Page 1 of Divine Fate (Cursed Legacies #4)

PROLOGUE

SILAS

Not right now , Maven’s alarmed voice echoes through our bond.

Smoke and ash fill the air, along with so much death that I can damn near taste it. I run through the battle, an ominous desperation tugging me in this direction as I use my remaining reserves of blood magic to hurl a group of Undead out of my path.

My back still bleeds from where a wendigo shallowly clawed it, but that hardly matters. My blood blossom needs me. She was asking for me to heal Everett before she went silent for too long—and now my every instinct is screaming at me to return to my keeper as fast as I can.

Godsdamn it, where is she amidst all this violence and bloodshed?

Just as I take down a hideous, scorpion-like Nether creature that I can’t put a name to, a deep, inexpressible dread sweeps through me.

Something just went wrong. I felt it in my very blood.

What’s happened? Where are you, sangfluir? I demand, nearly tripping over a dead ally shifter as I scan the battlefield for any sign of my keeper.

Above this symphony of screams and turmoil, the golden dragon arcs into a circle as Baelfire also searches for Maven, thunder crackling behind him in the tempestuous sky.

Mayflower? Answer us right the fuck now, he growls telepathically, his rising temper steeped in fear.

Crypt reaches out for her, too, but the hammering of my heart turns painful when his voice grows muffled before cutting out. It’s as if the bond that allows us to speak telepathically is glitching.

No—it’s altogether failing.

Which must mean…

Blind panic takes over. The next moments blur together as I avoid every confrontation, rushing toward the place where I see a large bubble of thick ice. Everett must be in there with her. If I can reach them in time and use whatever necromantic abilities I now possess to help my keeper?—

As if in slow motion, I see that damned formidable figure appear, cloaked in darkness itself and emanating primordial fear unlike anything I have ever experienced. None of the warring opponents near the ice shield notice her presence, but I freeze in abject terror as the goddess of reaping lifts her gleaming scythe.

No.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t witness this. It cannot happen.

The shadowy cloak still completely obscures the goddess’s face. As always, she does not acknowledge me—but one broken breath later, I feel it.

The severing. The loss.

Pain erupts in the emptiness left behind where the bond to Maven just vanished. I choke and fall to my knees. Overhead, Baelfire’s dragon lets out the ear-splitting roar of agony that every fiber of my being is making.

Maven.

I can just make out a hollow whistling above the lingering ringing in my ears. The sound of Syntyche reaping the beautifully twisted soul I fell so hard for.

No. No, no, no, no ? —

I drag myself to my feet, stumbling to the icy enclosure with deathly power numbing my blackened fingertips. The ice shatters at my touch, falling to pieces around the bloodied elemental with tears freezing on his messily bandaged face.

Maven is lifeless in his arms.

Gone.

Permanently.

You’ll never see her again , a faint voice titters somewhere in the corner of my mind.

I want to demand how this happened. How could we have possibly failed her? I need answers—I need her , but the sight of my dead keeper is so petrifyingly surreal that my surroundings seem to fall away. Vaguely, I’m aware of the temperature plummeting sharply around us. Ice crackles across the ground, shock-freezing brambles, corpses, and a ghoul on the attack as it blooms outward from the spot where Everett kneels. Thick snow begins to billow around us.

Bright royal blue flames ignite in the gray distance of this living nightmare as Baelfire’s dragon unleashes hellfire on friend and foe alike, so far gone to the rage and loss that he’s no longer himself.

And still, I cannot move.

You lost her just as we said you would , a voice snickers.

My father’s voice sneers, Good riddance to that worthless bitch .

“Stop,” I whisper helplessly.

The voices mock me. They cackle with one another as my world fragments. Slinking madness curdles my stomach as distant screams continue to echo in this newfound hell.

I would give my soul to bring hers back.

I would do anything.

Crypt materializes beside us, covered head to toe in blood. He drops a lich’s decapitated skull before falling to his knees beside Everett and Maven, visibly trembling. For a moment, his expression reflects everything I feel—the horror and stark, hopeless anguish as the absence of the bond takes its toll. Our hair and clothes begin to waft as if we’ve collectively been plunged underwater, and a burning smell like ozone singes the air.

I see the instant the DeLune snaps for good. His face goes eerily vacant before he vanishes.

A moment later, inhuman shrieks and screams of a different nature go up like a chorus of horror itself. Madness has joined us on this hellish battlefield, and gravity continues to malfunction around us as Limbo tears into the mortal realm.

Let the end of the world begin , voices crow inside my head. Without the scourge, you are all but broken, cursed legacies.

For once, the voices are right.

I don’t care.

The only thing I can manage to still care about as insanity encroaches is Maven’s lifeless body, frosting over in Everett’s arms. The surreality of her being gone still hasn’t registered fully, but I know one thing. If nothing is done, she will decompose. Return to dust, as all living things do.

But no. I won’t allow it. The dust can’t have what’s left of my keeper. She said she was mine, and she will be mine no matter where her soul wanders without me.

Necromantic power pulses through my veins, heightened by the thick atmosphere of death surrounding us. The voices in my head shriek and shout over one another as I fight through the insanity to prepare a potent preservation spell?—

But the moment I take one more step closer to the only trace of my keeper left upon this earth, her body vanishes like a shadow in daylight.

Just…gone.

My ears are ringing, but I can still hear Everett’s shout of rage directed at the heavens as this mad world begins to freeze and burn at once.

Because she’s gone.

Yes! Gone! The bitch is gone! the voices in my head cheer, ripping my mind to bits.

My keeper has been utterly wiped from this earth thanks to her revenant purpose, taking my will to fight for sanity with her. As everything around me dissolves further into chaos, I let the madness have whatever is left of me that didn’t just die with my blood blossom.