Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
My jaw clenches, and I glare at Baelfire.
But my suspicion that the dragon shifter is to blame dies when the Nightmare Prince scoffs, “I do my best work in mad minds, Crane. Of course I know that you’re one of them.”
He tips his head back to blow out a long exhale of sweet-smelling smoke, and Baelfire snaps, “Now is not the time to smoke, you creepy fuck.”
“Smoke shouldn’t bother a dragon.”
“
Everything bothers me right now. I need to fucking kill something, and it’s about to be you.”
The incubus’s typical levity is gone as he ignores Baelfire to look at me. “If Frost tells the faculty or anyone else that Maven was at the scene of the crime, I truly will kill him. Don’t try to stop me.”
As a faculty member and not a student, Everett wasn’t locked in this apartment with the rest of us. He went to a big meeting with the other professors and faculty, who are undoubtedly in a tizzy about Everbound being locked down.
It’s never happened before. Then again, neither has an assassination within the Immortal Quintet.
I glance down at my hands, watching the fresh clusters of puncture marks from my bleeding crystal as they start to tingle and seal, thanks to the concoction. I lost track of how many times I drew my own blood while trying to heal her, but whether or not she killed the mage for some anti-legacy plight, I would do it all again.
At least, I would try. I have no idea why my magic refused to heal her.
“When I couldn’t rely on either of you earlier,” I mutter, glaring at both Crypt and Baelfire, “Everett is the one who snuck Maven to this apartment while I wiped away all traces of her from that office. I doubt he’ll say anything to anyone else, but if he does, I’ll help you kill him. Gods only know how badly I wanted to when he told Maven?—“
“About the bet you suggested,” Baelfire growls, cutting me off. “Fucking fae. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
Whenever we were forced to spend time together as children, we’d made plenty of bets about all kinds of juvenile things. Typically, to prove who was the best. This bet was meant to be a harmless competition between childhood enemies and nothing more—for the others, at least. I was serious about winning Baelfire’s dragon scales, and I intend to collect them later for two good reasons.
But right now, my priority is to make sure Maven knows I wasn’t faking anything for the wager.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t pretend you weren’t the first to jump on the bandwagon.”
“Whatever. Unlike you, I don’t trust that icicle prick to keep his mouth shut. Hell, he just screwed us over! What’s going to stop him from telling the Immortal Quintet that Maven was in that room with their dead quintet member?”
I consider that quietly. The tingling in my limbs is softening, and my nose isn’t drizzling blood anymore. I’m sure my shoulder will be fucking sore, but at least the concoction did much of the heavy mending of my broken shoulder for me.
Finally, Baelfire sits up on the couch, grunting as he pulls my bleeding crystal from his bicep. His bicep immediately heals, and he studies the fae-created mineral.
“Okay, are we going to talk about the fact that our adorable little keeper might’ve murdered the headmaster? It sounds fucking nuts, but why the hell else would she have been in there? I mean…even if she’s part of the anti-legacy shit going on, she’s just an atypical caster, so how would she?—“
“She’s not just an anything, so watch your mouth. We’ve all been underestimating her.” Crypt exhales another long puff of smoke before tossing down the stub and stepping on it to snuff it out. I note that he’s no longer shaking.
“Easy to do when we’ve learned frustratingly little about her,” I mutter. Then my eyes narrow on him. “Were you watching her from Limbo when she was in that office? Do you know something I don’t?”
“I know plenty of things you don’t, Crane.”
“If it’s about Maven, tell us,” Baelfire grits. “We could have lost her?—“
He cuts off, and we all go quiet when we hear the click of the bathroom door opening down the hall. A moment later, my throat constricts violently when Maven steps into the room wrapped in nothing but a white towel. Her dark, wet hair drapes over one of her bare shoulders, and her boots hang from one hand. Water still clings to her arms, legs, and neck, glistening like miniature crystals all over her tantalizing body.
My cock is immediately demanding attention. I’m not the only one because Baelfire looks like his brain is malfunctioning, and Crypt is instantly at her side.
“Darling,” he rasps so quietly I almost don’t make it out.
Maven surveys each of us with a highly guarded expression. It takes intense effort not to adjust my erection, but she already has enough reason to be furious with us without me slavering over every inch of her like a starving wendigo with my dick in hand.
“I have no clothes here,” Maven mutters.
“Take mine,” Baelfire says quickly, hurrying from the room using his shifter speed to go to the bedroom he’s claimed for his own.
A few seconds later, he reappears and eagerly offers our keeper an armful of shirts, hoodies, and other random articles of clothing. Maven begrudgingly selects a massive dark gray hoodie from the pile. Her attention drifts to my still-healing nose, but she has no outward reaction.
“Well, baby? You gonna tell us why you were in that room?” Baelfire asks bluntly.
“If you’re wondering who killed the headmaster, I sadly can’t take credit.”
“Then what were you doing in his office?” I press.
Her dark gaze clashes with mine. “Besides bleeding out on the floor in agony after four idiots used my body to boost their egos? Not a damn thing.”
Ouch, one of the voices in my head snickers.
She has a sharp tongue, but there’s a faint undertone of hurt in her savage words that cuts even deeper. Baelfire is right. I was the one who suggested the very bet that hurt her. I’m no fool—I know Maven must be so completely closed off for a reason. Something made her like this. She won’t talk about her past, but my blood blossom must have been hurt deeply.
And now she’s hurting again, because of me.
I need to fix this. Immediately.
“
Sangfluir,” I begin gently, intending to smooth things over.
Her eyes flash as if my trying to cajole her has the opposite effect. “I’m not interested in your justification.”
I continue anyway, determined. “The bet had nothing to do with us wanting you?—“
“Stop talking.”
“Maven, please just?—“
I see it the moment her temper flares. But instead of snapping at me or storming away, she does the last thing I could possibly expect. She lifts her chin, drops her boots to the floor, and lets the towel fall away, leaving her gloriously naked.
I nearly bite my damn tongue off.
Gods above, her body is so fucking beautiful.
It’s impossible not to recall just how tight and wet and utterly addictive it was to be inside my keeper. My eyes snag on a water droplet that traces slowly down the smooth, olive-toned skin of her neck before it drips between her breasts, its path veering slightly when it rolls over the pale scar there.
I want to lick away the water and then…sink my teeth into that gorgeous neck.
Fuck me.
I should not have thought about biting her. Now it’s all I can think about—biting and drinking and finally finding out what her tantalizing blood tastes like.
Crypt exhales sharply, and Baelfire makes a strangled sound, gripping his own erection. Meanwhile, Maven holds my gaze as a very clear show of fuck you as she slips into Baelfire’s hoodie, which reaches all the way down to her knees. She adjusts her hair, slips into her boots without bothering to lace them up, and brushes past three extremely aroused, stunned legacies before slamming the front door behind her.
It’s quiet for one beat before Baelfire rubs his face. “Holy fuck. She knows how to shut us up.”
Crypt vanishes, no doubt to follow her. But as Baelfire and I stand in mutually frustrated silence, my ears begin to ring. The voices in my head build in volume until their whispers drown out my own thoughts. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to breathe through the cacophony of paranoia swarming in my brain.
What are you doing, letting her go out without your protection? You couldn’t even heal her. How useless are you?
Your keeper will die, and you’re powerless to stop it.
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.