Twisted Soul (Cursed Legacies #3)

23. Crypt

23

CRYPT

The pain is becoming unbearable.

I clench my teeth as my damned markings light up yet again, brighter as Limbo calls urgently to me from outside of this Sanctuary. But since I cannot leave the wards of the Sanctuary without permission, and I refuse to leave my obsession’s side anyway, there’s no help for it.

My limbs burn. Each breath scrapes. Even my skin seems to ache.

I’m searing from the inside out, pulled thin by this unbreakable curse—and now, my keeper knows it is slowly but surely destroying me.

I wonder if Crane would mind resurrecting that damned acolyte so I can have the pleasure of killing him all over again. Of course, it being just after midnight, I don’t suppose he would appreciate it if I were to wake him to ask such a favor.

Especially not when he’s lucky enough to hold Maven in his arms tonight.

I stand at the edge of the room, observing them all from Limbo. The cottage’s bed is not nearly big enough, so our oversized Decimus dozes on a simple makeshift bed of blankets on the floor. Frost is on Maven’s other side opposite Crane. The whole lot of them are peaceful, their subconsciouses wafting in this space as they pass through vague dreams—most of them centered around Maven.

Lucky bastards. I long to dream of her, too.

And I fully intend to, once I take her as my muse.

My darling has had trouble sleeping tonight, just as she has ever since that godsdamned wraith appeared in Nebraska. But just as I notice her dream finally start to take root, pain lances through me yet again. I’m left trying to breathe through it as I fight the temptation to simply stop feeling altogether.

It’s a little-known fact that powerful siphons are capable of almost wholly numbing themselves to pain and emotions. Call it a predator’s self-defense mechanism—when feeding on blood, emotions, arousal, or dreams, it’s rather pesky to deal with trivial feelings like fear, sorrow, or guilt. We can dull ourselves to physical pain to better focus on the hunt, losing ourselves in our more monstrous heritage.

I distinctly recall the night I first chose to exist in that numbed state.

I was eight years old and so badly beaten that I frightened the other children when I snuck into the orphanage late at night. Saint Eileen’s Private Home for Little Angels was located six miles down the road from one of the Immortal Quintet’s residences near Sutton. It was my favorite of their ever-changing mansions because whenever Melvolin or Somnus lost their tempers and took it out on me, I had somewhere to escape and pretend I was gloriously parentless.

But that time was different.

It was my first time visiting these children at night rather than during the day. When I first ventured into their dreams, I witnessed the horrors that haunted some of those defenseless young souls. Their stomach-turning nightmares were filled with true terror and agony at the hands of adults whom they had hoped would be their protectors.

Their psychological pain was excruciating.

After experiencing their dreams—their memories —I emerged from Limbo as numb as a corpse. Turning off my emotions and any ability to sense pain allowed me to hunt down their abusers and anyone else who was taking advantage of the innocent in all the savagely insanity-inducing ways they deserved, and I never looked back.

Not giving a fuck about anything but revenge was freeing. Empty years passed by, and I cared and wanted for nothing.

Until I saw her on that stage.

That’s when I decided to feel again—feel everything , including agony, hunger, and every other dreadful thing I had numbed myself to. Painful memories. The suffering of innocents whose dreams I experienced. Even the terror of those I took revenge on.

But so long as I can experience the remainder of my existence at my dark obsession’s side, I will never numb myself again.

Once the wave of pain eases slightly, I move beside Maven in Limbo. My mouth waters as I watch her dream slowly curl through this plane of existence, saturated with her aura—as if even in her sleep, she beckons to me.

How could I resist when I crave her so desperately?

I reach out for Maven’s dream and groan in satisfaction when the flavor of her subconscious floods my mouth. The taste of her dreams haunts me.

The pain in my body lessens slightly, and I find myself in a vague dream set in our quintet apartment back at Everbound. Maven is in the theater room, curled up between Frost and Crane on the sofa as Decimus scrolls through films.

“Oh! This one’s a classic,” Decimus insists. “I mean, the main girl in it is human, so she gets her panties in a twist trying to pick between two guys when the way I see it, she could’ve just picked them both and added her hot best friend while she’s at it. But it has a great sex scene in the rain. We could reenact it.” He bounces his eyebrows flirtatiously.

She makes a face. “They’re smiling on the cover. It looks cheesy.”

“You agreed to watch a romcom, did you not? They’re all cheesy,” Crane clarifies.

“I only agreed because they’re Lillian’s favorite,” she mumbles, lazily reaching up to tease her fingers through Frost’s white hair.

The scene continues, shifting and flitting to other casual instances. It’s so rare that my keeper’s dreams are so normal or peaceful. For a while, I’m pleased as I bask in her dream space, feeding to my content.

But then I feel it.

The same cold, dark presence that kicked me from her subconscious the last time.

I grit my teeth against the pressure and fight to remain in Maven’s dream, ignoring how my markings flare in warning. It’s a gut-wrenching sensation as her dream melds with something else entirely—an external memory, cold and brutal as it twists into her dream space. Everything shakes around me as I cling to Maven’s psyche.

I won’t have it unprotected as it was the last time.

When the melding stops, I drift for a moment in a dark, sinister place. It’s disturbingly unfamiliar as I try to get my bearings, still clinging tightly to Maven’s aura.

Finally, a memory-spun dream begins to play out. It feels nothing like one of Maven’s, yet I can still sense her nearby, present as she, too, experiences this.

I watch as a vague, towering figure stands waiting in a large stone room. Two thinly clad elderly humans with iron collars around their necks are shivering and silent on the floor beside him. Faceless guards line the perimeter of the room. Everything is dark and bland as if color is too afraid to exist in this dim plane of existence.

Finally, double doors swing open, and a bloke in long dark robes enters the room with a sweeping bow. Judging from the blackness at the tips of his spindly fingers, he must be a necromancer.

“My liege. Another of thine chosen mortals has succumbed to a most glorious death.”

The Entity shows no emotion. “And my daughter?”

“She awaits just outside.”

“Send her in.”

My pulse pounds in my ears as the necromancer brings in a younger version of Maven, perhaps fourteen years old. I choke at the sight of my keeper at this age—bruised and dirty, with her hair tied back from her gaunt face so her haunting eyes are even more prominent. She’s dressed all in black with gloves as she glances down at the terrified humans, but she makes no expression.

“One may live. Choose who will die and deal the blow,” Amadeus’s deep voice rumbles.

The younger Maven remains blank-faced. “I choose?”

“Yes, daughter.”

In a blindingly fast move, Maven whips a dagger from a sheath at her hip and sends it into the throat of one of the guards standing behind Amadeus and the humans. The guard vanishes from the dream, but the Entity appears unsurprised.

“There. That monster’s hands will wander no longer,” Maven mutters, turning as if to leave.

The doors slam closed before she can exit. Although the Entity’s voice remains strangely emotionless, it is like a coo.

“My murderous, moral maniac. You displease me.”

Shadows move in the dream, wrapping around the humans and lifting them from the ground. The remaining guards are strangled by the darkness, falling to the floor with heavy thuds just as Amadeus’s hands plunge into the chests of the two shackled humans. He drops their hearts to the ground, and the shadows release the corpses.

It all happened within the blink of an eye. Young Maven struggles to cover her shock, trying to compose her face despite the moisture gathering in her eyes.

The Entity leans to whisper to her, and I can barely make out the words. “You are weak. If you had obeyed, they would all yet be alive.”

“I don’t kill innocents,” she says, voice breaking.

“There is no such thing as a true innocent. Every being has a dark side—and you must become only your dark side. Then, you will be my telum.”

He straightens, moving to the doors. “You failed this test. Dagon will take you to the dungeons for your punishment.”

When the doors close behind him, I feel a change in the dream. It’s Maven’s memory now as her face crumbles. She drops to her knees beside the two dead humans, biting back a sob as she scrambles to grab one of their hearts. My throat tightens as I watch her whisper dark words, some ritual as she tries to return the hearts to their owners.

Again and again, she tries.

They remain dead. Her sobs wrack my body with aching sorrow.

I need to take this dream away so it will stop hurting her, but when I try to reach out with my own subconscious, a shock of alarm and fury rocks this dream space. Pain cripples me, bringing me to my knees as the true owner of this dream—the Entity himself—realizes his mind is not alone tonight.

All at once, I’m removed. I stumble out of Limbo, catching myself against the wall of the dark cottage as I try to catch my breath. The slumbering scene before me is as serene as I left it, except now Maven rouses, her eyes seeking me in the dark.

She cannot see as well as I do, but I move closer to brush my fingers against her cheek.

“I’m here, love.”

Her voice is hoarse. “What just happened?”

“We lost your dream to that bastard again.”

She’s disoriented as she gently disengages from Crane. He’s out cold, sleeping extremely soundly as he has ever since his curse was broken. I suppose he must catch up for all the sleep he lost as a paranoid madman, though it is a shame I don’t see his eye twitch nearly as often.

I grasp Maven’s hands in the dark to steady her as she leaves the bed.

“Gods,” she breathes, shuddering slightly. “I need to get rid of this awful energy.”

I nod. “Shall we, then?”

We leave the cottage, but we only make it a few steps before I realize she’s only in an oversized black T-shirt and the deliciously scandalous pair of dark red panties that came with the lingerie I gifted her for Starfall Eve.

She looks edible. Though she may not be cold in this temperate Sanctuary, my attention drops to her bare feet.

“I’ll get your boots,” I offer.

“Don’t bother. The grass is nice.”

Maven takes a deep breath, tucking her hair out of her face and taking in the midnight blue sky. Tiny streaks of the aurora borealis have begun to wind their way through the heavens, creating an ethereal scene as we walk away from the guest cottage out into a seemingly endless, surprisingly well-maintained field of grass.

My keeper is quiet for a long time as she walks off her restlessness, but the silence is companionable. Finally, when the cottage is nearly out of sight, she stops and turns to study me curiously.

“Food is optional for you, but is it possible for you to sleep?” she asks.

“Only after I take my muse.” I tip my head. “When shall we schedule the ceremony, by the way?”

“Ceremony?”

“When an incubus takes a muse, they can only do so through a ceremony in one of Syntyche’s temples.”

After all, the goddess of reaping is also the goddess of fate, dreams, and time itself.

Maven considers that. “What would it mean for me to be your muse?”

Everything.

To me, at least.

“We would share dreams while asleep and sense one another more keenly,” I murmur, brushing my fingertips through the dark hair framing her face. “I would be incapable of feeding on anyone’s dreams except yours, but that is already my preference. And…my psyche would be open to you, just as yours is open to me in Limbo. It’s said to be an extremely vulnerable, intimate connection unlike any other.”

Precisely what I crave when it comes to Maven.

She studies me thoughtfully before winding her arms around my neck. The press of her lithe body against mine sends excitement coursing through me as her lips brush over my jaw.

“How many muses can an incubus take?”

“One.” For eternity.

Again, precisely what I’m craving with her.

She pulls back slightly to examine me. “And if your muse dies?”

Dark anger flickers inside my chest. I give her my most warning look. “You won’t.”

“I expire all the time.”

Is that all she means? It had better be. “That’s not a true death.”

“But if it were?”

I sigh, ready to move on quickly from even the notion of losing her. “Incubi die when their chosen muse does. It doesn’t go both ways, so if Crane, Frost, or Decimus ever tried to do me in, you’d be perfectly safe.”

Maven snorts. “That won’t happen. You’re all softies for each other.”

What a horribly disturbing sentence that was. Decimus is all right, but I’ll need to rough those other wankstains up more often if she thinks we’ve gotten so chummy.

Then her expression falls, and she peers up at me. “Would me becoming your muse help your curse in any way?”

It’s a beautiful kind of agony, knowing that she also hurts over the idea of losing me. I wish I could reassure her and promise a lifetime of this sordid obsession, but all I can do is shake my head, kiss her temple, and let go of the topic that is causing my keeper pain.

“What’s your answer?” I whisper, my hands skimming over her sides. I curl my fingers in the sides of her panties, grinning when it makes her shiver.

Maven’s gaze is trained on my mouth now. “My answer?”

“Will you be my muse, darling?”

When she meets my eyes, there is a depth and emotion I can’t decipher.

“You’re mine, you know,” she whispers. “Bound or not, your muse or not, whether I get you for years or only days…you are fucking mine. If I ever speak to the assholes in Paradise again, I’ll have to thank them for finding other souls just as twisted as mine. Your broken edges match mine perfectly.”