Courts and Cabals 2 by G.S. D'Moore (warren buffett book recommendations TXT) 📗

turned wet, and I ended up spitting out blood. “Great. It looks like one of the ribs punctured my lung,” I would have been more worried if I wasn’t set to be decapitated before it became an issue.

Whatever my condition, no one was paying me any attention anymore. All eyes were on Aveena’s mom, and to my surprise, she looked like she was about to shit a chicken.

“Guards, secure the palace!” she yelled, jumping off her throne with her axe in hand. “Watch for anything out of the ordinary. My court, to arms!” she yelled, taking everyone by surprise as she marched toward me.

“Mother, what . . .?” Aveena never got to finish.

Her mother was a good thirty percent taller and thicker than Aveena, and she showed it by backhanding the younger giant across the face. The blow lifted Aveena off her feet and sent her sprawling into some nearby courtiers. Since they were normal-sized folk, she nearly squished a few when they failed to get out of the way in time.

“You stupid, stupid child,” the Lady of Winter sneered, as she stood next to me, and set her feet shoulder width apart. “Do you know what you’ve done?” she screamed, her eyes bulging out of her head.

“No,” tears leaked down Aveena’s cheek, and mixed with the blood from her split lip. I was pretty sure the tears weren’t entirely from the backhand blow.

My mom had been gone for ten years, but she’d always been kind to me. The way the Lady of Winter treated Aveena . . . it almost made me sorry for her. Almost was the key word there. Aveena had fucked up my life one too many times for me to really care about her mommy issues.

“You could have killed us all, you spoiled brat! You’ve never worked for anything in your entire life. You’ve grown fat and soft among all of these weakling humans. Sending you to learn among them was the biggest mistake of my life, but no matter. I will never allow someone as pathetic and weak as you to ever rule our people. I’ll send you back to the front, force you to fight, or be my general’s fuck toy. You’ll be lucky if it’s the latter after what you could have brought down on us.”

Judging by Aveena’s face, she was just as confused as I was, but I had bigger issues. The Lady of Winter was winding up with her axe. Her muscles flexed from the weight of the weapon, and power with a capital P flooded into her body. It felt like I was sitting next to a magical star, and I couldn’t help but look up as the axe reached the zenith of her swing and plummeted down toward me. The sentient marble released me, probably worried the boss lady was going to turn the throne room into a not-so-small crater. The floor retreated from me like water going out with the tide, and left me sitting on a hunk of black stone.

I was free, but that didn’t mean shit. I should have run, but my body was paralyzed. All I could focus on was the gleaming blade of the axe plunging toward my upturned face.

“Well shit,” was my second to last thought.

My last thought was excitement as the Lady’s titty popped out of her bikini top on the downswing.

Chapter 23

There wasn’t much I could do but sit there and wait to die. Time seemed to slow around me, but it wasn’t some magical spell taking effect at the last second to save my ass. This was just my brain freaking the fuck out in the microseconds before the Lady of Winter lopped off my noggin.

I waited for my life to flash before my eyes . . . if you could even call it a life. I was only eighteen; maybe nineteen now. I’m not sure how time worked in the Faerie Realm, but I could be out of my teens altogether for all I knew. If my life did flash before my eyes, it wasn’t going to take long.

Maybe I’d catch a glimpse of my time in the orphanage. I’m sure there would be a few sweet moments with my adoptive parents. They were good people, and deserved to make the highlight reel. If anything, my last few moments of life should show me the faces I really cared about: Danni, Xamira, even Fern, and most of all, Lilith. If one moment of true consequence was going to be seen in my dying moments, it was the first time I busted a nut in her throat. That had really set everything off; the lightning strike – although, I couldn’t prove that had anything to do with me emptying my balls – missing the deadline with Aveena, the following feud, joining the cabal, and all the hijinks after killing Ser Fredrick. All of that traced back to the one instance of fellacio back at St. Vincent’s Academy. It’s a hell of a thing when I can look back at one moment and see what a profound impact it had on my existence.

Even in the moments before my death, I still couldn’t remember what my mother looked like. That made me feel like a real sack of shit, but I was probably going to see her in a few seconds. At least, I hoped so.

There were dozens of predictions of what happened after you died. The most popular, even after the Revelation, was the Judeo-Christian idea of Heaven and Hell. Within those belief structures, there were different interpretations. Was Heaven a repeat of your greatest days on earth? A divine amusement park where you could do whatever the hell you wanted? Was it just basking in the presence of a capital-G god and having everlasting peace? For all I knew, it could be all of the above and just depend on the