The memory curse the los.., p.1
The Memory Curse (The Lost God Book 2), page 1
THE MEMORY CURSE
THE LOST GOD BOOK TWO
OceanofPDF.com
SHEILA MASTERSON
OceanofPDF.com
OceanofPDF.com
Copyright © 2023 by Sheila Masterson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The scanning, uploading, or distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for supporting the author’s rights.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is coincidental.
Ebook: 978-1-960416-05-6
Paperback: 978-1-960416-06-3
Hardcover: 978-1-960416-07-0
Cover Design: Andrea Laguer
Hardback Case and Map Design: Mike Sisak
Editing: Erin at EKB Books
Proofreading: Mike Sisak
OceanofPDF.com
CONTENTS
A Note From the Author
I. The Last Living Goddess
1. Cecilia
2. Cecilia
3. Xander
4. Cecilia
5. Rainer
6. Xander
7. Cecilia
8. Cecilia
9. Xander
10. Cecilia
II. Games Gods Play
11. Rainer
12. Cecilia
13. Cecilia
14. Cecilia
15. Rainer
16. Cecilia
17. Xander
18. Cecilia
19. Xander
20. Cecilia
21. Rainer
22. Cecilia
23. Cecilia
III. What Love Does
24. Cecilia
25. Xander
26. Cecilia
27. Rainer
28. Cecilia
29. Cecilia
30. Xander
31. Cecilia
32. Rainer
33. Cecilia
34. Rainer
35. Cecilia
IV. Things Worth Saving at the End of the World
36. Xander
37. Cecilia
38. Rainer
39. Cecilia
40. Cecilia
41. Cecilia
42. Rainer
43. Cecilia
44. Cecilia
45. Cecilia
After
The Adventure Continues in March 2024 with…
Review it ebook
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Sheila Masterson
OceanofPDF.com
For every tender-hearted soul who has ever been called “too sensitive.”
May you find your own spell for the courage to remain brave with your hand and brave with your heart.
OceanofPDF.com
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader,
THE MEMORY CURSE deals with mental health struggles (including grief, depression, and anxiety), fertility issues, war, violence, death, profanity, and explicit sex. I have attempted to treat all sensitive topics with the utmost care, but I recognize that this content might still be challenging for some readers.
This book is about many things, but mostly about love, especially self-love, so please take care of yourself above all else.
Happy Reading,
Sheila
OceanofPDF.com
OceanofPDF.com
OceanofPDF.com
OceanofPDF.com
1
CECILIA
All Cecilia wanted was to take her morning walk on the beach in peace, but the god of death couldn’t even let her have that.
Grimon was waiting for her the moment her feet hit the sand.
“What do you want, Grim? I don’t have time for gods stuff right now. There’s a war coming,” she said, brushing past him.
He grabbed her arm and spun her to face him. “You’re talking about the war out there. What about the war in here?” He tapped a finger on her chest.
She rolled her eyes so hard it hurt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She walked toward the water, and Grimon fell into step beside her. He knew how to weaponize a silence until she was anxious to spill her guts. This was the third morning in a row he’d ruined her solitude with his expectant presence.
Cecilia ignored him, focusing instead on the cool sand beneath her feet and the salty breeze ruffling her hair. The world had suddenly become much too loud and unruly and she struggled to adjust to her heightened senses. She had taken to hiding in her cottage with Xander, her body full of restless energy she could never fully spend despite Xander’s enthusiastic efforts.
Cecilia’s magic had always been about remembering—as if some vibrational pulse in the universe had been whispering to her since she was a child. Remember. Even the lessons in school seemed to awaken some wisdom that existed in the back of her mind. Remember. And when her brain felt too full, she could always make room for more. Remember.
The fates had a sense of humor since her new power was to make people forget. Forget themselves. Forget their purpose. Forget the very things that made them who they were. All while she was doomed to remember.
Memory strung the world together. It sustained the fairy tales and stories that she loved so much. It wound people into and through her life in beautiful, heart-opening ways. Memory was the foundation of personality. It was the roots through which family and friendships grew. It tethered people to reality.
Memory was life, and she its destroyer.
Cecilia, goddess of mind and memory, breaker of minds, ruination of identity, plague on memory. She never dreamed she’d be such a destructive force in the world.
In the quiet, she felt the power climbing through her bones like vines. Remember. She felt the call to vengeance, to bring the world to her feet. Remember. She felt the darkness clawing its way out of her chest like a rabid beast. Remember.
Long ago the Seer had said, “Only you can decide who fear will make you.”
Cecilia was foolish to think she could anticipate all the things there might be to fear in the world. A lifetime of fairy tales with monsters and dragons and demons, but she couldn’t have expected that she would become the thing she feared most.
Grimon finally spoke. “You know, you’re being selfish.”
She scoffed. “Selfish?”
“You didn’t get what you wanted and now you’re refusing to integrate your abilities fully.”
Cecilia shrugged. “I integrated them just fine when I fought Endros.”
“You got lucky. And you had help,” Grimon said.
“From who?” Cecilia asked.
“From me.” The voice sounded like it came directly from the crashing waves.
A goddess stepped out of the surf, her cerulean gown blending with the sea. Perfectly dry blonde curls spilled over her shoulders and her blue eyes—eyes that looked exactly like Cecilia’s—narrowed on her.
“Sister,” the goddess said with a nod.
It had to be—
“Adira,” the goddess of the sea said.
A lump formed in Cecilia’s throat. She was choked by a sudden, intense desire to know this stranger—to have the same kind of intimacy with her that Sylvie did with her sisters. Cecilia hadn’t the first idea how someone should act when meeting family they didn’t know existed, but she could do little more than gawk, searching for herself in the goddess’s mannerisms.
“You were there when I fought Endros?” Cecilia asked.
“You just assumed that you could suddenly control the tides perfectly?” Adira asked.
Cecilia sighed. Apparently sarcasm ran in the family.
“Adira, it’s been too long. You look good,” Grimon said with a seductive smile.
“Don’t even give me that look,” Adira snapped. “What happened twenty years ago won’t be happening again, even if it was the best sex of your long, miserable life. You ghosted me.”
“Ghosted?” Grimon’s lips tilted into a smirk.
“Yes, you slept with me and then poof! You were gone—like an apparition,” Adira said.
Grimon laughed. “It’s a bit on the nose for the god of death, don’t you think?”
“Okay, this is getting weird,” Cecilia said, looking between her half-sister and the god of death. The last thing she needed was a lover’s quarrel between gods.
“Which part? The part where you’re meeting your sister for the first time, or finding out you aren’t the first of us that Grimon has taken an interest in?” Adira asked, glaring at Grimon.
“I think your guardian is worried you’re losing your mind.” Grimon looked over Cecilia’s shoulder. She turned to find Rainer standing at the bottom of the cliff trail, watching her.
“Why?” she asked.
“He can’t see us,” Adira answered.
“Of course not.” Cecilia cupped her hands around her mouth. “Rain, it’s fine. I’ll meet you at the stables at lunchtime. Gods stuff.”
Rainer nodded and disappeared around a curve in the trail that led up to her cottage.
“I nee d to learn how to do this invisibility thing,” she said.
“Living gods can’t do it. Those of us ascended can choose to be invisible when we want,” Adira said. “It’s so we can move among mortals unseen if we wish. Only other gods can see us in this form unless we choose to make ourselves known.”
“Is that how you knew who I was when I was young?” Cecilia asked.
Grimon nodded.
Adira’s eyes went wide. “You met him when you were a child?”
“I was summoned by prayers, waiting right here on the beach, expecting an adult. Instead, this tiny little girl—couldn’t have been much older than six—walks up and asks if I’m lost,” Grimon said. “You can imagine my surprise that she could see me. She told me to call her Lady Cece and asked what I was, since she could tell I wasn’t human. When I told her, she wasn’t the least bit fazed. She just took my hand and walked with me and talked to me about her mother and the other spirits she met. I started coming back a few days a week and walking with her in the morning until she got older and was too busy with her training.”
Adira looked astonished. “All this time, you knew she was the Lost Goddess, and you kept it to yourself?”
Cecilia was hit with a wave of delayed panic. So much could have gone wrong when she was so young and it would have been entirely her fault. She owed Grimon a debt.
Grimon shrugged. “Why would I share it with anyone? She was young and sweet, and I have never had love for Endros and Cato.”
Cecilia tugged on her dress. “Thanks for the lovely trip down memory lane, Grim, but can you get to the point? Why are you both here interrupting my morning walk?”
“Because you haven’t integrated,” Adira said. “You’re still trying to push your abilities away, thinking of the goddess as a separate entity when she’s a part of you. The only reason you feel different now is because you won’t let the transformation fully settle in. It can’t be undone now. Accept it. It will be easier if you do. You’ll feel more like yourself.”
Cecilia blew out an angry breath. “I don’t want or need your help. I don’t need to be managed and I hate riddles. I’m not the place for the lot of you to hang your hopes. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up without this kind of power and then learn how to use it right away.”
“Lady Cece, what did I tell you about anger at our picnic in the woods?” Grimon asked.
“That I should hold on to it until I knew where to direct it.”
“And do you?”
She glared at Grimon. “Yes.”
“So it’s simple then. Integrate your powers, figure out what Cato is up to, and take him out.” Grimon said it as if murdering a living god would be easy—something she could do in an afternoon.
“If it’s so simple, why haven’t any of the rest of you done it?” she asked.
Adira sighed, twisting a golden curl around her finger. “The rest of us have been outsmarted.”
“Or unable to interfere,” Grimon said.
That was sobering. Cecilia’s stomach twisted in knots. “Just because I’m the goddess of mind and memory doesn’t mean that I’m smarter than him. He’s been ahead of me this whole time. I’m sure he’s still ahead of me now, but Cato also has some of Endros’s strength and fighting ability, which negates my last advantage.”
“You can’t think that way, little sister,” Adira said, her face softening ever so slightly. “We’re all here to help you in our own ways. We can’t give you all the answers because it’s against the rules of nature, but we can each give you pieces. You will have to put them together.”
Cecilia threw her hands up. “I’m tired of puzzles.”
Adira’s face pinched in disdain. “Yes, well. You’d have less to solve if you hadn’t made a deal with Cato.”
Cecilia kicked a shell into the sea. “I didn’t know he was pulling the strings.”
“Was it worth it?” Adira asked.
Cecilia swallowed thickly. Just the memory of Rainer nearly dying was enough to chill her down to the bone, freezing her body in terror that felt as fresh now as it had then. “It was.”
Adira laughed. “Oh, you silly girl. You don’t know that yet.”
“I do.” Cecilia’s glare challenged Adira to say otherwise. There was no point trying to pretend that her feelings were a secret.
Cecilia had written it on the beach once when she was younger and more hopeful. A wish in the sand swept away on the lips of the sea. A secret passed back and forth between old friends. I love Rainer McKay. The sea lapped it up in waves, murmuring like a gossip along the shore.
Some mornings she’d cried over it, the salt of her tears blending into ocean waves. Other times it was an angry shout, scoring her throat on the way out. Why can’t he just love me back? Always she returned home feeling like she’d shared what was forbidden everywhere else.
The problem was that everyone knew then. Even if she never said it, it was written all over her face. And now her husband knew it, too.
The goddess of the sea studied Cecilia as if seeing her for the first time. The set of her jaw, her eyes, and her stony face softened. “Well then, I suppose it was.”
“What will Cato want for it?” Cecilia tried to keep her voice from trembling.
“He never wants what we think he wants. He is a master of misdirection,” Adira said with a shrug.
“If you had to guess?”
Adira shrugged. “Probably the use of your power. You are the last two living gods. The most powerful gods in this realm.”
Cecilia frowned. “Isn’t Clastor the most powerful?”
“Clastor is ascended like the rest of us,” Adira said. “His home is in the Otherworld, the Realm of the Gods. He’s weaker in this realm than you are. We ascended gods can pull strings, but we don’t have full access to all our powers here. Why do you think so many prayers go unanswered? I may change the tides but I cannot flood the earth. You and Cato can change the minds of men, in your own unique ways. You can make the world forget there was even a time before you. Cato can manipulate people, and mortals are so easily swayed.”
“Perhaps I can make him forget me.” Cecilia laughed bitterly.
Adira’s eyes blazed momentarily brighter. “I’d like to see you try. Unfortunately, your power won’t work on him and his won’t work on you. But he doesn’t need his power to manipulate you. He can use those around you. He’s been doing it to the rest of us for centuries. The moves are too many. Only the fates know for sure.”
Cecilia swallowed a lump in her throat. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“Why should you?” Adira asked. “A goddess can make her own fate.”
“So what should I do?”
Adira stepped close enough that Cecilia could smell the salt on her skin. She twirled one of Cecilia’s curls around her fingers. “Our sisters are trying to figure it out. They are watching Cato closely, but it’s a challenge to read his moves. Some he makes just to throw us off.”
“Our sisters?” The concept of siblings was still so foreign to Cecilia.
“Did you not read any of your mythology texts, Cecilia? I’m talking about Desiree, goddess of love and beauty. Aelish, goddess of truth, and Sayla, goddess of the hunt. Who knows, perhaps even our brother, Devlin, god of wisdom and reason, might throw some of his considerable knowledge behind us, if he can be bothered to look up from his stupid books.”
