Page 49 of Divine Fate (Cursed Legacies #4)
48
MAVEN
I bite back a sound of pleasure when Silas grows rougher, pinning me to the wall of the dungeon as he moans and feeds from my neck. His stiff erection grinds hard against me as he pulls deeply from my neck again.
This is the least I can offer him, after he’s spent hours resurrecting the changelings.
Not to mention, if blood loss didn’t make me so lightheaded, I would ask him to feed from me all the time. The rush of his fangs sinking into my neck, the sting of pain and pleasure coursing through my veins—hearing his hungry groans as he becomes more desperate for my blood…
It’s everything a girl could ask for.
“That’s enough,” Everett mutters from his chair.
We set up a makeshift study table in this section of the dungeons so the rest of my quintet could study the intricate red-crayon map I drew on the back of my list. Crypt is still studying it, but Everett is wearing his reading glasses as he glowers at how aggressive Silas has become while feeding from me.
Baelfire finishes locking yet another reanimated Maven look-alike inside one of the many cells. A few muttering ghosts mull around this dungeon, curiously watching our macabre process.
Silas swallows one last time before he releases my neck, shuddering as he licks away the remaining traces of blood.
“Godsdamn me, I can never get enough of your divine taste,” he groans.
Grinning, I lace my fingers through his black curls to move his head so I can kiss him. I don’t care that when his tongue sweeps against mine, it tastes coppery like my blood. He grinds against me again, his bloodied lips curling into a smile against mine.
“Feeling better?” I ask breathlessly.
“ Than comper nas leathu,” he murmurs, also trying to catch his breath. “ Tha galeath.”
Which is fae for, I’m always better with you. I love you.
I peer at him, growing serious. “ Tha galeath . But I’m not sure how much help I’ll be when crafting the heart.”
“I can manage, sangfluir,” he promises, brushing my hair off my face with blackened fingertips.
His crimson gaze is so deep I could swim in it, but we’re interrupted when Asher Douglas once again enters the dungeon. He glances at the table where Baelfire has now joined the others memorizing the map of the Nether, but when he sees Silas lick another streak of blood off my neck, he gags.
“Gross. Get a fucking room.”
“I bought out the assets of the Legacy Council after they fled, so I own every room in this castle,” Everett reminds him, making a mark on the map.
Douglas grunts unhappily before glancing at me again, his green eyes lighting up briefly as his unique ability must pick up on someone else’s magic in the distance.
“Are there ghosts down here, too?” he checks.
“They follow me,” I explain, grinning when the blue-haired ghost pantomimes smacking his ass.
The mercenary makes a face at all the Undead changeling Mavens in a cell before he turns to leave. “That lioness shifter wants to see you about where she’ll be during the attack.”
I had planned on the Baird quintet being in charge of this safe haven during the attack, but if Kenzie doesn’t like being away from the action, I can think of a few places I could put her quintet. Nodding, I slip out of Silas’s arms despite his sigh and move to leave the dungeons. As I do, I hear Baelfire mutter something to Crypt, who promptly drops into Limbo to follow me just in case.
At the top of the steep stone steps descending into the dungeon, I find Kenzie and Luka. She’s pacing and looks frustrated while he folds his arms stubbornly. Unsure if they’re annoyed with each other or me, I smile at Kenzie.
“There’s the sexiest pregnant lady I know.”
She lights up, preening. “Aww, shucks. Watch out, monk, or I’ll try to add you to my quintet.”
Luka grimaces. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Kenzie swats his arm before turning to me seriously. “I want to help with the attack. Really help. And I get that keeping an eye on this safe haven is really important and if anyone needs to retreat here, we’re in charge of getting them healed and stuff—but I’m just so fucking worried about how this attack will go. We’re outnumbered, May. Really outnumbered. We don’t even know how many shadow fiends there are, but Reformist numbers have just been going down ever since the Upheaval started, so if even just one or two more people could help, I can?—”
“She can’t be in the battle,” Luka cuts in, looking at me.
“Kenzie can handle herself,” I point out coldly, disliking the idea of him underestimating her.
“No shit,” the vampire huffs. “But she’s not supposed to shift while she’s pregnant. It’s too fucking dangerous.”
I’ve never even considered if shifting while pregnant was a thing, but Kenzie sighs. “It’s highly discouraged, but I’m still not that far along. They say the second trimester is when it’s a big no.”
Luka shakes his head. “It’s a big no already. I’m not risking you or the baby, Kenz. I’m just not.”
When Kenzie looks torn and frustrated, I clear my throat. “Numbers won’t be a problem. We have backup.”
“From where?” Luka frowns.
I glance behind them at the hallway full of ghosts and think about all the corpses Silas is about to reanimate all around Everbound. With how many legacies have died while training at Everbound University, I’m more than willing to bet we’ll have plenty of Undead soldiers to spare. Not to mention, ravens have been flocking to Everbound like they’re aware I’m going to need them.
“The restless dead,” I finally reply, looking at the other two living people in this hallway.
Kenzie’s eyes get round. “Oh, shit. Are you about to pull some kind of demigoddess trick? Gods, that makes me feel so much better. I know people have rallied here for you, and I totally trust your plan—I was just getting worried. But if you think we’ve got it...”
“We do,” I nod, more determined than ever.
With Kenzie’s concerns eased, she reminds me to say goodbye to her before the actual attack, and then she and Luka leave. For a moment, I watch the ghosts wandering these halls in anticipation. With the ghosts and Undead, the Reformists and others who have gathered here to help, and the reanimated changelings…
It will be a brutal battle, but it all comes down to ending Amadeus.
Before, I would have settled for him merely falling from power. So long as he was no longer a risk to my quintet, I would have let him fade into obscurity peacefully.
But Amadeus sent me a warning through that first changeling. I didn’t listen, so he took away Lillian.
Now, I don’t just want him out of power. I want him gone. After taking away a light like Lillian’s from this world, he deserves whatever will happen to him in the Beyond. And in order for us to kill him, he needs to be mortal again. Based on what I learned from Galene, Amadeus also has no heart. He has nothing but corrupted magic keeping him alive—but if I put a heart back in his chest, I’ll be giving him the very weakness I couldn’t identify in him before.
And once Amadeus is dead…
Godsdamn it, I really fucking hope that whatever blood oath I made doesn’t ruin the happily ever after I’m working so hard to have with my quintet.
Turning to walk back down the stairs that will take me back to the dungeon, I absentmindedly check to make sure Pierce is in its place in one of my sleeves. Cuttrina is hidden near my waist—but the moment I touch my etherium blade, a new memory washes over me, dragging me back to my time in Paradise.
Arati and I are standing on a golden balcony high in the air overlooking stunning views. There is a beautiful white-and-gold city far below, filled with winged angels and nature spirits and countless other Paridisians going about their divine days. A multicolored mountain blooming with flowers and plants I can’t identify rises far in the distance. Constellations still dance in the sky above. An idyllic forest rustles in a soft breeze far below to our right. Just beyond that, a lake shimmering like millions of liquefied stars sparkles in the sunlight.
I realize that I’m cupping my hand in this memory as more golden blood—no, ichor —drips from my palm.
“Here,” Arati says, offering me a bandage she seems to have summoned from nowhere.
I wrap my hand and notice she’s doing the same to one of hers. This must be right after our blood oath to one another. As much as I don’t recall what I swore to do, I also don’t remember what the queen of the gods swore to me in return.
My aunt sighs, looking out over Paradise once again. “Very well. Now that the deed is done, I will tell you how a Paridisical being once gave up his divinity and descended to the mortal realm. I will warn you, he barely survived.”
Ignoring her warning, I prompt, “He?”
Arati nods, looking lost in a memory from eons ago. “Yes. You see, after being driven from the Nether, the fae have worked to uphold their culture and remember their past, but there are things even they have forgotten…such as the story of their fifth queen. The world was still young when she came to be, but even I can recall how beautiful and fiercely protective of her people she was. All of us gods favored her—of course, at the time, our pantheon was different,” she adds, shrugging. “A lot changes over the millennia. Only my sister and brother and I seem to stay the same.”
The queen of the gods sighs and settles into a seat I previously didn’t notice on this balcony. I sit in another one, watching the constellations twirl and shift above us as I listen.
“So favored was she that we gods decided to give her gifts from Paradise to bless the fae people with. We sent an angel down to deliver the gifts. He fell for her at once, and before I knew it, he came to my palace to beg me to turn him mortal so he could live one lifetime at her side. I had never heard such a thing—giving up an eternity of perfection here for the never-ending difficulties down there,” Arati adds, shaking her head in amusement. “But he was determined. I told him it was outside my power, but if fate itself agreed that he should become mortal, it would provide a way.”
“And it did,” Memory Me points out, impatient. “So what did he do?”
Arati looks at the mountain in the distance. “In Paradise, there is a flower called the corruinum that is so toxic, it is said to poison one’s very soul. It grows at the foot of the mountain. The angel took one seed of that flower and watered it every day with his blood for months until it fully bloomed, and then he turned that poisonous bloom into tea. Drinking it weakened him enough that he could fall to mortality—and I do mean fall, for nothing mortal can remain in Paradise,” she adds.
So he became mortal through…a blood blossom.
No wonder that term is still ingrained in the fae vocabulary. It almost makes Memory Me smile, remembering Silas calling me that—but at the same time, I ache. I’ve watched my matches through ravens in the mortal realm, so I know just how much he’s suffering even as I’m sitting here talking to Arati.
“What happened to the angel?” I ask.
My aunt, the goddess of love, looks pleased as she explains that the angel barely survived his fall to the mortal realm and lost his wings in the process, but the fae queen found him and nursed him back to health. They quickly became obsessed with each other and had many, many children together. They were two of the most honored rulers to reign over the Nether, long before it fell to Amadeus’s corruption.
When she’s done with the tale, I stand.
“Where are you going, niece?” Arati asks, arching a brow.
“I have a seed to hunt down before I talk to your lover, because I don’t have months,” I tell her, turning to walk away.
“Koa’s magic cannot speed up the process,” she calls after me. “That bloom must be watered with your ichor until it matures. Magically growing the bloom will merely sprout another corruinum like the rest.”
Memory Me swears vehemently in this recollection, but everything shifts and changes around me as I’m swept into a new memory. In this one, I once again sit at the edge of Paradise looking out over a sea of clouds. I’m holding my bleeding hand over a tiny green sprout that’s barely visible above the dirt.
Each drop of ichor slowly soaks into the ground around the start of the flower, but Memory Me isn’t focused on the flower. Her attention is on a winged silhouette far below Paradise, circling round and round beneath the very place I sit.
Oh, my gods.
It’s Baelfire’s dragon.
It was drawn to me even in Paradise, with no way to reach me.
A tall shadow appears next to me in this memory, and I glance up to see Syntyche hold out a scythe—Cuttrina.
“The memory-yielding scythe you requested. Consider this a reward for being far less annoying than most offspring I have witnessed,” she says with no expression.
“Don’t get sappy on me,” I tease as I stand to take the wickedly sharp etherium weapon.
My mother’s attention moves to the small sprout. “Falling from Paradise will be a pain unlike any you have experienced.”
“How do you know?”
She looks out over the sea of clouds. “Years ago, I asked my brother to venture into the Beyond and ask the fallen angel about it. Even in his peaceful afterlife, the angel shuddered to recall that pain.”
I stare at her, slowly putting it together. If she went far enough to find out from someone in the Beyond about this process…
“Oh my fucking gods. You were considering falling from Paradise to live a mortal life with Pietro Amato,” I realize aloud, gawking at her.
Syntyche says nothing for a long time before she pulls her hood back up, preparing to go down and reap more souls. “In all possible attempts, Galene only foresaw my demise, for fate knows my path is one of immortal reaping. You carry more humanity within you, so perhaps your outcome will be more favorable.”
“Darling?” Crypt’s voice checks softly as I jolt back to the present.
As the memories fade, I realize I’m still standing on the stairs leading down into the dungeon. My incubus is standing on the step below me, pulling me close as he studies me as obsessively as ever. His scent, like sweet reverium and leather, is comforting.
“Remembering more of your attempts to piss off the gods?” the Nightmare Prince asks, grinning.
“Something like that,” I manage.
Maybe later, I’ll tell them that I essentially poisoned myself with my own ichor to fall from the heavens. But that’s not important. The point is, I survived and now all I have to do is end Amadeus and figure out what the hell I swore to do—and then we have our entire future in front of us.
But as if the universe wants to mock me, Crypt tries not to grimace as his markings light up yet again. He’s kept his leather jacket on all day to keep me from seeing more of his markings slowly vanishing.
I saw them last night, though. So many of them are gone.
My pounding heart aches. Maybe I don’t have a future with him.
“Tell me why your markings are fading,” I demand.
“My love, now is not the time to?—”
“ Tell me. ”
Crypt studies my eyes before looking away. “Historically speaking, only one incubus at a time can bear the markings of the gods. As the current stewardship draws to a close, the steward is freed of their holy marks just before the next incubus is born into the curse.”
That’s a delicate way to put it very bluntly.
My Nightmare Prince is losing his marks because he’s dying faster than I realized.
And the fucking curse doing this to him can’t be broken.
My stomach churns so suddenly and angrily that I try to get out of Crypt’s arms. He tightens them with a sigh. “Be angry at me, darling, but allow me to hold you. Or if my touch bothers you?—”
“I’m going to be sick,” I warn him, gagging.
He quickly releases me before I turn and vomit on the stairs. It takes a moment before I can straighten again, wiping my mouth and swallowing down the remaining visceral reaction to the thought of one of my matches dying.
I refuse. I won’t let it happen.
Somehow, there has to be a way to fix this. I’ll find it.
Crypt pulls me back into his arms immediately, holding me so tightly I feel like it could almost put me back together as he murmurs against my ear. “I’m sorry for being such a godsdamned fool and speeding up this cursed process. You’ve no idea how sorry I am. How can I help you forgive me?”
“I won’t,” I finally manage, pulling away to glare up at his beautiful violet eyes. “I already lost Lillian. I can’t do this. If I lose you, I’m never going to fucking forgive you for leaving me. Understand?”
They’re angry words. I probably don’t mean them all.
He nods anyway, gently cradling my face and looking more serious than I’ve ever seen him. “I understand.”
“No, you—that’s not—” I huff, so frustrated I can’t even put it into words.
My incubus exhales, brushing a light kiss on my forehead. “I need this, darling. Every shade of your anger, your bliss, even your terror. Every fragment of you. I want everything I can get with you, so I ask that when I do give up the ghost?—”
“Stop,” I snap, wiping at my face because why the fuck is there moisture on my cheeks?
Crypt presses on anyway, his whisper bordering on desperate. “My darling, I only ask that you hold back from reaping whatever I have for a soul, when the time comes. Whatever I’ll be after this, I’ll belong to you just the same. Keep what’s left of me in a bottle, if you like. Let my wretched soul haunt you and hate me if that’s easier, but please just keep me .”
If I could be sick again, I would. The idea of Crypt being one of the many ghosts that follow me everywhere is too much.
But at the same time, I already know I will never be able to let any of my quintet go. If anything happens to us in this battle, they’re still mine . They’ll have no choice except to haunt me until the day I pass on—and if my mother tries to reap them, so fucking help me, I will fight her myself.
Taking a deep breath, I nod. It’s all I can seem to do.
Crypt smiles sadly, resting his forehead against mine briefly. “What a brave muse I have.”
I can’t stand feeling all these feelings, so just like I used to do when I was young, I lock them in a box inside my chest.
There’s a way for us all to survive this. I just have to find it.