The Cursed Bloodline Book 1: The Guardian
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Salem Morgan
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16
Chapter One
LYRA
The basement stank of rot and mildew, the kind of smell that clung to your skin and clothes long after you escaped it.
I didn’t want to be there, but when you’re the Lord’s bastard child and his lowliest maid, you don’t get to say no. The Lady of the house made sure of that.
She hated me, hated everything about me—my face, my presence, my mother’s blood in my veins.
I think she hated my mother even more, though, and she made sure her hatred killed her.
A curable illness, that’s all it was, but the Lady ordered the physician to look the other way. Mother died in pain, alone.
The same illness had struck me down a few weeks later, but I survived. Somehow. The fever burned through me, left scars no one could see but me.
No one noticed that I stopped feeling pain after that, that my nerves had gone silent. It was as much a curse as it was a blessing.
I hauled my bucket of cleaning supplies into the first room and nearly gagged.
Dust coated every surface like ash after a fire, and cobwebs stretched across the corners like veils. The air was stale, suffocating.
These rooms hadn’t been touched in decades, maybe centuries, and now I had to make them suitable for Lord Peter’s honored guests.
Warriors fresh from the frontlines, victors of another bloody battle in the war against the creatures trying to rip Earth apart.
They’d called it a celebration, the grand feast upstairs with music and laughter spilling out of every hall.
I’d never seen anything worth celebrating in war, but I wasn’t paid to have opinions. I wasn’t paid at all.
I set the bucket down with a thud and wiped my hands on my apron. The fabric was threadbare, like everything else I owned.
At least it didn’t matter if it got filthy here. Everything was filthy. The first thing I did was try the window.
If I could let in some air, maybe I wouldn’t feel like I was choking every second I was down here.
It took all my strength to shove it open, the hinges screaming in protest, but I got it to budge.
A sharp, cold wind rushed in, carrying the scent of wet earth and the faintest hint of the river beyond the estate.
It was almost enough to drown out the smell of decay. Almost.
“Better get on with it,” I muttered to myself, grabbing a rag from the bucket and wetting it with the lukewarm water.
My hands moved automatically, scrubbing at the grime like they’d been doing all my life. The muscles in my arms ached, but I ignored them.
Pain didn’t register the way it did for most people. If anything, the ache was a reminder that I was still alive. Alive. For now.
Scrubbing the centuries of grime off the walls was mindless work, but my mind wasn’t quiet. It never was when I had time to think.
As I worked, my thoughts turned back to the Lady’s guests. Warriors, she had said.
Men who’d stared death in the face and laughed at it, their hands stained with alien blood and their minds likely darker than the pits I was cleaning.
I wondered if they’d care about the state of the rooms or if they’d be too drunk to notice. These were men who lived for battle, not comfort.
Still, the Lady demanded perfection. She didn’t care that I’d be the one breaking my back for it.
The Lord’s bastard daughter wasn’t supposed to complain. She was supposed to serve.
I scrubbed until the rag in my hand was black, the water in the bucket murky and foul. The room wasn’t spotless—not yet—but it was better.
The mattress on the bed frame was another matter entirely. I wasn’t sure it could be saved.
The fabric was riddled with holes, the stuffing spilling out like entrails.
I leaned over it, poking at the edges, when something skittered out from the shadows. A rat. Or maybe it was a spider.
It moved too quickly for me to tell, but I froze anyway, my breath catching for just a second before I forced myself to keep working.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t as dangerous as the things outside these walls—the creatures from the stars that the warriors were here to celebrate defeating.
I could handle rats. Spiders. Anything human or earthly. It was the other things I feared.
I pushed those thoughts away as I dragged the mattress off the bed frame.
It landed on the floor with a dull thud, sending up a cloud of dust and, worse, the faint scent of rot. I gagged but kept moving.
The frame would have to be wiped down, the mattress replaced.
If the Lady wanted this done before the guests arrived, she’d have to send someone else down here to help. But I knew better than to count on that.
The second room was worse. The air was thicker, the darkness pressing against the dim light of my lantern.
The walls here were lined with shelves, most of them broken or sagging under the weight of forgotten junk.
I wasn’t sure what these rooms had been used for originally, but they’d long since been abandoned.
Everything about this place felt wrong, but I didn’t have the luxury of fear. Not here. Not in my life.
I pushed aside the unease and started pulling the junk off the shelves, tossing it into a pile by the door.
Broken glass, rusted tools, unidentifiable scraps of metal. My hands worked quickly, efficiently, until I reached the farthest shelf and froze.
There was something carved into the wood, just faint enough to miss if you weren’t looking closely.
I traced the grooves with my finger, squinting in the dim light. Letters. Words, maybe. But not in any language I recognized.
The symbols seemed to twist under my gaze, shifting in ways that made my head ache.
A sudden chill swept through the room, making me shiver despite the stagnant warmth of the basement. I stepped back, my hands trembling slightly.
It wasn’t fear—I didn’t feel fear the way most people did—but something deeper. Something instinctual. I wasn’t alone down here.
I turned slowly, scanning the room, the lantern’s feeble light flickering against the walls.
Shadows danced in ways they shouldn’t have, but no one else was there. No movement, no sound.
Just the pounding of my heart in my chest, a rhythm that usually stayed calm even when the world around me wasn’t. I shook my head. Lack of sleep.
Hunger. The years of backbreaking work. It all piled up and made you see things, hear things that weren’t there. And if they were there?
Well, I’d dealt with worse than the whispers of my own exhaustion. But the carvings bothered me.
I wasn’t a scholar or anything close to it, but even I could tell they were old. Older than the house, older than the Lord’s bloodline.
Maybe they’d been here when this estate was built, and no one had bothered to sand them away. Or maybe no one had dared.
A thought I didn’t want to dwell on. I grabbed the edge of a shelf and hauled it down, sending a cascade of splinters and debris to the floor.
Better not to see the symbols anymore. If they stayed hidden, they couldn’t bother me.
That was how I survived everything else, after all—by not looking too closely, not thinking too deeply.
When the shelf hit the ground, the impact echoed louder than I expected.
It reverberated off the stone walls, a deep, unnatural sound that seemed to stretch out longer than it should have.
The lantern’s light dimmed for a second, flickering like it was struggling against the dark. I froze again, listening. Nothing. Just silence.
But this time, the silence wasn’t comforting. It was oppressive, like the air itself was waiting for something.
“Keep moving, Lyra,” I muttered to myself. Talking out loud helped. It reminded me that I was real, that I was still here. “Nothing you can’t handle.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that, but I went back to work anyway.
If the Lady found me standing around, she wouldn’t care about strange noises or carvings.
She’d care that the room wasn’t ready, and I’d pay the price for it. The pile of junk grew larger as I cleared more of the room.
Broken things, forgotten things, things no one would miss.
But there was one item that caught my eye as I reached for it: a small, tarnished box, tucked away in the far corner of the lowest shelf.
It was heavier than it looked, its surface etched with more of those strange symbols. I should’ve left it there.
Every instinct I had told me to leave it. But curiosity—stupid, dangerous curiosity—got the better of me.
My fingers brushed against the latch, and I hesitated. What was I expecting? Treasure? Answers?
The lid creaked as it opened, the sound louder than it should have been. Inside, there was no gold or jewels, no explanation for the carvings.
Just a piece of fabric, folded neatly, and something that gleamed faintly in the lantern light. A dagger.
The blade wasn’t steel, or at least not any steel I’d ever seen. It shimmered with an almost liquid quality, like it wasn’t quite solid.
And the hilt was wrapped in a material that felt wrong under my fingers, as if it didn’t belong in this world. I should’ve left it there.
I should’ve closed the box, put it back on the shelf, and forgotten it existed. But I didn’t.
I slid the dagger into my apron pocket, my pulse quickening as I looked back at the door. The feeling of being watched hadn’t gone away.
If anything, it was worse now, heavier, like the walls themselves were leaning closer. Whatever that thing was, I didn’t have time to think about it.
The Lady’s orders were clear, and if these rooms weren’t ready by the time her precious warriors arrived, she’d make sure I paid for it.
No strange carvings, shadows, or daggers would change that. The pile of junk near the door grew higher as I worked.
Each piece I moved stirred up another cloud of dust that clawed at my throat and made my eyes water.
I grabbed an old broom from the corner and started sweeping, the rhythmic scrape of the bristles against stone grounding me.
The air was still thick and damp, but with every stroke of the broom, the room felt a little less suffocating.
When the worst of the filth was gone, I turned my attention to the lanterns.
I’d brought a bundle of them from the main house, all dented and mismatched but serviceable enough. Stringing them up wasn’t easy.
The walls were uneven, the ceilings low, and I had to drag over a rickety stool to reach the hooks that hadn’t rusted away entirely.
The first lantern flared to life with a faint hiss when I lit it, its warm glow pushing back the dark.
I hung it carefully, testing the strength of the hook before stepping back. One down. Five more to go.
As I worked, I kept glancing over my shoulder, half expecting to see… something. But the room stayed empty.
Just me and the faint flicker of light against the stone.
Still, the silence pressed against my ears, so I hummed softly to myself—a song my mother used to sing when I was little.
It didn’t make the room less eerie, but it kept me moving. By the time I finished hanging the last lantern, the room looked almost livable.
The grime was mostly gone, the stale air replaced with the faint scent of lantern oil.
The bed frame was wiped down, though the mattress was still unusable. That would be someone else’s problem—I’d done my part.
I was just setting a fresh bucket of water down to clean the next room when footsteps echoed down the stairs. Sharp, deliberate.
Not the Lady’s; her heels made a distinctive clack that everyone in the house had learned to dread. These steps were heavier, slower.
I straightened, brushing the dirt off my apron as the senior maid, Mrs. Branth, emerged from the shadows at the bottom of the staircase.
Mrs. Branth was stout and sharp-eyed, her graying hair pulled back into a severe bun.
She always carried herself with the kind of authority that came from years of managing a household full of unruly maids and demanding nobility.
If anyone in this house cared whether I lived or died, it might have been her. Might. “Lyra,” she said, her voice as stern as ever.
“How much have you finished?”
“Just one room,” I admitted, gesturing behind me. “The second is… taking longer. There’s a lot to clear out.”
Her gaze swept the room, taking in the freshly lit lanterns and the pile of junk near the door. She sniffed, unimpressed.
“It’ll have to do. Lord and Lady want these rooms ready within the hour.”
“The hour?” I repeated before I could stop myself.
I bit my tongue, but the damage was done. Mrs. Branth raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, the hour. And if they aren’t, I’m sure you know who’ll be blamed.” I did.
She sighed, softening just a fraction. “You’ll have to make do.” I nodded, biting back any further protests.
“Yes, Mrs. Branth.”
Her sharp eyes lingered on me for a moment longer before she turned to leave, her footsteps fading into the distance.
As soon as she was gone, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and turned back to the second room.
The pile of junk in the corner was waiting, along with the strange carvings I’d tried to ignore.
Whatever secrets this basement held, they’d have to stay buried for now. I had a job to do, and failure wasn’t an option.
The young maid arrived not long after Mrs. Branth left. Her name was Mina, one of the newer additions to the household.
She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, her cheeks still round with the remnants of childhood and her hands soft, uncalloused by years of scrubbing.
That wouldn’t last. She hesitated in the doorway, her wide eyes scanning the room like she’d just stepped into some ancient crypt.
“Mrs. Branth said you needed help,” she murmured, clutching a rag in one hand and a broom in the other.
“I do,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
“Start with the shelves over there. Toss anything broken into the pile by the door, and wipe down what’s left.”
Mina nodded and set to work, her movements hesitant at first but growing steadier as she got used to the grime.
We worked in silence for a while, the only sounds the scrape of brushes and the soft clink of debris hitting the floor.
Despite her inexperience, she was quick and diligent, and the room started to take shape faster with two pairs of hands working on it.
By the time we finished the last room, both of us were coated in dust and sweat, but the space looked almost presentable.
The lanterns bathed the rooms in a warm, flickering glow, and the stale air had been replaced with a faint scent of soap and lantern oil.
The beds still needed new mattresses, though; the ones in the basement were beyond saving.
“I’ll let the men know we need replacements,” I said, wiping my hands on my apron.
Mina gave me a tired nod, leaning against the wall to catch her breath. We climbed the stairs together, our footsteps dragging with exhaustion.
Upstairs, the chaos of the feast preparations hit us like a wave—servants darting back and forth with trays of food and bottles of wine, the hum of conversation and laughter spilling from the dining hall.
It was a world away from the dark, forgotten basement.
The male servants were gathered near the kitchens, leaning against the walls and sharing a jug of something that smelled strong enough to burn your nose hairs.
They looked up as we approached, their expressions shifting from boredom to something sharper, less kind.
“We’ve finished cleaning the basement rooms,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “But we’ll need three new mattresses brought down.”
One of the men snorted, a stocky fellow named Gareth. “Mattresses, eh? Well, you’ll be fetching more than that.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
He took a long swig from the jug before answering, his tone dripping with condescension.
“The Lord and Lady want the fancy ladies stationed in those rooms, one for each warrior. They’ve earned their comforts, after all.”
It took me a moment to process what he meant.
“The fancy ladies” was the polite term for the women Lord Peter kept on retainer, their only purpose to entertain the men who passed through the estate.
Glorified prostitutes, dressed up in silks and jewels to make their trade look respectable.
Mina’s face turned red, and I felt a knot of anger tighten in my chest.
We’d just spent hours scrubbing filth and clearing out centuries of rot, only to be told that the rooms we’d slaved over would be turned into brothels for the night.
“And we’re supposed to fetch them?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.
Gareth grinned, a lazy, mocking expression. “Unless you’d like to volunteer to take their place. Didn’t think so.”
The other men chuckled, their laughter grating against my nerves.
I clenched my fists but said nothing. There was no point. Arguing wouldn’t change anything, and it certainly wouldn’t make my life easier.
Instead, I turned to Mina, who looked like she wanted to disappear into the floor. “Come on,” I said quietly. “Let’s go.”
Mina followed me out of the kitchen, her steps quick and nervous as we weaved through the throng of servants.
Neither of us spoke until we were well away from the noise, tucked into a quieter corridor that led toward the wing where the “fancy ladies” were kept.
“Do you think they’ll…” Mina started, her voice barely above a whisper. “Do you think they’ll mind?”
“They don’t get to mind,” I said, sharper than I meant to. The bitterness in my voice wasn’t directed at her, but Mina flinched anyway.
I softened my tone. “It’s their job. Same as it’s ours.”
Her wide eyes darted toward me, her expression full of questions she was too afraid to ask.
I couldn’t blame her. Even though we were both maids, our lives couldn’t have been more different.
Mina had come from a farmer’s family—poor, but decent.
She’d grown up with siblings, warmth, a mother who braided her hair and a father who worked the fields.
I’d grown up as a secret no one wanted and everyone resented. We understood hardship, but hers had been gentler, kinder. She still had hope. I didn’t.
The corridor ended at a heavy wooden door that marked the threshold to the fancy ladies’ quarters.
I hesitated before knocking, not because I feared what was inside, but because I hated this part of the estate more than any other.
This was where the truth of the Lord’s wealth and power showed itself—not in the polished silver or the sprawling feasts, but in the lives he controlled and discarded at will.
The door opened, and a woman stepped into view.
She was older than most of the others, her face lined with age and her hair streaked with gray, but she carried herself with a confidence that demanded attention.
Her name was Maris, and she was something like a mother to the women here, though I wasn’t sure if that role was chosen or forced upon her.
“Lyra,” she said, her tone cool but not unkind. Her sharp eyes flicked to Mina, then back to me. “What do you want?”
“The Lord and Lady need three of your girls stationed in the basement rooms for the night,” I said.
I kept my voice even, professional, though the words felt heavy in my mouth. “For the warriors.”
Maris’s lips thinned into a line.
For a moment, I thought she might refuse, but then she sighed and stepped back, holding the door open wider. “Wait here.”
We stood in silence as she disappeared into the dimly lit quarters beyond.
The faint hum of voices and laughter drifted through the open door, mingling with the faint scent of perfume.
Mina shifted beside me, her fingers twisting the hem of her apron. When Maris returned, three women followed her.
They were beautiful, of course, in a way that was almost unsettling.
Their dresses clung to their curves, their hair and makeup flawless despite the late hour.
They looked like they belonged at a royal court, not in a place like this. “This is Lila, Corinne, and Faye,” Maris said, her tone brisk.
“They’ll do as they’re told.” I nodded, though my stomach churned. “Thank you.”
The women didn’t speak as they followed us back down the corridor, their footsteps soft and deliberate.
Mina kept glancing at them out of the corner of her eye, her curiosity barely contained.
I understood the fascination—they seemed like something out of a dream, too perfect to be real. But I knew better.
Perfection came at a price, and these women had paid it tenfold. When we reached the basement stairs, Corinne wrinkled her nose.
“We’re being sent down there?” she asked, her voice dripping with disdain.
“Orders are orders,” I said shortly.
I didn’t have the patience to coddle her. She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue further.
One by one, they descended the stairs, their movements graceful even on the uneven stone.
When we reached the rooms, I lit the lanterns again, casting the space in a warm, golden light that made it seem less oppressive.
“This is where you’ll stay,” I said, gesturing to the rooms. “Make yourselves comfortable.”
Lila let out a soft laugh, her tone bitter. “Comfortable. Right.”
The three women moved to claim their spaces, their expressions unreadable as they surveyed the rooms we’d worked so hard to clean.
Corinne sat on one of the makeshift beds, her gaze distant. Faye lingered by the doorway, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
Lila busied herself adjusting the lantern, as if the task might distract her from whatever thoughts she was wrestling with.
Mina leaned close to me, her voice barely a whisper. “Should we… stay?”
I shook my head. “Our part’s done. Let’s go.”
We climbed the stairs in silence, leaving the basement behind us.
But as we rejoined the noise and light of the main house, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d left more than just those women behind in the dark.
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