Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
“This leads down and connects with the citadel’s catacombs,” Maven mutters. “Anytime they find a human who has manifested magic, or any other abnormality among the living that Amadeus wants to study or let his necromancers toy with, they’re chained down here until they’re either turned into a lich or tossed into the arena.”
“Delightful. But why are we going there, darling?”
“There’s an old, forgotten stairwell in one of the cells that connects to a hallway that will bring us close enough to
Amadeus’s chambers that we may be able to sneak in from there. If he’s not in his chambers, we’ll check the arena.”
I hesitate. “And if he sees us coming?”
“Right now, Amadeus will be enduring a barrage of visions about an impending attack, including a dozen of my lookalikes to confuse him. He can prepare for some things he sees, but not everything. Predicting the future isn’t truly possible until it’s moments away,” she adds. “By then, the attack will be here and I’ll have this heart in his skeletal chest.”
We finally reach the bottom of the spiral stone steps, and now I can just make out a system of surprisingly ornate tunnels, thanks to the flicker of a small green torch on one wall. As we pass it, I notice the runes etched into the stone walls.
“That’s fae, isn’t it?”
“This all used to belong to the fae thousands of years ago, before Amadeus drove them out and took over. Felix used to tell me about the knowledge all?—“
Whatever she was about to say, she cuts off as Crane speaks telepathically.
The Undead have breached the Nether, and your ghosts are well ahead of them, sangfluir.
That blue-haired one appeared to be leading them, but I lost track.
The Decimus clan is officially flying over the citadel,
Decimus adds.
Please tell me you’re somewhere safe so we can light this fucking place up.
Do it, Maven agrees.
Deep in these catacombs and inside Limbo, I hear nothing of the outside world, but something must happen because a startled voice yelps from somewhere in these dark tunnels.
“W—what’s going on up there?” a terrified man asks, his voice wavering as if he’s about to burst into tears.
My markings light up again, and a shock of pain courses over my system so quickly that I nearly black out as I collapse. Agony pulses through me, my skin burning as more of my markings vanish from my body. I can hear Maven’s worry and feel her cradling my head in her lap again, but it takes a moment for my ears to function fully again as the pain lessens once again.
It’s then that I realize I dragged us out of Limbo.
“Crypt?” my darling whispers, her cool hand brushing against my forehead.
I realize she’s so cool to the touch because I’m burning up. That can’t be good.
Nevertheless, I smile up at her. “Is it a demigoddess trait to look mouthwatering at every angle, or is that just you?”
She huffs at my attempt to brush off the fact that I just collapsed, but someone else speaks in the tunnel.
“Who’s there?” a raspy older woman’s voice asks, every bit as frightened as the old man.
Other voices mutter and whisper, terrified in this darkness. Maven holds up a hand, whispers a word I’ve never heard, and holy light swirls around her hand, illuminating this space.
More gasps sound. Wide-eyed, gaunt faces of chained-up Nether humans stare back at us in abject terror—but my interest is piqued by a quiet whimper in one of the adjoining tunnels.
“Y—you’re Maven Oakley,” one of the chained-up tributes chokes nearby, his bloodshot eyes so big and wide on his gaunt face that they look chilling. “The telum!
You’re supposed to be dead?—“
“If you value your life and freedom, you’ll stop talking,” I warn as we get to our feet. Stepping over an old skeleton, I guide my keeper to turn down into the tunnel where I heard the whimper.
The moment Maven’s light falls upon the young woman curled in on herself in a cold stone corner, I halt.
“That’s Frost’s sister.”
Maven inhales sharply, realizing I’m right. She darts forward to crouch beside the empath, using her magic to illuminate the girl better.
Frost’s sister is wearing jeans and a jacket that are badly stained and ripped. Her butterscotch-colored hair is a mess. Like the other living people in these tunnels, her wrists and ankles are bound tightly together in rusty shackles. I can hear the poor girl quietly sobbing, but when Maven gently shakes her shoulder, she makes no reply.
“Heidi?” Maven whispers.
Something high above these catacombs explodes, and the ground around us trembles. When the people in the other hallway cry out in fear, Heidi sobs and curls in on herself more.
“Shit.” My keeper glances at me. “Without the charm that keeps her from feeling what everyone around her is feeling all the time, she’s going through an empathic overload. We have to…” She trails off with a slight frown. “You recognized her. Have you met her before?”
“Once, as children.”
She lets her curiosity go in favor of the here and now. “Can you get her and the others out of their chains? We need to set them free and get them to safety before all hell breaks loose out there.”
“Right away, darling,” I reply as cheerfully as I can before dropping back into Limbo so she won’t witness more of the searing agony.
MAVEN
Where are you?
Everett demands telepathically, worry saturating his voice.
Now probably isn’t the right moment to tell him I’m trying to get a response out of his unconscious sister, who he thought was dead, while a bunch of ghosts watch.
I’m in the catacombs, I reply.
Crypt and I won’t stay here long. I doubt Amadeus is near his chambers now that the attack’s begun.
That’s fine. It may even be easier to track him down in a fight.
The important thing is getting these living survivors out of here, especially Heidi.
Cautiously, I lift my glowing hand to see if my match’s sister is hurt anywhere, but my attention is momentarily arrested by her face. She must have been wearing makeup in that picture of her I saw at Everbound, because now I can make out a pink port wine stain birthmark covering one of her cheekbones and ears, just under her right eye, all the way down to her upper lip.
So this is why her bitch of a mother made that comment about her children being disfigured.
What a fucking idiot. If anything, it makes Heidi’s soft, pretty face far more interesting. She doesn’t look much like Everett, aside from her nose. After another moment of examining her, I decide she’s been incarcerated and in hell for too long, but otherwise, she’s unharmed.
Somewhere in the tunnels behind me, I hear chains clinking as Crypt frees the others. The ghosts drifting through these catacombs whisper and hiss unintelligibly.
“Heidi?” I whisper again.
No response.
Motherfucker, Baelfire swears through the bond about something I can’t see.
I tense, all kinds of horrible possibilities for his alarm crossing my mind.
Bael?
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