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

“Hatchling,” she barely acknowledged him.

It would have irked the Commander if it was anyone else, but he held his tongue. He was approaching his four-hundredth birthday, but anything under a thousand years was a hatchling to the old ones. It didn’t help that she could smell his diluted blood. He was dragonspawn. His mother went by the name Samantha today, but she was known to her kind as Samala. She wasn’t even half the age of Vesuvia, and was considered, improperly so, as a bit of a whore by other full-blooded dragons. She had many dragonspawn children. Feng’s father was a Chinese philosopher during the Ming dynasty, and Feng had half a dozen younger brothers and sisters that he knew about.

Dragonspawn qualified as shifters, just like their full-blooded parents, but they were far weaker. Where his mother’s true form measured several hundred feet from snout to tip, Feng’s was simply a tall, scaled, hybrid mix of dragon and man. He was a force to be reckoned with compared to most supernatural creatures; but he couldn’t go up against someone as old as Vesuvia. Not even his whole team stood a chance.

“Where are the children?” he asked.

“Gone,” she answered simply. “No one told me you wanted them,” something in her tone told him she wouldn’t have given them up anyway.

Harboring fugitives was a felony, but he knew they couldn’t bring her in, and the UN would never bring the resources to bear needed to fight a dragon on such a small charge.

“Very well, thank you for your time,” he bowed again.

“Give your mother my best wishes,” she added as he sprinted back to the chopper.

“We need to contact HQ, and get some mages on this,” he ordered as the chopper took off and headed south-east. “We have a portal to track.”

Even though he knew that was true, he doubted she would make it that easy.

Chapter 4

“Huh,” Aveena gazed at her childhood bedroom. There were four stone walls and a hearth with wood piled next to it if she wanted a fire. The slab of stone that sat in the center of the room was her bed, and a basin next to the hearth was for all her hygienic needs. All of it sized for her twelve-foot stature.

To anyone else it would have looked like a typical guest room, but her keen eye saw the veiled insults that alerted her to her mother’s mood. There was no flint and stone to light a fire. Guesting laws required that any guest of a Fae court be treated with respect. With a will-o’-the-wisps as her father, she had power over fire, as well as the power over ice provided by her mother’s blood. By not providing her flint and stone, thereby acknowledging her wisp bloodline, her mother was treating her as a guest, not a member of House Foxbelle coming home.

That was bad. Being heir to the House was her entire reason for being. She was going to be the future Lady of Winter. She was the most beautiful of the frost giants, and she was being treated like a foreigner in her own home.

She took calming breaths as she clenched her fists so tight her knuckles cracked like small gunshots. She didn’t need to look at the closet or washroom. There would be none of the furs she left behind, or any of her preferred fragrances.

“You could have warned me,” she spat at Godric, who stood calmly in a corner.

“Would that have helped?” the old goblin raised an eyebrow.

She didn’t respond, as she lit the fire with a flick of her wrist. Roaring flames leapt to life, and she thought about burning the whole place down out of spite. Godric made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue as if he’d read her mind.

She glared at him, about to order him away, when a knock on the door stopped her.

“E . . .” she was interrupted as a male of her species pushed open the door.

“Lady Foxbelle, you’re . . .” he never got to finish.

One of Godric’s swords leapt from his scabbard and into her hand. Her palm burned on direct contact with the cold iron handle, but her anger was so much stronger. The messenger’s eyes had time to widen in fear before she removed his head from his shoulders. Silver blood fountained out of his headless stump, and his body managed to keep its feet for several seconds before toppling into the room. More silver blood flowed onto the stone floor, but she ignored it as she approached him.

She flipped him over with her power and grabbed a hold of his penis. With a practiced slice, she removed it at the base and put it on the end of Godric’s sword. She placed it in the fire like she was roasting marshmallows and took a seat on her stone bed. She growled as her hand started to heal from the second-degree burns.

“Very mature, My Lady,” Godric didn’t look upset, but he slowly moved away from the growing pool of silver.

A second flick of her wrist, and the limp body launched itself into the hallway to crash into the far wall with a crack loud enough to alert anyone nearby. “Maybe next time they’ll remember to respect me,” she willed her mother to read her thoughts and feel her anger. The Lady of Winter might be upset with her, but no one entered Aveena’s private quarters without her permission . . . ever.

She didn’t have to wait long. A second knock came less than five minutes after the first. She grabbed the roasted penis off the fire and waited a moment to see if whoever had come had learned their lesson.

“Enter,” she commanded, and a nervous-looking male opened the door without stepping into her room.

He took in the