Virtue - a Fairy Tale by Amanda Hocking Read Free Book Online

about all of this, not until he had something better to give him than a lame excuse.
    The night had felt long and exhausting, and he’d rented a room just so he could wash up and get some sleep. But sleep never really came. He tossed and turned, feeling a weird anxiety spreading over him. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get comfortable or shake the feeling of dread.
    His solution to this was his solution to all of life’s problems: find a beautiful girl to help him pass the time. Lux didn’t even care about finding someone for Valefor anymore. He just needed someone to calm his nerves, to take the edge off the way he felt. He dressed to the nines in a new suit, his hair slicked back, and set out to find someone to do the trick.
    Then Lux discovered a disturbing problem he’d never had before. He couldn’t do it. He could see a beautiful girl, even go up and talk to her, but the nauseated pit in his stomach only intensified the more he interacted with her. As soon as he’d lean in for a kiss, all he could think about was kissing Lily. Her lips had been cool and tasted of peppermint, and nothing would ever be as sweet. The hair on the back of his neck tingled.
    And just like that, the very thought of kissing another person disgusted him. He tried three different times with three different girls, but he could never bring himself to kiss them. He could charm them as much as he wanted, but he got no pleasure from it. In the end, if he couldn’t have more than a conversation, he didn’t see the point.
    At the very edge of Insontia, buried in a cave on the side of the cliff, was a dank little bar called the Devil’s Knee. The lights were dim, the patrons were ugly, and it smelled of wet dog and urine, so it was the kind of place that Lux never frequented. That made it perfect for avoiding Valefor, but that’s not why he went. On any given night, at any given time, he could find Gula seated there, getting sloshed on stale mead and eating barbecued goblin wings.
    Lux didn’t really have friends. His lifestyle didn’t allow for that, but Gula was the closest thing he had to one. He’d known him the longest since they’d joined Valefor around the same time, and Gula had to be the friendliest of the peccati. In fact, out of the seven peccati, only Lux and Gula seemed interested in interaction on any level. The rest were happier doing their business and keeping to themselves as much as possible.
    When Lux pushed open the door to the bar, a hunchback with one arm tried to trip him. Lux knocked him down without a second thought and looked for Gula. He always had the same booth, near the back under a broken lantern that flickered just above his head. Most of the patrons were horrible, sniveling looking men, if they were even human, and Gula stood out like a sore thumb.
    Gula was a massive man, easily weighing a quarter of a ton, and well over six-feet-tall. Lux had never seen Gula come or go, so he could never understand exactly how he fit into the booth. His dark hair hung just past his shoulders, and his green eyes were always smiling. Lux had always suspected that Gula would be an attractive man underneath the rolls of fat, but he’d never had the chance to see him that way.
    Thick red barbecue sauce covered his mouth, hands, and face. Even when he wiped it clean, his skin had a perpetual stain from being covered in it so frequently. A platter on the table overflowed with the greasy, fat goblin wings, and their brittle bones littered the floor where Gula discarded them. An amber pitcher of mead sat at the table, its edges marked with barbecue lipstick from where he drank from it. Gula had no need for tableware of any kind.
    “How are the wings tonight?” Lux smiled and slid into the booth across from him. He leaned as far back in the booth as he could, afraid of getting splatter on his shirt.
    “Lux, my good man!” Gula’s face spread into a happy grin. “I didn’t see you come in!” He hadn’t seen him because