Courts and Cabals 2 by G.S. D'Moore (best novel books to read .txt) 📕

in the mail, and not one of those big containers either. I’m talking one of those little P.O. boxes. I’ll fold you up like a little origami swan and stuff your ass in there, Bernard Fuller,” the dwarf was lucky the judge didn’t hear the clear threat in her voice.

Bernie did, and he hustled Lilith out of the room. The succubus waited until they were clear before she chuckled. “I’d watch your back, Bernie. Dani isn’t known for her patience.”

The guard paled a few shades; all his bravado gone.

“That’ll have to do,” Lilith took a mental snapshot, and promised herself to hold on to the flicker of humor for the next few months.

It might be all she had to work with.

Chapter 22

“Why is it that every time I wake up, I feel like a troop of Wisconsin cheeseheads performed the latest rendition of Stomp all over my body?” I gave a mental groan but didn’t open my eyes.

Everything was fuzzy, and I mean everything. Who I was? Where I was? How I’d come to be here? Why I was here? Of course, what I was had been a question for months, so that wasn’t too big of a headscratcher. Since I didn’t want to delve into that big an existential crisis, I decided to give myself a once over.

On top of everything being fuzzy upstairs, everything else hurt. My muscles ached like I’d been through the roughest workout of my life. My bones felt like they needed a good dose of WD-40 to get moving. My teeth ached when I tried to open my jaw. Hell, even my dick felt raw; like I’d jerked off twenty times in a day. On top of all that was exhaustion; pure, unadulterated, and complete exhaustion. Since I’d just been unconscious, that was weird. Plus, I was naked as the day I was born.

“Why does the best, and worst, stuff always happen to me when I’ve lost my clothes,” I bemoaned, but I didn’t have much time to think about it.

A creak echoed from somewhere in front of me. Someone was coming, so I went limp and played dead.

“You’re up,” someone said a few seconds later. “The old I’m-unconscious-so-I’m-not-a-threat bit isn’t going to work.”

“You can’t blame a guy for trying,” I muttered, and opened my eyes . . . or I tried to.

One eye opened, but the vision was blurry, and it didn’t clear. My other eyelid refused to budge at all.

“You don’t heal as fast as we thought you would,” the voice stated.

All I saw was a vaguely humanoid shape standing in front of me. I tried to move, and searing pain radiated through my arms, shoulders, and back. I gasped and nearly blacked out again. “Got it. Movement bad.”

I digested the new information. I was shackled by the wrists and hanging from something above me. My shoulders were definitely fucked up; dislocated, broken, or muscles shredded. I didn’t know. Either way, I wasn’t going anywhere. The top half of my body was out of action.

“Sorry to disappoint,” I answered the dark figure’s question. “Maybe don’t beat my ass next time and we can talk.”

The figure chuckled, and walked to stand next to me. It reached out and placed a hand on my chin. The pain from a moment ago felt like a sunburn compared to the wave of excruciating agony that ran through me. Despite being nearly comatose, I screamed and thrashed. I didn’t know if it was a hex, curse, or whatever else the Fae inflicted on the people on their shit list. Whatever it was, unimaginable cold tried to strangle the life out of me. It was like someone shoved me in a sub-zero freezer and dumped me in an iced-over, Siberian lake; multiplied by a thousand. There was no way in hell anything on earth was this cold. Not possible. So, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

“Stop,” I cried, as tears formed icicles on my cheeks. The thing took a step back, and the unbelievable cold vanished.

The white fire of my Fae gifts inside me were weaker than a flickering candle, but it steadily grew stronger. Only one thing had that type of nullifying power on my gifts. “Cold iron.”

If this Fae was walking around wearing cold iron, I did not want to fuck with it. It also meant I was in the Faerie Realm, and that meant I was shit out of luck; do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, proceed straight to six feet under, and remember to tip the undertaker.

“Forgive me,” the figure genuinely apologized, “but this usually works better with physical contact.”

I didn’t have time to brace for the deluge of magic that hit me like a sledgehammer between the eyes. This time, I did black out for a second, but when I came to, I could see.

“Let there be light,” I blinked and my vision cleared, which gave me a good view of the creature in front of me.

He was butt ugly with leathery skin covered in cold iron chainmail. Thick tusks protruded from his mouth, which made his facial expressions moderately terrifying. He looked like a wild boar about to gore me to death. Despite his ugliness, whatever he’d done fixed my vision and made me feel less like hammered shit; especially my shoulders. My chances of escape went up a fraction of a percent. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

“I fixed your detached retina, bruising, swelling, popped both of your shoulders back in, and generally tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” he seemed to sag a little after working the magic.

I didn’t know what impressed me more; that he could do that level of healing magic, or that he knew who Humpty Dumpty was. Either way, now would have been the perfect opportunity to try