Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
“Gross. Get a fucking room.”
“I bought out the assets of the Legacy Council after they fled, so I own every room in this castle,” Everett reminds him, making a mark on the map.
Douglas grunts unhappily before glancing at me again, his green eyes lighting up briefly as his unique ability must pick up on someone else’s magic in the distance.
“Are there ghosts down here, too?” he checks.
“They follow me,” I explain, grinning when the blue-haired ghost pantomimes smacking his ass.
The mercenary makes a face at all the Undead changeling Mavens in a cell before he turns to leave. “That lioness shifter wants to see you about where she’ll be during the attack.”
I had planned on the Baird quintet being in charge of this safe haven during the attack, but if Kenzie doesn’t like being away from the action, I can think of a few places I could put her quintet. Nodding, I slip out of Silas’s arms despite his sigh and move to leave the dungeons. As I do, I hear Baelfire mutter something to Crypt, who promptly drops into Limbo to follow me just in case.
At the top of the steep stone steps descending into the dungeon, I find Kenzie and Luka. She’s pacing and looks frustrated while he folds his arms stubbornly. Unsure if they’re annoyed with each other or me, I smile at Kenzie.
“There’s the sexiest pregnant lady I know.”
She lights up, preening. “Aww, shucks. Watch out, monk, or I’ll try to add you to my quintet.”
Luka grimaces. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Kenzie swats his arm before turning to me seriously. “I want to help with the attack.
Really help. And I get that keeping an eye on this safe haven is really important and if anyone needs to retreat here, we’re in charge of getting them healed and stuff—but I’m just so fucking worried about how this attack will go. We’re outnumbered, May.
Really outnumbered. We don’t even know how many shadow fiends there are, but Reformist numbers have just been going down ever since the Upheaval started, so if even just one or two more people could help, I can?—“
“She can’t be in the battle,” Luka cuts in, looking at me.
“Kenzie can handle herself,” I point out coldly, disliking the idea of him underestimating her.
“No shit,” the vampire huffs. “But she’s not supposed to shift while she’s pregnant. It’s too fucking dangerous.”
I’ve never even considered if shifting while pregnant was a thing, but Kenzie sighs. “It’s highly discouraged, but I’m still not that far along. They say the second trimester is when it’s a big no.”
Luka shakes his head. “It’s a big no already. I’m not risking you or the baby, Kenz. I’m just not.”
When Kenzie looks torn and frustrated, I clear my throat. “Numbers won’t be a problem. We have backup.”
“From where?” Luka frowns.
I glance behind them at the hallway full of ghosts and think about all the corpses Silas is about to reanimate all around Everbound. With how many legacies have died while training at Everbound University, I’m more than willing to bet we’ll have plenty of Undead soldiers to spare. Not to mention, ravens have been flocking to Everbound like they’re aware I’m going to need them.
“The restless dead,” I finally reply, looking at the other two living people in this hallway.
Kenzie’s eyes get round. “Oh, shit. Are you about to pull some kind of demigoddess trick? Gods, that makes me feel so much better. I know people have rallied here for you, and I totally trust your plan—I was just getting worried. But if you think we’ve got it…”
“We do,” I nod, more determined than ever.
With Kenzie’s concerns eased, she reminds me to say goodbye to her before the actual attack, and then she and Luka leave. For a moment, I watch the ghosts wandering these halls in anticipation. With the ghosts and Undead, the Reformists and others who have gathered here to help, and the reanimated changelings…
It will be a brutal battle, but it all comes down to ending Amadeus.
Before, I would have settled for him merely falling from power. So long as he was no longer a risk to my quintet, I would have let him fade into obscurity peacefully.
But Amadeus sent me a warning through that first changeling. I didn’t listen, so he took away Lillian.
Now, I don’t just want him out of power. I want him gone. After taking away a light like Lillian’s from this world, he deserves whatever will happen to him in the Beyond. And in order for us to kill him, he needs to be mortal again. Based on what I learned from Galene, Amadeus also has no heart. He has nothing but corrupted magic keeping him alive—but if I put a heart back in his chest, I’ll be giving him the very weakness I couldn’t identify in him before.
And once Amadeus is dead…
Godsdamn it, I really fucking hope that whatever blood oath I made doesn’t ruin the happily ever after I’m working so hard to have with my quintet.
Turning to walk back down the stairs that will take me back to the dungeon, I absentmindedly check to make sure Pierce is in its place in one of my sleeves. Cuttrina is hidden near my waist—but the moment I touch my etherium blade, a new memory washes over me, dragging me back to my time in Paradise.
Arati and I are standing on a golden balcony high in the air overlooking stunning views. There is a beautiful white-and-gold city far below, filled with winged angels and nature spirits and countless other Paridisians going about their divine days. A multicolored mountain blooming with flowers and plants I can’t identify rises far in the distance. Constellations still dance in the sky above. An idyllic forest rustles in a soft breeze far below to our right. Just beyond that, a lake shimmering like millions of liquefied stars sparkles in the sunlight.
I realize that I’m cupping my hand in this memory as more golden blood—no, ichor
—drips from my palm.
“Here,” Arati says, offering me a bandage she seems to have summoned from nowhere.
I wrap my hand and notice she’s doing the same to one of hers. This must be right after our blood oath to one another. As much as I don’t recall what I swore to do, I also don’t remember what the queen of the gods swore to me in return.
My aunt sighs, looking out over Paradise once again. “Very well. Now that the deed is done, I will tell you how a Paridisical being once gave up his divinity and descended to the mortal realm. I will warn you, he barely survived.”
Ignoring her warning, I prompt, “He?”
Arati nods, looking lost in a memory from eons ago. “Yes. You see, after being driven from the Nether, the fae have worked to uphold their culture and remember their past, but there are things even they have forgotten…such as the story of their fifth queen. The world was still young when she came to be, but even I can recall how beautiful and fiercely protective of her people she was. All of us gods favored her—of course, at the time, our pantheon was different,” she adds, shrugging. “A lot changes over the millennia. Only my sister and brother and I seem to stay the same.”
The queen of the gods sighs and settles into a seat I previously didn’t notice on this balcony. I sit in another one, watching the constellations twirl and shift above us as I listen.
“So favored was she that we gods decided to give her gifts from Paradise to bless the fae people with. We sent an angel down to deliver the gifts. He fell for her at once, and before I knew it, he came to my palace to beg me to turn him mortal so he could live one lifetime at her side. I had never heard such a thing—giving up an eternity of perfection here for the never-ending difficulties down there,” Arati adds, shaking her head in amusement. “But he was determined. I told him it was outside my power, but if fate itself agreed that he should become mortal, it would provide a way.”
“And it did,” Memory Me points out, impatient. “So what did he do?”
Arati looks at the mountain in the distance. “In Paradise, there is a flower called the corruinum that is so toxic, it is said to poison one’s very soul. It grows at the foot of the mountain. The angel took one seed of that flower and watered it every day with his blood for months until it fully bloomed, and then he turned that poisonous bloom into tea. Drinking it weakened him enough that he could fall to mortality—and I do mean fall, for nothing mortal can remain in Paradise,” she adds.
So he became mortal through…a blood blossom.
No wonder that term is still ingrained in the fae vocabulary. It almost makes Memory Me smile, remembering Silas calling me that—but at the same time, I ache. I’ve watched my matches through ravens in the mortal realm, so I know just how much he’s suffering even as I’m sitting here talking to Arati.
“What happened to the angel?” I ask.
My aunt, the goddess of love, looks pleased as she explains that the angel barely survived his fall to the mortal realm and lost his wings in the process, but the fae queen found him and nursed him back to health. They quickly became obsessed with each other and had many, many children together. They were two of the most honored rulers to reign over the Nether, long before it fell to Amadeus’s corruption.
When she’s done with the tale, I stand.
“Where are you going, niece?” Arati asks, arching a brow.
“I have a seed to hunt down before I talk to your lover, because I don’t have months,” I tell her, turning to walk away.
“Koa’s magic cannot speed up the process,” she calls after me. “That bloom must be watered with your ichor until it matures. Magically growing the bloom will merely sprout another corruinum like the rest.”
Memory Me swears vehemently in this recollection, but everything shifts and changes around me as I’m swept into a new memory. In this one, I once again sit at the edge of Paradise looking out over a sea of clouds. I’m holding my bleeding hand over a tiny green sprout that’s barely visible above the dirt.
Each drop of ichor slowly soaks into the ground around the start of the flower, but Memory Me isn’t focused on the flower. Her attention is on a winged silhouette far below Paradise, circling round and round beneath the very place I sit.
Oh, my gods.
It’s Baelfire’s dragon.
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.