Honored beginnings end s.., p.1
Honored (Beginning's End Series, #12), page 1
Honored
Beginning's End Series, Volume 12
W.J. May
Published by Dark Shadow Publishing, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
HONORED
First edition. March 17, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 W.J. May.
ISBN: 979-8223763888
Written by W.J. May.
@Copyright 2024 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 2024 by W.J. May
Honored, Book 12 of the Beginning’s End Series
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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:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gILAwXxx8MU
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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Honored 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 who you invite to the table, they might end up running the game...
From the moment the Tezerin horde swept into the valley, it became clear that Kiera and her friends weren’t getting out. An alliance with the warlords had sounded good in theory, but they had waded far from the shoreline, and those quick-churning waters could just as easily drown.
Forced to smile their way through what was quickly becoming a hostage situation, the friends try to navigate a razor’s edge of warring agendas and peaked tempers, content to merely escape the palace with their lives. But there are secrets held within the Tezerin valley.
Secrets dark as the night that bore them.
Secrets older than the earliest whispers of time.
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
NEW BEGINNING’S SERIES
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
FULL READING ORDER
Contents
Have You Read the C.o.K Series?
Find W.J. May
Honored Blurb
Beginning’s End Series
NEW BEGINNING’S SERIES
The Queen’s Alpha Series
The Omega Queen Series
FULL READING ORDER
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
NEW SERIES DECISIONS BLURB
NEW BEGINNING’S SERIES
FULL READING ORDER
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
When Kiera was nine years old, some boys dug a hole in the woods outside her village.
It was a foolish pastime, rare for mountain children. There was enough danger in the forest without adding one’s personal touch. But for whatever reason, they’d latched onto the idea with uncharacteristic enthusiasm and set about the task each day. What started as an indulgence, soon turned into an obsession. They were at it all hours, sneaking out after evening chores and rising well before dawn. Armed with crude shovels and pointed sticks, they’d march stoically into the trees, then start digging like furious monkeys. You’d think something was buried, the way they committed.
But such fervent devotion came with a cost.
It wasn’t long until the hole was up to their shoulders. Not long after that, it was up to their heads. That was the point when they probably should have stopped, but the adrenaline had taken over and they’d lost sight of reason. It was only the shovel, their hands could hold no other shape.
Digging, and digging, and digging.
Then one morning, their beds were empty. The walls had risen too steep and high, and it was no longer possible to climb out. They screamed themselves hoarse for hours, but they were deep underground, and the sound was lost in the night. It wasn’t until the calls from one house reached the ears of another, anyone thought there might actually be a problem. It wasn’t until those calls turned into screams that anyone thought to check that fateful hole in the woods.
By the time they were rescued, two of the boys were hypothermic. The other had fallen into a coma, and no one could get him to wake. The hole was filled with stones from the river.
No one went into that part of the forest again. Not for a very long time.
Kiera hadn’t been particularly close to the boys, but the story burrowed deep. She couldn’t help but imagine their terror in that particular moment. The moment they lifted their eyes, and saw the sky too far above them. The moment they realized where their ambition had taken them.
The moment they realized they’d dug themselves too deep.
That’s exactly how I’m feeling now...
Kiera stood in the sliver of a narrow window, staring at the swarm of tents that had amassed outside the palace walls. Her arms were stiff from holding a rigid pose, and her legs ached with exhaustion. Yet despite the countless hours of her vigil, she couldn’t fathom going to sleep.
There were too many to count, and she’d spent a great deal of the night trying. Evander had muttered it was something close to nine hundred, before stalking deliberately down the hall. The fae had lingered a while longer, just to confirm they weren’t getting any closer, before pacing after him.
The door had swung shut, and their room had been quiet ever since.
Where did they all come from?
She was too far away to make out the individual sigils, but a spattering of tattered flags rose above them, spearing through the commotion and marking their place beneath the sky
All of them had come by invitation. All of them had come to fight.
But who will they be fighting...?
It was perhaps the larger question, and the only one that mattered. It was the same question she’d been asking since the others had eventually drifted away from the window themselves, chafing against the claustrophobia and preferring the solitude of their own beds. She had no clearer answer now than when the thundering battalions had first arrived. And even then, no one had been asking.
There had been nothing but shock.
“What did he say to you?” Eden had been the first of the friends to recover, whirling around with sudden urgency, like guards might be coming up the hall that very moment. His eyes were large and the torches cast slanting shadows down his cheeks. “Tell me what Mierko said, exactly.”
She had looked back at him in a daze, those seismic impacts trembling up her legs.
“He said...he said we hadn’t been forthcoming,” she stammered, heart pounding in her chest. She scrambled to remember the rest of it, piecing through those splintered moments the two had shared in the dark. It had felt like a dream at the time, and even now, it was sliding away like a distant memory. Had they really stood there, making tentative jabs across the shadows? Had there really been a little girl? Or was she moonlight and ether, just another part of the dream? “He was smiling the whole time, like it was some kind of game. And then he...”
She trailed off suddenly, remembering the way his eyes had fixed upon her chest—dilating with the keen gaze of a predator, like he could see though the fabric to the pendant that lay beneath.
“...he knows about the stone.”
It was quite possibly the only thing she might have said to distract the others from whatever horror was gathering on the other side of the window. In the space of a single breath, three sets of eyes latched onto her face, all of them shining with the same wordless question.
How?
“He said that?” Eden asked with a bit of an edge, as though the balance of the next few moments hung upon whatever she said next. “He said it directly—”
“He didn’t say it directly,” she interrupted with a bit of frustration, wishing for the hundredth time that she’d never gotten out of bed. “He didn’t say anything directly, but I just...” She shook her head, lost for words. “Eden, he knows. I’m sure of it. Now what are we going to do?”
The fae stared at her a split second longer before turning back to the window.
Even more troops had gathered in the brief time they’d been speaking, trickling into the valley from every corner of the murky darkness, and pooling on the cracked earth like a flood. It was nearly impossible to see the distant forest over the gleam of their torches. The smoke was already wafting through the open window, mixing with the rising stench of sweat and metal and blood.
Twice, those eternal eyes swept the length of the valley—searching for answers in the flickering shadows, searching for cracks in the ranks. Twice, they came up blank.
A long moment passed, framed in silence.
“I don’t know,” he answered quietly.
THE IMMORTALS VANISHED down the hall just a few hours later—not to sleep, but to whisper for endless hours in the dark. Jesse lay down not long after that, pressing a silent kiss to Kiera’s forehead before kicking his boots into a corner and climbing onto the massive bed.
Despite the casual homicide that had marked their arrival, the friends had been afforded every luxury the strange palace had to offer, and the room itself was a testament to their host’s vaunting pride. Carved with the same inexplicable seamlessness as the rest of the structure, the interior showed a slightly greater finesse. There were ornaments of bronze and silver, chests of clothes and basins of water, teak furniture and a set of crystal goblets set above the fire. It was finer than any establishment they’d visited, save that which had been crafted by the fae. Its high ceilings and plush fabrics would have been enough to fool even the most discerning traveler—until they wandered to the window and glimpsed the parched wasteland outside.
In hindsight, the shifter was probably hoping she was going to come with him. He was probably intending to scold her a little, as well. No wandering. By now, the others had said the words so many times, they’d nearly ceased to have any meaning, though they repeated them just the same.
But she kept her place by the window, arms wrapped tightly across her chest.
She was still standing there when he awoke a few hours later.
“Has there been any change?” he rasped, staring up at her from the mattress. His dark braids were tangled from hours tossing in a fitful sleep, and his throat was raw from the curls of smoke still drifting through the window. Despite the fledgling daylight, the horde had yet to extinguish its sea of torches. “Has anything happened?”
“Half a dozen men came through the gate a little after dawn,” she replied, never taking her eyes from the window. “They were riding horses and preceded by servants carrying large emblems.”
They must have been the chiefs.
From the moment the gate had closed behind them, her body had gone rigid with attention, straining to hear even the slightest whisper of noise—the catch of voices, the metal scrape of a blade, the sound of furtive footsteps coming up the hall. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she was the only one listening. No doubt, the vampire and the fae were tracking each movement with a great deal more success from their quarters at the opposite end of the corridor. The friends might have come to the valley with reason and purpose, but those logics held up easier in the bright light of day. Once the sun had settled, it was hard to see anything other than the immediate happenings:
They were sharing a hearth with a pack of desert warlords.
A part of her couldn’t understand how Jesse had been able to sleep.
“Half a dozen,” he repeated, lifting silently from the bed and ghosting across the floor to her side. His green eyes swept across the same pennants and banners, recognizing many more of them than she did herself. An instinctual shudder swept across his shoulders, but he kept every hint of it from his face. “And they are meeting with Mierko now? Discussing our proposal?”
An awkward silence fell between them.
“How would I know that?” she finally answered.
Another silence.
“I don’t know,” he replied, trying to keep things light, “perhaps he told you.” He turned abruptly away from the tents and stared down at her, those lovely green eyes glinting in the pale light. “Perhaps it was one of the things you discussed during your late-night wandering.”
She lifted her eyes slowly, meeting his gaze.
So much for keeping things light.
In a fortunate bit of timing, there was movement at the other end of the hallway. The faint rattle of a basin, the soft latch of a door. A few seconds later, their door pushed open and the immortals stepped inside. Their cloaks were tightly fastened and there was a layer of dust on their boots that hadn’t been there the night before. The smoke that had been drifting through the window clung much heavier to them, as though they’d spent the evening lighting torches of their own.
“We cannot leave this place,” Eden said without preamble, in a voice quiet enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond the room. He avoided looking at the window. He had looked enough. “It’s not just the western rim of the valley, the horde circles around the entire length of the palace. There are regular patrols, overlapping, and performed by trained soldiers. Even if that wasn’t the case, it’s unlikely we could make it past the front door,” he added with an irrepressible twinge of frustration.
The words were quiet, yet certain—spoken in a single outpouring of breath. His bright eyes lingered a moment longer, catching on the glint of a hundred spears, before he repeated his original assessment. Flat and unyielding, like he was trying to convince himself.
