Page 65 of Fae Crown

“Why would you think I did anything to her? She’s my friend. I wouldn’t hurt?—”

Faster than I could register over the cottony sluggishness inconsiderately stuffing my head, he was back in my face, his weight again pressing down on my shoulders.

The blackness crowding my vision had returned too. This time, I pushed it away. This crazy goblin might actually kill me while I was out, no matter that he’d been the one to apparently nurse me back from the threshold of death.

“Get … the fuck … off me,” I grunted, while I tried to push him away. My arms wouldn’t cooperate, making it obvious how very much at the mercy of this goblin I was.

Though I’d only managed to reveal more of my vulnerability, he pulled back some, though he continued to hover above me, his knobby hands a constant threat of more pressure, more pain.

His eyes were narrowed, his brow low in heavy suspicion. “Ladies aren’t supposed to curse.”

“And I’d bet goblins aren’t supposed to murder innocent ‘ladies’ just because they feel like it.” My jaw ached like I’d been smashed in the face by a few pygmy ogre fists, but by sunshine at least I could actually talk again.

“Besides, I’m not a lady,” I added.

His eyes narrowed again. “Then what are ye?”

“For one, I’m Primrose’s friend—and don’t you dare try to kill me again for saying it. I’d think it’s pretty obvious I’ve been through enough without you trying to hurt me more. And I haven’t earned any of this any more than you earned your ‘punishment.’ Since the queen hurt you too, you’d think you’d be sympathetic to her doing this to me instead of making me almost black out from the pain.”

The remorse I was hoping to find was nowhere on his face.

“Ye can’t be Primrose’s friend.”

“And why not?” I asked.

“‘Cause it ain’t done.”

“Says who?”

“Everyone,” he grumbled, still leaning his face over mine.

“Then ‘everyone’ is wrong. Primrose and I are too friends.” I hesitated, but he was her granddoody, I was sure of it. “We even took a blood oath to protect each other’s secrets.” My jaw throbbed with all this talking, but he was finally listening.

His nostrils flared at the end of his large, wide nose. He scrunched it, accentuating a slash of a scar across its bridge.

“And there’s my proof,” he said, voice another sawing slice through wood. “What’ve ye done to my gran’gobbler? If ye’ve hurt her, I won’t stop till ye?—”

“For fuck’s sake, Granddoody! Can I call you that?”

“Ye cannotcall me ‘Granddoody.’ That’s?—”

“Great.Granddoodyit is till you give me something better to call you. Unless you want me to pick, and at the moment my choices run along the lines of Stubborn Idiotic Asshole—SIA for short—and Murderous Angry Goblin. I’d call you MAG.”

He sucked in an affronted wheeze. As if I were the problem here… “Ye’ll do no such thing!”

“Then what do I call you?”

“Ye’ll call me nothing till ye tell me what ye’ve done with?—”

“Come on, man,” I snapped at him, even though he was no man. “I can’t take this right now. I’m two short seconds from losing whatever I have left of my shit. Like, seriously. You’ve got no idea what I’ve been through lately. None. Give me a break here and stop being such a miserable jerk!”

His fat nose crinkled. “Ye will not loose yer bowels in the bed. Cleaning that up’s not my job.”

I wanted to roll my eyes but couldn’t; the movement would hurt, no doubt about it. “No,Granddoody, I have no plans to. It’s an expression.” Before he could misunderstand me anymore, or assume anything else, “Is there some way you can”—I paused to swallow around a tender throat, to find the strength to push through the ache in my jaw—“sense the blood oath between her and me? You know, so you stop beating me up? Also, what kind of goblin takes advantage of someone’s incapacity like this?”

“A smart one. My Primrose would never be foolish enough to do something like that with someone like ye.”

“Well, she did,” I snapped, well and truly over this dragonshit. Was it not enough that the queen nearly succeeded in killing me again? That I was hurt in so many places that it was faster to list where I wasn’t hurt than where I was?

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