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

good question that the Fae probably never asked themselves. After all, why would a Fae need to bottle glamour? For me, it would allow me to combine my abilities. I could conceal myself behind a flawless façade, but still take advantage of my precognition. The troll strength I had burning inside me was all well and good, but I missed being able to tell when something was about to happen. Even a second or two could mean the difference between life and death; enhanced strength or not.

I’d become competent at fixed glamour, and could probably program it into a crystal if that was possible, but I was still working on the second type. I called it streaming glamour; like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. All those apps allowed people to stream content off the internet to their devices. Streaming glamour allowed a Fae to continuously stream power to an object. It countered the main con of fixed glamour. Fixed glamour was exactly that: fixed. You put a certain amount of power into it, and it was set in stone. The pro was not having to constantly worry about it since the glamour had been tied off. That was great for a certain quasi-human, walking around a porn convention, who’d just learned glamouring in the last week. However, if the fixed glamour wasn’t strong enough, you could be in real trouble.

Lark used the example of a sword to explain it all. A sword of fixed glamour had a certain strength and sharpness to it; like a sword forged by any blademaster. That was good in most cases, until you came up against something stronger and sharper than your own blade. In that case, a fixed glamour blade would shatter against the stronger object, and you’d be shit out of luck. I don’t know about other Fae, but it would suck donkey dick if my sword broke in the middle of a fight.

That’s where streaming glamour came in; which also just happened to be the preferred glamour of most Fae. Unlike fixed glamour, it wasn’t tied off; so, you had to maintain the power flow to the object. In the case of a blade, you had to keep that manifestation of power going with your will. That wasn’t an issue with a true Fae, but I hadn’t figured it out yet. Lark had proven that point by slapping me in the face. Not hard, but hard enough to surprise me, interrupt my concentration, and dissolve my blade into pretty sparks that did a whole lot of nothing to protect against anything he decided to follow up with.

Chloe had used a streaming glamour blade when she’d hip checked me out a second story window. The dagger’s she’d thrown were fixed, but the sword that almost ended me was streaming.

I had a violent flashback of being battered, broken, and bleeding on the concrete outside my dorm. The water nymph’s sword plunged toward my defeated chest. Lilith’s own blade and whip of fire saved my ass, and shattered Chloe’s concentration. That’s the difference between fixed and streaming, when you stop focusing on your object, the glamour crumbled. Chloe’s blade had disintegrated into harmless sparkles a moment before she’d killed me.

I didn’t have much of a choice with my glamour at this point, but fixed worked for me; it was the safer option for someone with no control. Still, I recognized streaming could really save my ass in a pinch. With streaming, I could pump as much power as I could into an object. With a blade, I could make it stronger, sharper, or even repair damage mid-battle.

When going up against an opponent you had no intel on, streaming was the better option. That sucked for me, but like I was saying, if I was able to program fixed glamour into a crystal, I would be able to take advantage of my other abilities. I was intrigued; so intrigued that I totally missed Dani approach me from behind.

“Don’t look,” she whispered in my ear as she picked up a green crystal that flashed a cock going into a shapely ass in the right light. “You’ve got a tail at your eight o’clock.”

I resisted the urge to turn and look. When someone told me not to do something, my first instinct was to do it. This time when I turned the crystal, it was balls that flashed across my face, but I caught a glimpse of the dude trying to appear nonchalant while he kept an eye on me. He was fit, dressed like the talent scouts, with a bulge in his pocket that wasn’t a gun, but also wasn’t his dick.

“There’s another one at three o’clock,” she stated as she put down her crystal and faced me.

That gave me a chance to look over her head, and spot bad guy number two. He was built from the same mold as bad guy number one: fit, lean, with a military bearing. He could be one of the basement-dwelling chronic masturbators for all I cared; the fact that anyone was following me was a bad sign.

“UN?” I whispered.

“No idea, but we need to move. They’re boxing us in,” she slipped her arm through mine, like we were about to take a stroll through the park, and headed off at an angle away from both men.

A group of people offered us a little cover, and we were able to put them between us and bad guy number two. I felt the frustration radiating off him as we skirted past the trap, but we weren’t home free. The two baddies fell in behind us and started gaining ground. If we ran, they’d know we were onto them. I tried to appear relaxed as we rounded a corner and ran smack dab into bad guy number three. They’d herded us like sheep, and I had no time to react as something silver flashed toward me.

Thankfully, I’d