WORK IN PROGRESS: Three Witches #1: Magnus and Magnolia

Chapter 24 (Magnus): Good Luck And Prosperity

When I was sixteen, I had to have an emergency appendectomy. I remembered waking up from some other world, some blissful, cozy cocoon where there wasn't any pain. A nurse had called to me gently, coaxing me to open my eyes. I hadn't wanted to. The last thing I could recall was excruciating pain and then I'd been rushed into the operating room where they'd put me under and then...nothing.

My mother had been brought to me when I'd become more alert in the recovery room and had sat beside me, sneaking out her flask every so often.

"Finally awake?" she said when she saw my eyes trying to focus on her. "Doctor said it was really close. You almost died."

Remembering the pain, I could believe it.

"Course, I should've known you couldn't even do that right." She took a sip. "Instead of a nice little insurance policy payout, I'm probably going to be stuck with hospital bills now."

Looking at my face, she started laughing. 

"Just making a joke, boy. Although that twenty-five thousand would have come in pretty handy."

Then she'd laughed again as I'd fallen back to sleep.

The feeling back then, of a fog lifting, was similar to what I was experiencing now, except it wasn't a nurse calling gently to me. It was a deep, deep voice and there was nothing gentle about it.

"Wake the fuck up."

I knew that voice. It was right there on the edge of my consciousness, but I couldn't quite remember how I knew it.

"I don't have all fucking day, so wake the fuck up."

I concentrated on opening my eyes, and the second I saw that face with those weird-ass silver eyes, I knew who the voice belonged to.

The man who'd spent the entire night slowly trying to end my life. Butcher.

"'Bout time. I got shit to do. You need to work on bouncing back quicker when you almost die."

"Die?" I rasped.

"Yeah. The fucking fairies are on my shit list more than they already were. You didn't deserve what happened to you."

"That was the point," I said, my mouth so dry it felt like wool, "of the Trial of Undeserved Pain."

Stab.

"Got no problem delivering punishments that are deserved," Butcher said. "But I don't like delivering a punishment to someone who doesn't deserve it."

Oberon stepped up to stand beside Butcher.

"Told you not to heal me," I said to him. It probably would have been a lot more menacing if my tongue wasn't sticking to the roof of my mouth.

Stab.

"I'm a king," he shrugged. "I don't listen to anyone but my queen. You needed healing, so I healed you. No way were we going to be the cause of your death."

Arrogant asshole. If his healing me knocked me out of the running for Noli, I was going to hunt this fucker down and kill him with my bare hands.

"You saved my wife's life," Butcher said. "I owe you."

"You don't owe me anything."

Stab.

"The fuck is going on? Why do you have a hole open up in your chest every time you talk?"

"It's the Fae," Burr said, his head cocked to the side. "They stab him every time he tells the truth."

"Did he accidentally step on one of the little fuckers or something? Pop the head off one when they annoyed him too much?"