Trickery, p.1
Trickery, page 1
part #6 of Beginning's End Series
Trickery
Beginning's End Series, Volume 6
W.J. May
Published by Dark Shadow Publishing, 2022.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
TRICKERY
First edition. December 17, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 W.J. May.
ISBN: 979-8215170953
Written by W.J. May.
@Copyright 2022 by W. J. May
THIS E-BOOK OR PRINT is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book/paperback may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Copyright 2022 by W.J. May
Trickery, Book 6 of the Beginning’s End Series
Cover design by: Book Cover by Design
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Have You Read the C.o.K Series?
The Chronicles of Kerrigan
Book I - Rae of Hope is FREE!
BOOK TRAILER:
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How hard do you have to shake the family tree to find the truth about the past?
Fifteen year-old Rae Kerrigan never really knew her family's history. Her mother and father died when she was young and it is only when she accepts a scholarship to the prestigious Guilder Boarding School in England that a mysterious family secret is revealed.
Will the sins of the father be the sins of the daughter?
As Rae struggles with new friends, a new school and a star-struck forbidden love, she must also face the ultimate challenge: receive a tattoo on her sixteenth birthday with specific powers that may bind her to an unspeakable darkness. It's up to Rae to undo the dark evil in her family's past and have a ray of hope for her future.
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Trickery Blurb:
USA Today Bestselling author, W.J. May, continues the highly anticipated bestselling YA/NA series about love, betrayal, magic and fantasy.
Learn to fight—it is the only option...
Be careful what you wish for...
Since setting out from the ashes of her village, Kiera has kept her mind on the quest and her eyes on the dragon—never wondering about the mysterious token guiding her every step. But the fates don't bestow gifts lightly, and a dragon might not be the most dangerous threat to the realm.
Kiera gives herself over to the power of the stone, hoping for answers, but all she discovers is that trouble may be closer than she feared. For the enemy has many faces, and true friends seem harder and harder to find. With dragon fire scorching the horizons, the gang finds themselves faced with a terrible choice. One that may change the very course of history.
BE CAREFUL WHO YOU trust. Even the devil was once an angel.
Beginning’s End Series
Beginnings
Curiosity
Scrutiny
Foresight
Disavow
Trickery
Wisdom
Decree
Influence
Prevail
Dignified
Honored
The Queen’s Alpha Series
Eternal
Everlasting
Unceasing
Evermore
Forever
Boundless
Prophecy
Protected
Foretelling
Revelation
Betrayal
Resolved
The Omega Queen Series
Discipline
Bravery
Courage
Conquer
Strength
Validation
Approval
Blessing
Balance
Grievance
Enchanted
Gratified
Contents
Have You Read the C.o.K Series?
Find W.J. May
Trickery Blurb:
Beginning’s End Series
The Queen’s Alpha Series
The Omega Queen Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Wisdom Blurb
Beginning’s End Series
The Queen’s Alpha Series
The Omega Queen Series
Find W.J. May
More books by W.J. May
Chapter 1
“Kiera!”
The voice lifted out of the ether, rousing the young woman and making a painful crease between her eyes. She didn’t know how it was she’d ended up beside the river, both hands planted on the ground in front of her, as though she’d been dropped from the sky. The last thing she could remember was stumbling wearily into the tent, but even that had become somehow distorted. Like she’d already left the waking world. Like the voice in the distance was calling her back to a dream.
She lifted herself slowly, feeling like someone had dropped a boulder upon her head.
The sky was bright gold, caught in the parting flush of a summer sunset. The mist rose high off the river and a million tiny particles reflected the waning light, making it seem as if the entire shoreline had been doused in the same magical dust. To look up was lovely. To look down was mud.
“Seven hells,” she muttered, prying her hands slowly from the seep.
It was a gentle place, they had come. The hills melted softly into the fields, and the fields melted softly into the river. Whichever way you looked, the world was carpeted in either flowers or grass. All except the place she was lying. The earth had been carved deeper there, drenched with a pooling of last season’s rain and thick with a layer of sludge.
“Kiera!”
It was Jesse, she could hear him better now. Judging from the sound of his voice, clipped and breathless, he was moving at a quick pace—combing the countryside to find her. At that point, she was surprised he hadn’t shifted. The others would no doubt be searching as well.
She pulled herself up higher, flinging drops of stagnant water from her sleeves. The one patch of mud in all the low countries, and she’d landed flat on her face.
Disgusting.
A belated chill had begun to take hold, seeping through the layers of her clothes. Her long hair was tangled and slick with grime, and she was painfully aware that having submerged herself so completely, at least part of the general stench had to be coming from her.
And from this.
Her eyes tightened with another wince, sweeping the crater that had claimed her.
She had assumed it was a quirk of geography—the jagged hollow left by a tree felled in a storm, or perhaps the scrape of a boat as it was dragged onto the shore. But it was more deliberate than that. It was too finely cut a shape. She lifted to her feet and rotated slowly around, trying to get the full picture. It took a few tries, then in a single heartbeat, all the color drained from her face.
It wasn’t a dream. I am standing in the proof.
This is the print of a dragon.
Jesse found her a moment later, windswept and utterly relieved.
“There you are!” he exclaimed, taking a second to find her beneath the mud. “I’ve been calling for ages. What did we tell you about wandering off!?’’
She stared up at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
Don’t you see it?
“Did you find her?” The fae arrived a moment later, the silver gleam of a knife clutched in his hand. He stopped at the edge of the grass, looking as relieved as Jesse and personally offended by the mud. “What are you doing down there? And what did we tell you about wandering off?”
She forced in a breath, reeling with shock. “I was just—”
There was a gust of wind, and the vampire appeared among the m. Oddly enough, he was the only one to notice the print. But he dismissed it just as fast.
“Kiera, stop playing games,” he chided. “Some of us were having supper.”
Unbelievable!
She made a strangled sound of frustration, somewhere between a profanity and a scream, but the vampire’s attention had already been diverted to the twin crescents on his lover’s neck.
“Mi lios,” he murmured apologetically, “I didn’t think it was so hard.”
“It wasn’t so hard,” Eden said dismissively, pocketing the knife. “It was fine.”
The vampire stepped closer, his brow furrowed in concern. “Can I get you something for the pain?”
She threw out her hands, gesturing to the massive footprint that encased her with something that bordered on hysteria. If it wasn’t so terribly serious, she might have thought they were all playing a joke. She might have thought she was still dreaming. But the day had stretched long, the sun was slipping into the distance, and each one of them was turned inward to their own troubles.
“There is no pain,” Eden was insisting, tilting his chin obligingly as the vampire’s long fingers found those bloody marks on his neck. “Please, stop your fuss—”
“Oh, were you talking about his neck?” Jesse asked in false surprise, his eyes sparking with mischief. “I thought it was something else.”
The immortals paused, then Evander turned with a glare.
“Shall I show you?” he asked dangerously.
Eden cast him a quick look. “That’s a strange threat.”
The vampire shook his head, looking abruptly unsettled. “Yes, I didn’t really think it through.” He tapped Eden lightly on the chest. “That is your doing, I’m sure. I’ve been drinking too much of your blood—”
“Are you blind?!”
The others glanced down in surprise, as Kiera actually stomped in frustration, waving her arms like a lunatic and flinging splashes of mud from her hair.
“Look. Down.”
There was a beat of silence, as their eyes found it at the same time.
For a moment, all three of them just stood there. No talking, no expression. No idea what might come next.
Then Jesse stepped back with a shiver, tightening the clasp of his cloak. “What did we tell you about making scary footprints in the dark?”
“I CANNOT BELIEVE IT would be this far south,” Eden said for the third time, staring pensively into the forest. “We started over a hundred leagues from here. And what of the desert?”
After hauling Kiera unceremoniously from the crater and making a tense sweep of the forest to scan for additional tracks, the friends had moved their camp farther into the forest. For a full twenty minutes, they’d argued about whether it was safe to light a fire. But between her intense shivering and the estimated ‘age of the print’, they’d decided to go ahead and risk it.
Jesse’s bright eyes found her across the flames. “Maybe it’s following you,” he said quietly. “There isn’t a single person who’s stumbled upon the creature and lived. You’ve happened upon it twice. Two separate villages...you survived.”
It was Evander who answered. “Is that likely? Has a dragon ever done such a thing?”
At that point, she wasn’t sure if either were teasing. But given the fact that she’d spent the last hour scrubbing river brine from her hair, she wasn’t in the mood for suggestions either way.
“Would that be so strange?” she challenged. “A monstrous creature mysteriously sparing my life, then stalking me across the realm?” She flashed a caustic glare. “Maybe it’s in love with me.”
The vampire met her gaze, but wisely chose to hold his tongue.
“At any rate, it was not the dragon who led me here,” she continued, reaching instinctively into her pocket. “It was the stone.”
Her fingers wrapped around it immediately, finding the seam running down the middle and curling it into her palm. They were never far away, the pair of them. She was startled to discover, she now thought of them as two separate entities—instead of a carefree girl who’d been gifted a charm.
“It looks different than when you showed me earlier.” Eden spoke softly, leaning closer for a better look. “The blue is nearly gone—it looks almost like glass.” He studied it a moment longer, not knowing what to make of this, then lifted his eyes to her face. “Tell me what happened.”
She drew in a steadying breath, trying to sort through the story herself. “I was having a dream. But different than a dream, more like...a trance. It led me to the river. I saw each of you.” She paused, remembering the bloody crowns. “...you were not well.”
There had only been two sets of footprints on the shore that evening. One massive track, left by the dragon, and her own stumbling towards it. The men had knelt in silence beside the edge, seen the precise spot where her boots had slipped and she’d fallen inside. There was nothing else beside it—as though the dragon had touched down a single foot, and lifted back into the skies.
“Alright, well...what are we going to do about it?”
She lifted her head in surprise, staring across the flames.
It was in those moments, she loved Jesse more than ever. The way he so easily adapted and stayed the course. The way he’d started framing every problem in terms of a collective we. A problem shared. She rarely knew how to respond. No one had ever done that for her before.
He spoke again before anyone could answer.
“Why don’t we just get rid of it?” A hush of silence fell over the camp, as the others turned to him incredulously. He met their gaze, then shrugged. “Throw it in the woods. Problem solved.”
Eden stared a second longer, then turned to Kiera. “You asked me once why I despise the world of men...”
The soft-spoken words still managed to carry, but Jesse was completely unashamed.
“I’m serious, Eden. It glows and burns, it leads her to monsters. If this is dangerous for her to be carrying, then I don’t care if it’s some celestial talisman, I don’t want it hanging around her neck. Throw it into the forest, bury it at the base of a mountain...and let us be done.”
The stone went cold in her fingers, like it had somehow heard.
I don’t think it’s that simple.
Like an echo of her own thoughts, the fae shook his head slowly, his lovely face flickering in the light of the fire. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”
Jesse’s eyes flashed and he pointed an accusatory finger. “Put it on your own neck, then.”
Eden glanced over without thinking, his eyes finding the stone. For a fleeting moment, that ancient blue seemed to stir again in the center. Then he turned his face away.
“It was not given to me,” he said simply. “It was given to her.” He glanced again towards the river. “And it led you here...why?”
The friends glanced around the marshy bank.
Evander flicked at one of the reeds. “...perhaps it wanted you to bathe.”
Most days, she would have savaged him with threats. Most days, she would have recruited the others to drown him, as she stood laughing upon the shore. But whether or not the dream had officially ended, she hadn’t fully awoken from it just yet.
“We cannot yet sail to the badlands,” she murmured, saying the words before she’d given them any conscious thought. “We need to go somewhere else first...”
She leapt to her feet a second later, ignoring their joint looks of astonishment, as she began rummaging in Jesse’s pack. Her fingers closed down upon the familiar parchment and she pulled it to the surface—smoothing it on the ground, before jabbing her finger into a particular spot.
“We must go here instead.”
The others leaned forward, gazing down at the map.
It hadn’t been hard to find—the valley was wide and encompassed a huge swath of the low country. The coast bordered the furthest edge, while the bottom ended in the dwarven mines and the northern most point rose into towering mountains crusted in snow. It wasn’t far from where they had been traveling. It was the quickest and most direct route to the western sea.
