Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
Baelfire is pissed off. Blue flames flicker beneath his skin as he looks around. “Come out, you motherfucking coward.”
More otherworldly laughter bounces between the trees as the experimental wraith toys with us. Shadows shift, swirling and solidifying occasionally around the place we stand at the ready.
Crypt. Go into Limbo. He can’t see you there, Maven says telepathically.
He drops into it immediately.
“Hunting me, hunting you. Back from a grave to mourn at a grave,”
the wraith taunts.
“If she never loved you, she would have survived. They who love you must die.”
To underline his point, the wraith finally makes his next move. Shadows lurch towards Baelfire, but the shifter dodges aside just in time. My attention is pinned on the swirling, tactile shadows. I barely have time to notice the vague, dark figure rising up behind Silas before Maven’s etherium blade is hurtling toward it.
Her knife whooshes just over Silas’s head and plunges into the center of the wraith. Gideon’s hiss of pain fills the air as shadows wrap around Silas’s neck and yank out the knife all at once. The blade twists down, aiming at the fae’s chest as he’s being strangled?—
Until Crypt drops out of Limbo and slashes his own sword upward, knocking her knife free of the shadows.
Maven capitalizes on the wraith’s temporary confusion, moving faster than my eyes can register as she catches the spiraling blade and darts forward. Suddenly, I’m watching Maven bury the etherium blade into the fiend.
Gideon shrieks, and his tangible shadows try to swarm around Maven like thousands of wickedly sharp knives—but she shouts something that makes holy magic flare around her. Her spell punctures through every one of his attempts to harm her as she stabs him again, black wraith blood gushing.
Over and over and over, she stabs it.
The shrieks are deafening as what’s left of Gideon falls to the forest floor, writhing in a mass of dying shadows. Maven doesn’t let up even after the writhing stops, but once the wraith evaporates like all the others, my snowdrop looks exhausted.
Silas is still trying to catch his breath after nearly getting strangled, but Baelfire helps him up as Crypt and I immediately crouch beside Maven.
Fresh tears are on her pretty face as I pull her close, quietly repeating that everything will be okay.
“He’s dead,” Baelfire assures her softly, glancing down at the place the wraith just was.
“You avenged her beautifully,” Crypt adds, brushing hair out of her tear-stained face.
“So she did,” a woman’s voice murmurs beside us.
I don’t even have words for the kind of terror that floods me just with those three words. This is a completely different kind of fear from the blind panic wraiths wield. It’s controlled. Absolute. The kind of primordial fright that haunts you when you least expect it.
With my heart pounding in my throat, I peer over Maven’s head to see my mother-in-law in the flesh for the first time.
MAVEN
The last few minutes have been such a blur that I’ve only processed three things.
One, I killed Gideon.
Two, my mother is here.
Three, Lillian is dead.
Or maybe I haven’t processed that last one yet, because my heart is still doing something horrible inside my chest. I’m suffocating from the surreality of the sight of her ripped to pieces.
She died in fear. I know that much.
And I wasn’t here to help her.
Death has always been a part of my life. I’ve been surrounded by it for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been able to sense it, toolike a heavy tide going out, taking with it the spark of life.
But sensing it this time is different. It hurts. I didn’t see Lillian’s spirit or feel her move on or say goodbye.
I need that goodbye. If I can’t go back in time and change the fact that I wasn’t here to protect her, I need to at least see her again. Which is why I sucked up my pride and prayed for the first time in who knows how long when.
Now I sense all four of my matches are tense with fear as my mother stands nearby. Her hood of shadows is up, completely concealing her face as she looms over us in these eerie, bloodstained woods. Another scythe rests on her shoulder, almost a copy of the one she gifted me.
“You came,” I finally manage.
Syntyche dips her concealed head, her voice as smooth and quiet as I remember. “Amusing as it is, I advise against including threats in your future prayers, spoken aloud or not.”
She’s the furthest thing from a warm presence, but I don’t miss the way my quintet members all flinch away from her voice. Even Crypt looks like he’s having great difficulty adjusting to her presence or looking directly at her.
Silas isn’t even trying. He’s frozen in place, crimson eyes wide as he pointedly looks in the opposite direction of the reaper goddess.
They’re terrified of her.
I don’t sense anything, but I’ve heard she’s the goddess of fear. Maybe that affects them. But I’m too numb from the pain in my chest to try reassuring them. Instead, I look back at Syntyche.
“I need to say goodbye to Lillian.”
“So you mentioned, in between all the threats.”
I stare at the hooded figure. She makes no sound or movement.
“There must be something you can do,” I finally insist, half afraid I might break down again if this plight doesn’t work.
“There is. You just haven’t asked.”
What is it with the gods trying to get a please out of me? First Galene, now her?
“
Please,” I grit, desperate enough to give in.
Syntyche considers for a moment in the dark silence before her hood dips forward again.
“I shall take you into the vestibule between the two lowest planes of existence. The vestibule is the halfway point where the spirits I reap await my brother to lead them to their respective afterlives. You may only be there briefly, for only a fully divine being can linger there without consequence.”
“
Consequence?” Crypt enunciates, finally looking at the hooded figure as he gets over the fear she emanates. “No. She stays.”
Syntyche’s hood turns toward him, distaste in her voice. “
No?
“
“She’s not going anywhere without us,” Everett clarifies, managing to look at my mother again. “Especially not if it’s dangerous.”
“She will likely return,” the goddess muses.
That makes Silas frown, and he finally glances over his shoulder at the hooded figure, too.
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.