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

disposal. The thought made me feel powerful and sick at the same time. Powerful, because for the first time in my life, there was someone weaker that I could command; and sick, because I knew what the bond between us really was. Aveena had offered me the same opportunity to end my blood feud. Fern was effectively my slave; bound to me by blood and power, as she was to the troll knight before me. The only way she would get free of me was my death, and then, she would pass into the service of another. It would go on and on like that.

“Fern, how old are you?” she might look like an adorable child, but Fae were immortal.

“I served Ser Fredrick for sixteen mortal years,” she replied.

“That’s not bad,” I thought with relief.

“But I served his father for seven hundred and twenty-three mortal years before that. My family has served the trolls of the Winter Court back to the beginning.”

My eyes bulged as I tried to do the math. You’d have to add up the age of everyone in the car and multiply by ten to even get near the small pixie’s age.

“I’m sure you served the troll well,” Lilith’s voice was soft. “You will find Cam to be a different kind of master than one you are used to.” A flicker of hope, and fear, flashed across Fern’s face.

“What did you do for Ser Fredrick?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

“I gifted him power to maintain his sword and armor. It kept the blade sharp and the armor strong. I cleaned his barracks, cooked his meals, and serviced his person,” she checked items off her task list with a smile.

“Serviced his person,” my face paled. That could only mean one thing. I looked at Fern, and compared that to the big, swinging dick I’d seen on the troll. At a foot and a half, his cock had been a third of the pixie’s size. I winced just thinking about it.

“What would you like me to do for you?” she asked, her eyes looking up at me with complete devotion.

It was unsettling. “Why don’t you take the rest of the drive to . . .” I waved at her face and body, “. . . figure out who you want to be.”

She just looked at me in confusion. “Do I not please you?” from her tone, you’d think I’d slapped her.

“No . . . I mean . . .” I scowled as Dani laughed at my stammering. “I want you to look the way you want to look, not the way you think that I want you to look,” I clarified.

“How I want?” she couldn’t even fathom the idea, and I got a ringside seat at what eight centuries of obedience could do to a person.

“Take some time and think about it,” I suggested.

“Here,” Dani handed a tablet over the seat. “Google people and see if you like how anyone looks, then go with it.”

Fern hesitantly accepted the tablet like it was worth its weight in diamonds. “Is this what you want, master?”

“It’s not what I . . .” I gave an exasperated sigh. “Yes, it’s what I want.” I had to gradually ease her into freewill, or she was never going to get it.

“Okay,” she brightened up, turned on the tablet, and started surfing the web like she’d been doing it since the dawn of the internet.

“Maybe she has,” I didn’t know.

I spent the next few hours in quiet contemplation; trying to figure out what the hell I’d gotten myself into. I had enough trouble taking care of myself. How was I going to manage a Fae who’d been around since before the Renaissance?

A couple hours from our destination, I tried to break the silence and make conversation. “You found me fast,” I meant it as a compliment.

Fern immediately put down the tablet and gave me her undivided attention. Being a teenager myself, I don’t think I’d ever seen someone stop looking at their phone when someone else was talking to them. It was refreshing.

“Almost not fast enough,” she lowered her eyes. “I traveled as far as I could between the realms before my power gave out, and I had to spend the last few hours traveling by mortal means. Thankfully, my last bit of strength emerged near a truck stop. A driver was more than happy to give me a ride on generous terms.”

I looked down at her hobo clothes and distinctly recognized dry semen on her collar. Anger bubbled up inside me, and I swore to the gods if I ever found some trucker bragging about how he made a Fae bob on his knob, I was going to bash that fucker’s face in.

“I’ve upset you,” she wrapped her arms protectively around herself and hunched her shoulders.

“No, not you,” I almost reached out to comfort her, but thought twice about it. “Sometimes, humans can be assholes,” I said it with the conviction that I was now only tenuously linked to the species. Gods only knew what I really was.

“You know, you shouldn’t just have sex with anyone in exchange for something,” it was a really awkward thing to say, but knowing what I’d learned about pixies, it had to be said.

“Except master,” if it was possible, she looked even sadder at me telling her not to pleasure random people.

“Fae culture is so fucking weird,” I said this knowing full well I had a little bit of Fae in me. “Thanks a lot, troll.”

She thought I was pushing her away; telling her she was worthless. For a creature that had spent centuries in servitude to others, and been stockholmed like a motherfucker, it was the insult of all insults.

I knew I’d need to take it slow with her. “Except master,”