Twisted Soul (Cursed Legacies #3)

22. Maven

22

MAVEN

I hear Crypt swear before he’s holding my hair back. Someone else rubs soothing circles over my back.

Three rounds of heaving later, and I’m ready to repeatedly stab the prick who caused this. When my stomach finally stops trying to escape through my throat, I wipe my face with a shaky arm and straighten to see four pairs of eyes pinned on me.

Everett is beside me, his hand still rubbing soothing circles on my back. Baelfire and Silas are close, standing guard, and Crypt hasn’t let my hair go as he stares at me with a…tender smile?

What the fuck?

I’m confused by their strangely intense, happy expressions until I hear Everett whisper a quiet prayer of thanks to Koa, the god of fertility.

Yikes.

Talk about jumping to conclusions.

“You’ll feel bad for smiling in a moment,” I inform my overly pleased, very mistaken matches.

Baelfire beams, his golden eyes misty. “My mate is pregnant. How could I not smile?”

Oh, gods. I guess we’ll have to talk about that.

I sigh. “Calm down. It’s not pregnancy. It’s just poison.”

Nightshade, to be precise. It’s not nearly as potent as its root powder, but those were unmistakable symptoms from a potent batch. It’s a good thing that I was forced to build up a tolerance to a wide variety of poisons, including nightshade, or I would be dead and reviving right now.

My quintet stares at me for a moment as they absorb my words. Then all hell breaks loose.

“What? ” Baelfire booms, going from emotional and thrilled to murderous in an instant.

Silas swears furiously as he storms over to examine my plate for the culprit. Crypt goes deceptively still as Everett scoops me up like he thinks the ground might try to hurt me next.

Being swept off my feet doesn’t help with the dizziness my body is trying to combat. I pat his chest, swallowing down more bile.

“Set me down. Now.”

“Who the fuck is trying to poison you?” Baelfire snaps, blue fire flickering under his skin. “Ross? I’m going to fucking kill that guy.”

“Right after we make him beg for mercy that he will never get a fucking ounce of,” Crypt agrees, vanishing in the next moment.

“It’s not Ross,” I protest before the incubus can slip away unseen. “He thinks I’m important somehow. It was probably?—”

Before I finish speaking, a massive, glowing, wolfish form appears in the Great Hall out of literally fucking nowhere. It leaps toward Baelfire with claws extended. I shout, but Silas is already whirling to hit it with a bright blast of blood magic.

The wolf makes no sound, gnashing its teeth as it recovers. No sooner does it turn toward Everett and me than a thick, deadly spike of ice erupts from the ground, skewering the strange beast high in the air. It twitches and evaporates.

“What the fuck was that?” Bael snaps.

“My familiar,” Parker’s voice says from nearby, and we all turn to see him glowing with blue magic as he glares at all of us from the end of the Great Hall. “And there’s far more where that came from.”

He raises his hands, and spells cascade from his fingertips. Bright blue lights shift into vague animal shapes that immediately begin to attack. Silas quickly fires back with his own magical attacks. Baelfire snaps a familiar’s neck before charging toward the acolyte. He’s blasted into one of the nearby pillars hard enough that I hear a crack .

I scramble out of Everett’s arms, ignoring the lingering nausea and weakness as I withdraw Pierce from a hidden arm strap. It’s a full-on battle with magical beasts all around. Everett sends a wave of ice to knock many aside so I can dash toward Parker.

His attention is on me until Crypt emerges in the mortal realm and tries to snap the acolyte’s neck. But Parker has so many defensive charms glowing around him that Crypt is electrocuted immediately, dropping and spasming as blue light sizzles across his skin.

Silas cries out somewhere behind me. When I risk a glance toward him, my gaze latches on Baelfire, who is trying to fend off another familiar despite his broken back, which isn’t healing fast enough. Silas is bleeding heavily from a bite to his arm. Everett freezes another familiar and is immediately tackled by a glowing blue jaguar.

How dare he harm my matches?

Anger floods me along with the life forces of the guards I killed days ago, and I run faster. As soon as I near Parker, he fires off a spell that would be agonizing if I didn’t rip through it immediately. A paralysis spell, a death spell, madness maledictions, hexes—I tear through each of his attacks as darkness crackles around me.

I was made to destroy anything. To be nothing but deadly calm.

Parker shouts in horror as I reach out, ignoring the pain that lashes through my system momentarily before my magic shatters the remaining charms protecting him. He falls back on his ass. I immediately plant a foot on his chest, forcing him to his back so his head smacks with a resounding sound against the Great Hall’s mosaic floor.

When he tries lifting his hand to defend himself with another spell, I fling Pierce down so it stabs him through the wrist, pinning it against the floor. He screams, thrashing as the rest of his summoned familiars dissipate.

My head is still pounding, and now the adrenaline is mixing with the nightshade in my system. It’s not a good mix, as evidenced by the nausea that barrels through me again as the world tilts.

Hands and arms marked with intricate swirling patterns reach around to steady me from behind.

“All right, darling?”

I nod, trying to focus on the acolyte, who I realize is bleeding heavily from his head. Pierce’s adamantine begins to taint his veins, blackening his skin as he curses at us.

“Fucking monsters!” Parker spits as Silas stalks over. Everett isn’t far behind, allowing Baelfire to lean on him as my poor, grimacing dragon shifter still hasn’t healed. “Your patchy excuse for a quintet deserves every misery it gets—starting with this fucking bastard biting the dust,” he adds, glaring at Crypt.

Is he really trying to threaten Crypt when the adamantine is sucking his life away?

I roll my eyes. “And yet he will far outlive you.”

He sneers mockingly at the incubus, showing off his unfortunate overbite. “ Far? Ha! No. Maybe for another couple of years, until he burns out early like the rest of the fucking stewards. Didn’t know I knew that about you, did you, Nightmare Prince? You fucking deserve it. It’s an insult that the gods ever chose Somnus DeLune’s monster spawn to tend to the?—”

Crypt releases me and kicks the acolyte’s head in.

Blood splatters everywhere. The others react with scowls and disgust, but I’m still registering what Parker just said.

The other stewards of Limbo…burned out early.

As in, they died.

“How long?” I whisper.

The DeLune picks up on the fury in my voice as the others go quiet. “Darling?—”

“Don’t darling me right now. How long do you have left?”

He hesitates. “I’m not certain.”

“But you’ve known about this.”

“Yes. It’s an inevitable side effect of my?—”

“Were you ever going to tell me?” I demand roughly, crouching to yank Pierce out of the corpse. I angrily clean it on one of Parker’s sleeves, trying to ignore the sting in my eyes.

Crypt is dying, and he wasn’t going to fucking say anything.

He told me his curse differs from other curses because it can’t be broken. That means bonding with him won’t change this. Even if the Garnet Wizard manages to preserve my heart to keep all their other curses at bay, Crypt’s will still eat him alive.

I fucking hate the gods right now.

He crouches beside me, gently tipping my chin so I’ll have to look at him. Which is annoying because he’s gorgeous and mine and dying, and there is not one godsdamned thing I can do about it.

I despise feeling helpless, but especially when it comes to them.

“It is what it is, love,” he whispers, smiling wistfully. “I didn’t want to sully the precious time we have together. Besides, with all the world against us, there are far better things to spend such lovely tears on.”

“I’m not crying.”

Crypt reaches out to brush away a traitorous teardrop, pressing it to his lips for a taste. “All right. You’re not crying.”

“I’m mad at you.”

“I accept.”

Someone shouts in the distance. It’s Ross, and he’s running toward us. I look over my shoulder at my other matches. Silas is finishing healing his arm, Baelfire is frowning deeply at the ground, and Everett watches me with a soft sorrow in his pale blue gaze.

Ross grinds to a halt when he sees Parker’s dead body. “Oh, heavens. What happened?”

“We killed him,” I mutter, looking away in case he can tell I was just fighting tears.

“Yeah, but I mean, why...” He trails off, shaking himself. “Forgive me. You don’t answer to me—and besides, I believe I know why. Parker told me he would offer you up on a silver platter to the Legacy Council. When I tried to alert the Garnet Wizard, Parker got me with a paralysis hex, and… please forgive me for not preventing this.”

The caster seems genuinely upset about this. Meanwhile, all four of my matches give him the evil eye. I have no idea why he’s so respectful to me, but I stand, sheathing my dagger on my arm strap again.

It’s good that he showed up right now. If I have to linger on Crypt’s predicament or the fact that I can’t think of a single fucking thing to do about it…

Something inside me cracks.

I lift my chin, forcing composure onto myself like a shield.

“Is that why you ran over here?”

“Oh—no, actually. I had no idea Parker was here. My mentor sent me to let you know he has something for you.”

The etherium must finally be here.

Good. More to focus on instead of the anger and helplessness.

I step around Ross to march toward the Garnet Wizard’s favorite study, not surprised when my matches follow. Given what just happened, it’s no surprise they refuse to let me go alone this time.

And honestly? I don’t want to go alone. I want them beside me.

Our quintet has always been on borrowed time, but I feel that truth like an anvil on my shoulders as we walk down one of the cobbled paths, the sky overhead the deep royal blue of a polar night.

As we walk, the final symptoms of the poisoning fade, ultimately useless against the tolerance I built up over the years. When we turn down a path near the brook, I decide it’s time to address that little incident back there.

“I can’t get pregnant,” I inform them quietly.

Everett gently takes one of my hands to slow my pace a bit. “You’re right, it would be the worst possible timing. So we’ll take all the right precautions?—”

I stop to look up at all four of them, shaking my head. “No, I mean that I can’t . It’s physically impossible. Think about it. The Undead can’t reproduce because they’re dead.”

“You’re not dead,” Baelfire interjects angrily at the thought.

“I’m also not alive. As a semi-existing thing , I’m…sterile.”

I hesitate, picking at the hem of my black shirt. This isn’t something I’ve ever lingered on. It just became fact after my heart was taken from me. I never considered how this might bother my matches—but everyone knows that legacies prize having heirs.

“If that’s a dealbreaker for you guys—” I begin with a frown.

Everett interrupts. “Do you want children?”

“We just went over this. They’re not an option.”

“But if they were. If there was a way, would you want that, sangfluir?” Silas presses.

I’ve never given it thought before. Daydreaming about a future family isn’t a luxury I’ve had, not when survival alone seemed unlikely. Not to mention, trying to picture me in a maternal lighting is laughable.

But if miracles did exist, my life continued, and my matches wanted to be fathers…

I shrug. Curiosity aside, it’s a moot point.

“The only thing I want right now is every possible moment I can get with all of you.”

For a moment, I worry that’s not the answer they want, especially Baelfire. After all, he’s a shifter, and his family has been struggling to continue their lineage.

Instead, he beams. “Hang on a second. That kinda sounded like a confession of love to me.”

“It certainly did,” Crypt grins when I scowl.

They all tease me as we continue to the Garnet Wizard’s study. Part of me is profoundly relieved that they don’t seem disappointed, but they’re also clearly trying to lighten my mood from everything that just happened.

It’s sweet, but I want to kick their asses for teasing me so much about this. Talking about feelings is one of the purest forms of torture. How do they not get that?

Silas opens the study door for me, and I see that the Garnet Wizard is now middle-aged and jotting down notes of some kind with a quill and ink pot at a desk in one corner of the study. He glances up and motions at a briefcase on the coffee table beside the same stack of books I noticed before—although now they’re filled with bookmarks.

“Please do help yourself, telum . I have something for you once you are done.”

We walk into the room, but I realize Crypt is stuck outside the threshold. A dreamcatcher hanging beside the desk keeps him from getting any closer, even in Limbo.

“I’m not inviting that one in here,” the wizard says without looking up from his writing. “Though truthfully, I’m surprised I’m allowing any of you shirtless, dirty, gore-smattered barbarians indoors. One would think you were raised in a barn, Silas.”

“Barnyard animals might’ve taught me more manners than you ever did,” Silas retorts.

The wizard laughs good-naturedly as I unlatch the sides of the briefcase and open the top, studying the velvet-wrapped pieces of smooth, glass-like etherium. The pieces are in various shapes and sizes. Just like the first time I saw this element in Amadeus’s crown, something about it draws me in.

I pick up a piece and unwrap it for a better examination. It gleams in the overhead mage lights, completely transparent but full of promise.

Thank the fucking universe. Now, my plan can go on.

“How have you gathered so much etherium?” I ask.

“Despite the Legacy Council trying to horde it all to themselves, you mean? Why, collecting oddities has long been a hobby of mine. I have always had a fascination with Paradise.”

“Clearly,” I say pointedly, looking at the well-read books on his coffee table.

Everett picks up one of the said tomes, skimming curiously through it as the wizard replies.

“Old favorites of mine. I merely desired a refresher. Now then, is the etherium to your liking?”

I nod.

He smiles and selects an envelope and a small, empty vial from his desk before approaching with his walking stick.

“Excellent. On to more business, then. Engela Zuma wrote this missive for you. It contains exact descriptions of those immortals’ life links , as she calls them, along with many of their safehouses and anything else she believes you may find useful. I only ask for two ounces of your blood in return.”

Silas’s gaze snaps to his mentor. “Absolutely fucking not. Her blood is mine.”

“And mine,” Crypt calls from the threshold in a sing-song voice.

That earns a sharp glare from Everett. “Shut up, freak.”

“Why the fuck do you want my mate’s blood?” Baelfire demands, lounging in one of the settees. It’s an antique piece of furniture clearly made for smaller people, so he looks comedically burly in it.

The Garnet Wizard looks at me. “They’re terribly possessive. And clingy.”

I smirk in agreement. “Like a bad rash. I’m a lucky revenant.”

Just admit you love us already, Everett’s voice teases in my head.

I roll my eyes and set down the etherium, getting back to the wizard’s request. “You all need to relax. It’s just two ounces of blood.”

Silas grumbles unhappily about it and goes to browse through books on one wall under a section labeled “ Restricted for Fools .”

What are you looking for? I ask him telepathically.

Anything he has on necromancy that I can borrow. I must adapt and learn new spells to complement what I am now.

The Garnet Wizard isn’t aware of our internal conversation as he offers me the vial and a large needle.

“Keep the needle,” I grumble, pulling out one of my other daggers to slice through my palm.

I hold my hand over the tiny glass, watching it fill up. Baelfire grunts unhappily about it while Everett quickly stands at the ready with a clean rag he picked up somewhere in this wannabe alchemist lab.

“Why do you want my blood, anyway? Revenant blood is exactly like Undead blood.”

The Garnet Wizard throws his head back in a boisterous laugh, again giving me the impression that I’m missing something. “My dear Maven, that is certainly not the case, for Silas loathes the taste of Undead blood.”

Silas frowns, looking up from an old grimoire. “That’s true, actually. The magic in your blood tastes nothing at all like the Undead.”

It must be because of all the experimentation. Or perhaps the gods made me tasty just for you for the sake of sticking us in a quintet together, I shrug, keeping it telepathic.

Perhaps , he echoes, now lost in thought.

When the vial is full, Everett quickly wraps my hand, his touch as gentle as silk. I clean and restash the dagger. As I do, my sleeve moves, and the Garnet Wizard tips his head when he sees Pierce sheathed to my forearm.

“By the gods. Adamantine. I’ve studied weapons formed in the Nether extensively, and I must say that one appears to be of excellent workmanship. Did you make it?”

I shake my head. “It was gifted to me by one of the humans in Amadeus’s citadel.”

I met Olivia when I was twelve. We were the same age, and she was considered a pet of one of the blacksmiths in the citadel. She was fascinated that I came from the mortal world and would sneak to see me between my trainings and laboratory sessions. Though I never spoke more than ten or so words to her in all the time we spent together, she declared us friends and stole Pierce from her lich master to give to me as a gift. I thought it was harmless to acquiesce to her attachment to me.

Until Amadeus found out.

She’s the ghost who haunted me the most until Dagon hexed me.

The wizard hums and hands me the letter from Engela, drawing me from my dark memories.

“You should be aware that one of my acolytes recently used a powerful communication spell to speak with someone outside the Sanctuary. The council likely knows your whereabouts if they did not already.”

“Parker paid with his life for that,” Silas mutters.

“Poor chap wasn’t clever enough to live, then,” his mentor shrugs easily, returning to his desk. He peers up at me one more time as he caps the vial. “If you’re in earnest about leaving Engela safe here, I suggest you leave promptly. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your answers, and I shall greatly like to see how the rest of this plays out—but as you know, I prefer avoiding those immortal simpletons.”

I nod and then pause. “Have you considered whether you will test my other theory?”

“I have. Should you succeed, we shall talk again.”

I nod and give the briefcase to Silas to stash in his void pocket for safekeeping before we leave the room. I’m trailed by my quintet, who all give me curious looks about what I meant.

“We’ll leave in the morning,” I tell them instead.

After all, now that I have etherium, there’s no more reason to hide.

It’s time to hunt.