Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I smirk. “Bullshit. If you really didn’t like them, you would have driven them insane years ago. Instead, you’ve watched their backs. Most people would call that touching.”
He studies me, his lips curling up. “And what do you call it?”
“Convenient. It means I don’t have to actually worry about you killing them or vice versa.”
“As if he even fucking could,” Baelfire calls from inside the cottage.
Silas moves to the threshold, too, pressing a gentle kiss against the side of my neck. He ignores that Parker is glaring daggers at him like he has a personal vendetta against the blood fae.
“You will not truly be alone,” Silas murmurs in my ear, softly enough that I doubt Baelfire can even hear him.
He goes on telepathically.
Everett and I are a mere thought away. And although my mentor has his idiosyncrasies, his obsession with knowledge drives him. You’re a curiosity to him, and as such, he will not allow harm to come to you. If anyone else tries
?
—
I’ll kill them, I reassure him before leaving to talk to the wizard.
MAVEN
Though my quintet isn’t happy about this situation, twenty minutes later, Ross opens the door to an expansive study room within one of the many other buildings in the Sanctuary.
It’s something between a library, alchemist lab, and indoor garden, with books lining every wall and a small sitting area beside thriving plants. Ross again dips his head and continues acting far too fucking formal with me before closing the door, leaving me alone with the Garnet Wizard.
Who has aged considerably within the last hour and a half.
When we first met him, I would have guessed he was in his late forties. Now he’s definitely in his fifties, and his hair has grayed into his eyebrows. He’s sitting in one of the cushioned settees sipping tea and smiles when he sees me analyzing him.
“Silas did not warn you of my curse beforehand because he has been sworn to the utmost secrecy, as is everyone who enters my Sanctuary.”
He nods at the teapot and cup waiting for me on the small coffee table beside a small stack of ancient-looking books. I briefly skim the titles on their old, cracked spines.
A Complete History of Paradise
Divine Compendium: All We Know of Gods and the Saints Who Walk Among Us
Sancti, Semidei et Prophetae
I’m still translating the last title in my head when he motions again at the teapot.
“Tea?”
I don’t trust eating or drinking anything offered freely, but I take the opposite seat and study him, putting the pieces together.
“It’s your curse. You age quickly.”
“Four years per hour, to be precise. My life cycle resets each midnight—or rather, it used to. For centuries, ever since I lost my keeper and quintet, it has always been the same, but recently, the aging cycle has become quite unstable. I might wake old in the morning and age backward, for example. Extremely tedious and something I have taken as a sign of my probably-impending death.”
I see now how Silas matched this curse with The Scarab nickname. This is one of the most severe curses I’ve heard of, so it’s also no surprise that Silas wants Baelfire’s scales to try to treat his mentor’s condition.
Still. It’s fucking weird that he’s openly telling me about such a taboo subject.
The wizard sees my expectant look and shrugs, setting down his teacup. “That was my way of offering you transparency, for I am not one to beat ineffectively around the bush.”
“Me neither.”
“Excellent. Then, let us be frank with one another. I have long stopped caring about keeping the Nether out of this world. Indeed, my untraceable Sanctuary is my own world. It is safeguarded from any monster, human, or shadow fiend that I do not wish to admit. Only my deeply loyal acolytes and I know how to leave and enter through two rare spells, which I can change anytime. If the prophecies are true and you are to bring about the end of balance between the five planes and wreak havoc on this world, I and my collection of knowledge shall be quite safe here.”
I absorb that. At least now I know Gideon can’t get into the Sanctuary, even if he does track us here. It also means Douglas and any others after us won’t reach us for now.
“All this to say, we are not enemies,” the wizard clarifies.
“We’re not allies, either.”
“Agreed. We simply both exist and can benefit from one another if the option arises. If you need etherium or my assistance, I only require one thing in return.”
I glance down at my hands, which feel odd without gloves. “Knowledge. Silas says it’s what drives you.”
He smiles. “How very true. He’s always been quite bright—my only official apprentice for the last two hundred years, and I daresay someone I could almost consider a friend. And to think, I nearly refused to take him in. Those damned immortals would have raised him if that elemental of yours hadn’t stepped in.”
I blink. “What?”
The Garnet Wizard peruses the little teacakes on the table.
“Indeed. I charge a rather exorbitant fee for tutelage, let alone raising and apprenticing someone for many years. The Crane estate and fortune ought to have passed to that young prodigy when his parents killed one another—but their will was suspiciously altered, and his distant Crane relatives descended like wolves. He would never have survived on what little they left him with, and he knew it. He sent an application to me, but I overlooked the boy because of his severe lack of funding.”
He huffs with disdain. “Not to mention, I knew how much the Immortal Quintet wanted to make a Crane into one of their obedient, brainwashed pets. You see, I like to avoid them entirely, so I was resolved to ignore the so-called prodigy and continue as I have.”
“But…Everett stepped in?” I press, still stuck on that. “How?”
“He had contacted me and paid quite handsomely a few years prior for a very special trinket—intended for an empath, I believe. He contacted me again after the death of the Cranes, but instead of money, he offered nevermelt. At the time, it was worth far more than a fortune would have meant to me. After quite a lot of haggling, wherein I realized he seems to have inherited his annoyingly keen business sense from that prat father of his, I agreed to take in Silas as my apprentice.” He laughs. “Looking back, it is one of the finer decisions I’ve made in my very long life. Quite a lad, your blood fae.”
Oh, my gods.
Knowing Silas’s life could have been so drastically different at the hands of the Immortal Quintet and that Everett stepped in like that…
“Silas doesn’t know about this,” I realize.
“No, to be sure. Secrecy was part of the arrangement. I assumed the elemental would tell him eventually.”
I try to tame my smile, but it’s surprisingly tricky.
Those fucking legacies. They’re all secretly a bunch of softies, aren’t they? They can gripe about each other and fight all they want, but the sense of brotherhood they deny having any trace of has clearly played a part in all their lives.
You’re getting a blowjob tonight, I send just to Everett.
There’s a shocked silence, followed by a very flustered,
I…you…um, what?
Just say yes and thank you.
Yes. Thank you. But only if I get to return the favor. Also, please tell me you’re safe.
I reassure him that I’m good as I finally pour myself tea. If the Garnet Wizard was going to try hurting me, he would have done it by now.
Thank the gods. But keep talking. We’re kind of dying over here without updates, Snowdrop, Everett’s soft voice says in my head.
Whoa. Hang on. Snowdrop?
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.