent magic wards keep out the wild dangers.
Not that “safe” actually fucking exists, but everyone takes what they can get here.
As I near a crumbling wall of stones, a shadow moves nearby. I whip out a dagger, expecting to behead a vampire or dismember another Undead, but the thin, one-armed figure steps forward so I can see it better.
Felix looks more gaunt than ever, which is saying something. I assume he’s giving his scant portions of food to his sick mother. His father was devoured by the Undead six months ago after breaking his leg doing manual labor in the citadel, so now Felix is the unofficial leader of the humans here.
“If it isn’t the telum herself,” he greets. “Hi, there.”
I bend to yank a severed claw from the back of my thigh, trying not to visibly grimace at the pain. Gods, that hurts. It’s going to slow me down on the way back. I also have several gouges from harpy talons on my left arm, which haven’t stopped bleeding.
The fun just never ends here.
“I know you avoid talking like the Undead avoid direct sunlight, but how about a simple hello? It’s called small talk—and you’ll have to use it to blend in after you’re sent to the mortal realm,” he points out. “Which means speaking to people, oh horror of horrors.”
I drop the bag of supplies at his feet without a word. Felix picks it up, and the way his face brightens at once makes me wish Lillian could’ve been the one to deliver it. She’s the one who secretly bakes things for the humans, and I’m sure she would appreciate Felix’s look of pure gratitude far more than I do.
Shows of emotion aggravate the Undead and many types of shadow fiends—hence why, much like myself, Felix grew up suppressing his expressions. But right now, he’s plain emotional as he hugs the bag of stolen food to himself with his one remaining arm.
“Thanks. Seriously, you have no idea what this means to us. To me.”
Felix getting sappy is fucking weird. Things must be worse off for the humans here than I realized. I look away, waiting for him to compose himself so we can get down to business.
A couple of the ghosts whisper unhappily, trying to pass through me like I’m the solution to their restless fate. All I feel is the slightest chill. Felix doesn’t see them, of course. He clears his throat and glances at my bleeding arm as he sets the bag down again, opening the top.
“I’m glad you came, but cover that up before the scent of blood lures vampires. You’ll get the people I care about hurt if you’re not more careful.”
There we go. That’s the Felix I know.
I rip a section off the bottom of my shirt to wrap the wounds on my arm. “Too bad you’re not a necromancer, or you could heal me and be done with it.”
He scowls, scanning the area as if the dead trees or bones littered outside the compound will overhear his secret—that magic manifested in his blood when he was six years old. Surprisingly strong magic, at that. If Amadeus finds out, Felix will be treated like all other manifested casters in the Nether:
killed in a dramatic ritual and brought back to serve as a lich. Those fiends are a personal favorite of Amadeus’s.
Felix has been carefully keeping his magic hidden for seventeen years.
“Thank the gods I’m not a necromancer,” he mutters. “Nasty things. That type of magic is not for me or for anyone who happens to have these pesky things called morals.”
Thank fuck I don’t have those weighing me down anymore.
Felix pulls out the fae translations on parchment, and his face lights up again. “Send Lillian my thanks again for helping me learn fae. It’s been unbelievably useful for figuring out complex healing magic for my mother.”
“How is she?”
He blinks up at me, startled. “Uh…do you actually care? Not trying to be rude, I just didn’t think that was even possible, considering your lack of heart.”
Word spread quickly throughout the Nether about the way Amadeus decided to officially turn me into his telum. The monsters who come to take innocents away from the compound must have been gossiping because these humans know I’m no longer one of them.
Although they’re still kind whenever I show up, they fear me much more now.
They’re smart like that.
“It’s called small talk,” I parrot before moving on. Pulling the shard from my pocket, I hold it up.
He makes a face. “You brought a piece of glass?”
“It’s not glass.”
“Yeah? Looks exactly like it. How do you know for sure that it’s not?” he challenges with a smirk.
“Because I pried it out of Amadeus’s crown.”
Felix’s smirk dies immediately, and he swallows hard. “Are you serious? You must be insane.”
“Yes to both.”
He rubs his face. “Oh, gods. I’m not sure that was the wisest course of action. Isn’t he going to look for it eventually?”
Amadeus is already looking for the culprit. If he finds out it was me, I’m sure my fate will be eternally worse than death. I almost admire how creative my self-appointed “father” is with punishments.
He keeps his intricate adamantine crown locked up in his extensive quarters behind several extremely heavy protective spells, which I tampered with so I would leave no trace when I left. Within the crown, three pieces of this substance were embedded.
When I saw it for the first time, I knew they couldn’t be glass. Something about the transparent, flawless element drew me in, so here we are.
I toss the shard to Felix, who barely manages to catch it. “Tell me what it is.”
He grumbles as he tries to study it in the dark lighting. “Not sure. Maybe if I could see it in the morning with a bit more light, I could figure it out. I mean, it wouldn’t make sense for him to have clear quartz or something cheap stuck in his crown. It would have to be something incredibly precious, like?—“
He cuts off suddenly, gawking at me. “Hold on. Hold on, what if…shit. That must be it. Oh, my gods, I can’t believe it.”
“I’m not the kind of monster who can read minds,” I pointedly inform him.
Felix has forgotten about controlling himself again and is now animated with excitement. “Okay, I’ll back up. Did you know this compound is made out of the ruins of a fae castle from thousands of years ago—from before the Entity came along and turned the Nether into a realm of death?”
“Did you know I didn’t come here for a history lesson?”
“It’s relevant, I promise. Over the years, I’ve dug up countless old, broken slabs of stone engraved with ancient fae writings and illustrations. I think they had an impressive library here long ago. That’s what I’ve been studying to learn magic. There’s so much to learn from the fae about agriculture, arts, diplomacy, folklore, and especially their unique ways of crafting minerals and?—“
Gods. Who knew this guy had such a hard-on for knowledge?
My hard stare makes him trail off. “Right. Relevance. Gods forbid I say anything that isn’t conducive to what you have your mind set on. You have an astronomical case of tunnel vision, you know that?”
“I’m blushing,” I say flatly. “Cut to the chase.”
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.