Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I like the leash, too. They make me feel more like I’m yours, as long as no one else sees them. Besides, with the newlybound urges so fucking bad this time around, I think it’s helping to calm me down since I can’t have you naked in bed for a little bit longer.
His newlybound urges are worse, too?
I wonder if the others have been experiencing the same thing. Before I can ask, Crypt disappears into Limbo without another word.
CRYPT
Syntyche’s scythe, everything hurts.
I loathe that my muse has been left concerned in the distorted mortal realm as I retreat here for the worst of it. But as little as I care for the opinions of others, collapsing in pain in full view of the refugees gathered here would have caused a commotion that Maven shouldn’t have to deal with.
Not to mention, those pretty tears she held back the last time she saw me like this hurt almost as much as my curse. I’ll do anything to spare her more tears than I know she’ll one day shed for me.
Curling in on myself, I grimace as the pain repeatedly wracks through me. My limbs burn. My lungs can’t pull in oxygen as a sensation like millions of needles burrows inside my veins. When I can finally breathe again, it quickly turns into coughing—and up comes more blood.
It’s less severe than it was before my heart was rebound to Maven’s, but in the end, there is no help for it.
It won’t be long now before this curse of mine takes me away from her again. My guess is a week or two, or maybe days. Whatever Sachar has in mind for my afterlife sentence in the
Beyond, it will be nothing in comparison to being ripped away from my obsession again.
Unless…
My darling reaps souls now. Perhaps she would not reap mine. Perhaps she would instead allow me to haunt her until the end.
Come back. Stop hiding from me when you’re in pain, Maven’s frustrated voice pleads through the bond.
If only she would ask me for anything else. I’d steal each and every one of the fucking stars from the night sky for her, if it would make up for my past actions catching up to us.
I’ll be fine, darling, I insist, sitting up in Limbo to spit more blood out of my mouth.
Liar.
I’m searching for a way to put her mind at ease when Crane frowns in the mortal world, his distorted image glancing down at the very spot where I sit. He’s almost looking me in the eye.
Hang on. Can he see me? Is this some result of his previously being inside my head?
“I almost feel as if Crypt is…” he trails off.
“Oh, thank fuck—I thought
I was crazy this time,” Frost huffs, gesturing at the exact place I sit. “You feel like he’s there, right?”
Decimus nods, his hand sweeping around the vicinity where my head is. “Yeah, here-ish. Sitting.”
Gods above.
Does this mean the rest of them can sense me in Limbo now? Perhaps this is a result of our stronger bonding this time around. What a fucking nightmare—not to mention, it spoils all the fun of dropping out of Limbo to scare those three bastards.
As I stand and fight to regain the last of my breath so I can step back into the mortal world and reassure Maven, Lillian looks at the spot Decimus gestured to.
“Is he okay?”
“It’s his curse,” Decimus explains quietly.
“I thought those were broken,” she frowns, brushing a windblown strand of curly pale hair back behind her ear.
“Yeah, but Crypt’s curse is different because it’s actually more like a?—“
Fucking gods, is that lizard seriously about to just spill everything he knows about my curse again?
Stepping out of Limbo, I elbow the blabbermouth hard in the gut so he shuts up and remembers that even if his curse is gone, mine deserves some privacy.
“Asshole,” he grumbles, rubbing his stomach.
“Loudmouth.” I glance at Maven, immediately transfixed by her dark gaze as something in my chest melts. “See? I’m fine enough, love.”
Her expression is utterly blank as she observes me, and then she turns to stride toward the cultists’ section of the encampment.
“We’ll catch up with you later,” she calls over her shoulder to Lillian, who will not be venturing with us into the cultist area.
Maven knows you’re not fine, Crane warns telepathically, pinning me in his ruby stare.
You know how much she’s already struggling with it. Lying to her for false comfort won’t help.
Piss off, I shoot back, irritated as I fall into step behind the muse who owns every facet of my being.
If all I can give her is false comfort right now, then I’ll give it all the same.
As soon as our quintet draws nearer to the black-tent section of the encampment, there’s a clear difference in how we’re received. Where the Nether humans and Reformists cheered, clapped, and looked on in excited, curious fascination, these black-clad cultists stop what they’re doing and bow deeply to my keeper. They appear to all be legacies, and though many are older, a few of them can’t be older than Decimus.
It’s almost noon, Frost points out telepathically.
Where is their psychotic leader so we can stop his sacrifice?
We turn into a new area of their encampment and pause, taking in the view. Another giant wooden stake has been constructed here. Surrounding it are more cultists who are assembling a feast of some kind—one heavily dependent on smoked meat skewers, by the looks of things. Animal carcasses are strung up to bleed out, and several other cultists are painting canvases with scenes of death and graveyards using the animal blood.
As soon as these cultists see Maven, they also bow. When another of them emerges from a big tent behind the massive wooden stake, there’s no mistaking that he must be Orlando Coates. His eyes light up with unnatural obsession as soon as he sees my muse.
The middle-aged caster with slightly graying hair immediately drops to his knees, pressing animal-blood-covered hands over his heart as he gawks at her. “Daughter of Syntyche! You are so beautiful, I could die.”
“Please do,” she mutters without missing a beat, making me grin. Her attention moves to the wooden stake. “Who are you sacrificing?”
“Only a creature that will please your dark appetite,” he promises.
He snaps his fingers at some of his nearby followers, who rush quickly into one of the tents. A moment later, they pull out a changeling. At first, it’s in its true changeling form, horns and all. It hisses and struggles against its many bindings while they drag it toward the stake.
But as it draws closer, the skin of the Nether creature rapidly morphs and ripples, changing until the changeling now resembles a blue-haired young woman who leers at my keeper.
I don’t miss that both Maven and Crane glance from the creature to a spot where no one stands and back again, almost as if they are drawing comparisons to something I cannot see. A ghost, perhaps.
My suspicion is confirmed when Crane telepathically muses,
This changeling must have seen her before she died. In the Nether, perhaps.
So she was a tribute sent to Amadeus by the Frosts after all,
Maven agrees.
“Veriba pateris thui da’tib!” the blue-haired falsity snarls even as it’s dragged toward the stake.
I understand none of it, but Crane speaks through the bond.
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.