Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
And I fully intend to, once I take her as my muse.
My darling has had trouble sleeping tonight, just as she has ever since that godsdamned wraith appeared in Nebraska. But just as I notice her dream finally start to take root, pain lances through me yet again. I’m left trying to breathe through it as I fight the temptation to simply stop feeling altogether.
It’s a little-known fact that powerful siphons are capable of almost wholly numbing themselves to pain and emotions. Call it a predator’s self-defense mechanism—when feeding on blood, emotions, arousal, or dreams, it’s rather pesky to deal with trivial feelings like fear, sorrow, or guilt. We can dull ourselves to physical pain to better focus on the hunt, losing ourselves in our more monstrous heritage.
I distinctly recall the night I first chose to exist in that numbed state.
I was eight years old and so badly beaten that I frightened the other children when I snuck into the orphanage late at night. Saint Eileen’s Private Home for Little Angels was located six miles down the road from one of the Immortal Quintet’s residences near Sutton. It was my favorite of their ever-changing mansions because whenever Melvolin or Somnus lost their tempers and took it out on me, I had somewhere to escape and pretend I was gloriously parentless.
But that time was different.
It was my first time visiting these children at night rather than during the day. When I first ventured into their dreams, I witnessed the horrors that haunted some of those defenseless young souls. Their stomach-turning nightmares were filled with true terror and agony at the hands of adults whom they had hoped would be their protectors.
Their psychological pain was excruciating.
After experiencing their dreams—their memories
—I emerged from Limbo as numb as a corpse. Turning off my emotions and any ability to sense pain allowed me to hunt down their abusers and anyone else who was taking advantage of the innocent in all the savagely insanity-inducing ways they deserved, and I never looked back.
Not giving a fuck about anything but revenge was freeing. Empty years passed by, and I cared and wanted for nothing.
Until I saw her on that stage.
That’s when I decided to feel again—feel everything, including agony, hunger, and every other dreadful thing I had numbed myself to. Painful memories. The suffering of innocents whose dreams I experienced. Even the terror of those I took revenge on.
But so long as I can experience the remainder of my existence at my dark obsession’s side, I will never numb myself again.
Once the wave of pain eases slightly, I move beside Maven in Limbo. My mouth waters as I watch her dream slowly curl through this plane of existence, saturated with her aura—as if even in her sleep, she beckons to me.
How could I resist when I crave her so desperately?
I reach out for Maven’s dream and groan in satisfaction when the flavor of her subconscious floods my mouth. The taste of her dreams haunts me.
The pain in my body lessens slightly, and I find myself in a vague dream set in our quintet apartment back at Everbound. Maven is in the theater room, curled up between Frost and Crane on the sofa as Decimus scrolls through films.
“Oh! This one’s a classic,” Decimus insists. “I mean, the main girl in it is human, so she gets her panties in a twist trying to pick between two guys when the way I see it, she could’ve just picked them both and added her hot best friend while she’s at it.
But it has a great sex scene in the rain. We could reenact it.” He bounces his eyebrows flirtatiously.
She makes a face. “They’re smiling on the cover. It looks cheesy.”
“You agreed to watch a romcom, did you not? They’re all cheesy,” Crane clarifies.
“I only agreed because they’re Lillian’s favorite,” she mumbles, lazily reaching up to tease her fingers through Frost’s white hair.
The scene continues, shifting and flitting to other casual instances. It’s so rare that my keeper’s dreams are so normal or peaceful. For a while, I’m pleased as I bask in her dream space, feeding to my content.
But then I feel it.
The same cold, dark presence that kicked me from her subconscious the last time.
I grit my teeth against the pressure and fight to remain in Maven’s dream, ignoring how my markings flare in warning. It’s a gut-wrenching sensation as her dream melds with something else entirely—an external memory, cold and brutal as it twists into her dream space. Everything shakes around me as I cling to Maven’s psyche.
I won’t have it unprotected as it was the last time.
When the melding stops, I drift for a moment in a dark, sinister place. It’s disturbingly unfamiliar as I try to get my bearings, still clinging tightly to Maven’s aura.
Finally, a memory-spun dream begins to play out. It feels nothing like one of Maven’s, yet I can still sense her nearby, present as she, too, experiences this.
I watch as a vague, towering figure stands waiting in a large stone room. Two thinly clad elderly humans with iron collars around their necks are shivering and silent on the floor beside him. Faceless guards line the perimeter of the room. Everything is dark and bland as if color is too afraid to exist in this dim plane of existence.
Finally, double doors swing open, and a bloke in long dark robes enters the room with a sweeping bow. Judging from the blackness at the tips of his spindly fingers, he must be a necromancer.
“My liege. Another of thine chosen mortals has succumbed to a most glorious death.”
The Entity shows no emotion. “And my daughter?”
“She awaits just outside.”
“Send her in.”
My pulse pounds in my ears as the necromancer brings in a younger version of Maven, perhaps fourteen years old. I choke at the sight of my keeper at this age—bruised and dirty, with her hair tied back from her gaunt face so her haunting eyes are even more prominent. She’s dressed all in black with gloves as she glances down at the terrified humans, but she makes no expression.
“One may live. Choose who will die and deal the blow,” Amadeus’s deep voice rumbles.
The younger Maven remains blank-faced. “I choose?”
“Yes, daughter.”
In a blindingly fast move, Maven whips a dagger from a sheath at her hip and sends it into the throat of one of the guards standing behind Amadeus and the humans. The guard vanishes from the dream, but the Entity appears unsurprised.
“There. That monster’s hands will wander no longer,” Maven mutters, turning as if to leave.
The doors slam closed before she can exit. Although the Entity’s voice remains strangely emotionless, it is like a coo.
“My murderous, moral maniac. You displease me.”
Shadows move in the dream, wrapping around the humans and lifting them from the ground. The remaining guards are strangled by the darkness, falling to the floor with heavy thuds just as Amadeus’s hands plunge into the chests of the two shackled humans. He drops their hearts to the ground, and the shadows release the corpses.
It all happened within the blink of an eye. Young Maven struggles to cover her shock, trying to compose her face despite the moisture gathering in her eyes.
The Entity leans to whisper to her, and I can barely make out the words. “You are weak. If you had obeyed, they would all yet be alive.”
“I don’t kill innocents,” she says, voice breaking.
“There is no such thing as a true innocent. Every being has a dark side—and you must become only your dark side. Then, you will be my telum.”
He straightens, moving to the doors. “You failed this test. Dagon will take you to the dungeons for your punishment.”
When the doors close behind him, I feel a change in the dream. It’s Maven’s memory now as her face crumbles. She drops to her knees beside the two dead humans, biting back a sob as she scrambles to grab one of their hearts. My throat tightens as I watch her whisper dark words, some ritual as she tries to return the hearts to their owners.
Again and again, she tries.
They remain dead. Her sobs wrack my body with aching sorrow.
I need to take this dream away so it will stop hurting her, but when I try to reach out with my own subconscious, a shock of alarm and fury rocks this dream space. Pain cripples me, bringing me to my knees as the true owner of this dream—the Entity himself—realizes his mind is not alone tonight.
All at once, I’m removed. I stumble out of Limbo, catching myself against the wall of the dark cottage as I try to catch my breath. The slumbering scene before me is as serene as I left it, except now Maven rouses, her eyes seeking me in the dark.
She cannot see as well as I do, but I move closer to brush my fingers against her cheek.
“I’m here, love.”
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.