Page 62 of Fae Crown

“Mmhmm,” I agreed, though his suggestion had been a tad bit obvious, hadn’t it? “You’re the one who’s been tending to me?”

“Sure am.” He scowled until lines sliced down from his mouth to his chin as if he, too, were aMauricio.

“Thanks?” I offered, thrown off by his frown only growing more pronounced.

He grunted, slid down the stool, and gently placed the small bottle in a position of prominence among the others atop the crate. Then he lumbered across the room, opened a door with a creak, and left without a word.

I harrumphed to myself and prepared to wait for his return—what else was there for me to do? When he didn’t come back for several minutes I began to fret. I should have accepted the knockout juice and been done with it. Why did I insist on lingering in my pain? So many patches of tissue itched, stung, or ached that I couldn’t decide which was more pressing, what damage was greater.

After my regret at refusing the tonic had grown into an ache in itself, the goblin finally returned carrying a pail of water in each knobby hand.

Tracking his progress across the sliver of openfloor that wedged between walls, crates, and beds, I noticed there was something wrong with his legs.

He wore a clean if simple set of tunic and breeches that exposed him from the knee down. Where Pru and every other goblin I’d ever seen had feet much like those of dragons, with shiny scales and claws the palace goblins were ordered to keep trimmed to useless nubs, this goblin had feet fashioned from what looked like … wood?

“Would ye like me to draw ye a picture so ye can stare at that instead?” the goblin muttered irascibly as he set down one pail and approached me with the second.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I’ve just…” I stopped to breathe. Being a competentMauriciowasn’t as easy as I’d imagined. “Never seen feet like yours before.”

I realized I was maybe insulting the very last fae in the Mirror World I wanted to be offending. I needed his talented hands and medicine.

“Ah, it’s alright,” he grumbled gruffly though generously. “No one else’s got ‘em like me, that’s for sure.”

“Why?” I blurted before I could properly consider. At least my curiosity was distracting me from my discomfort…

He plopped the pail on the floor with an audible slosh I didn’t see. “Why, what? Why are ye such a nosy female, ye mean?”

In my current state, it was all too easy to imagine his pain at losing both legs. I took a moment to compose myself and show him true compassion without goingover the top to pitying. I very much doubted he’d appreciate that.

Eventually, I asked, “How’d you lose your legs?”

In the book, Mauricio had a thick Spanish accent as he’d originally been owned by a matador who’d met his end on the wrong end of a bull’s horn. I entirely lacked his sophisticated accent, sounding more like an untuned wind instrument.

With a ferocious scowl, the goblin ladled water into a wooden cup and climbed back to sit on the stool at my bedside. Water splashed across his hand and arm but he didn’t appear to notice.

“Curiosity kills the sneakle, don’t ye know?” He shook his head. His hair was thick and shorn short along his head, which was large for his body.

He considered me some more before muttering, “No matter what that windbag claims, I’m not getting paid enough forthis.”

“Sorry,” I said automatically. “Didn’t mean to pry.” Only of course I had.

A beat of disgruntled silence from him, continued curiosity from me, and then I heard myself asking, “Was it the queen?”

His large, pupil-less eyes blinked at me. Once, twice, thrice. Four fucking times.

I couldn’t decide if he was shocked I’d dared to ask, angry, or perplexed. All of those, I concluded.

“She did this to me,” I offered, and automatically went to gesture to the length of my useless self with ahand, only to gasp at a pang that shot up my side and along my arm.

I hissed, then snarled, “Am I hurt fuckingeverywhere?”

Some of the impact of my distress was likely lost to my ventriloquism. The goblin’s large eyes grew wider. Or was it my Nightguard language? One didn’t grow up among rough-and-tumble dragon shifters without picking up some colorful habits…

His dark eyes narrowed a bit, widened again, then settled. He pursed his lips, then, “Aye. ‘Twas the queen. She did it to punish me, though she had no reason to.”

“Tell me … about it,” I grumbled. “The woman likes to cause pain just for the … sake of it.” I shuddered at the thought of her, then shuddered again when the first set off a series of spasms in my damaged body. “Before I met her…” I sucked in an inhale and forged on. “I never knew someone could be so evil.”

Only after I felt his curiosity pinned on me did I realize I’d been staring at the empty space between us and the wall.

---