Force the Truth, page 1
Force the Truth
Fae Wilds Series, Volume 3
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.
FORCE THE TRUTH
First edition. October 4, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 W.J. May.
ISBN: 979-8201869748
Written by W.J. May.
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 arduous 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.
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2022 by W.J. May
Curse of the Fae, Book 2 of the Fae Wilds Series
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Have You Read the Kerrigan 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.
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
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Fae Wilds Series
Twist & Turns
Curse of the Fae
Force the Truth
Crown & Glory
Enemy & Rivals
Light in the Dark
Force the Truth
If you can’t trust your family, who can you trust?
The Fae Queen and her King are locked in a millennia-spanning war of wills, and Lina has to walk the treacherous line between them to expose an even greater danger. Her trusty velox Braken is by her side, but even the well-trained soldier has secrets of his own. Her friends are imprisoned while her sister holds the key, but it’s an outsider who provides an exit when its needed.
From one trap to another, their ragtag band faces beasts, dreams, and illusions, to try and free the Fae Royals from their curse. Trusting the wrong person can get you killed, but trusting the right one could save the Realm.
Contents
Have You Read the Kerrigan Series?
Beginning’s End Series
The Queen’s Alpha Series
Find W.J. May
Fae Wilds Series
Force the Truth
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Crown & Glory
Fae Wilds Series
Find W.J. May
More books by W.J. May
Prologue
A flash of lightning pitched the room into bright relief for a moment, repeating twice more before vanishing, leaving Braken blinking into the dim candlelight. He looked up at his mother, who was stirring a pot hanging over the fire in their stone fireplace. Her dark eyes darted to the door then back again. They’d made the same quick journey over and over again as day descended into night without his father walking in to greet them with his usual bombastic charm.
The wind blew the rain against their small home on the outer edge of Exeria, and anxiety bubbled up inside him. His father wasn’t prone to tardiness, a trait that had served him well as he’d risen in the ranks of the Fae military. Elden Weiss was a leader of men, and his unit was one of the most disciplined. His father brought that same discipline into his family life, meaning Braken was used to obeying without question.
“Mama, when is Father coming—”
“Soon,” she replied before he’d finished asking the question he’d voiced an hour earlier, and an hour before that. His mother let out a shuddering breath, then struggled to pull the pot off the flames. “We’ll eat and keep some stew warm for him.”
His stomach was too knotted to eat much, but he’d been taught not to waste what he was given, so Braken dutifully finished his bowl, ignoring the gurgle in his belly. His mother’s bowl went untouched, her hands too busy twisting her napkin, her eyes steadfastly on the door.
Braken watched as his mother rubbed her eyes with her hands and let out a long sigh. “Mayhaps I should put you to bed,” she said, her tone distracted, her eyes still on the entry. Braken opened his mouth to ask for another few minutes when there was a thump from the other side of the door.
Eyes wide, his mother stood, clutching her napkin to her chest. Braken was filled with fear, having seen less than a dozen springs, but he was his father’s son. His duty was ingrained inside of him. Protect.
He pulled the knife from where it had been driven into the loaf of hardy bread that sat beside their stew bowls. Holding it out in front of him, Braken circled the table to stand in front of his mother. His hands were shaking, and he had no confidence in his ability to fight off even the weakest of attackers, but nothing would stop him from trying.
The door opened suddenly, lightning flashing behind the large form that stood in the doorframe in silhouette. His mother screamed, and Braken lunged forward, then froze when the form stumbled and landed on its face in front of him.
“Elden!” his mother cried, going to her knees beside him. She shoved against the form’s shoulder, turning him over to reveal his father’s face. Braken gasped, having never seen his father in such a state before. His face was pale, save for red blotches on his cheeks and nose beneath a patina of dirt. Hair disheveled, eyes glassy, Elden Weiss, rising star of the Fae forces, mumbled to himself as he tried to pull himself to his feet again.
As he rose, Braken picked up the fumes of Elven moonshine on his breath. He fanned the stench away from his face, looking up to take in his father’s full condition. Commander Weiss’s uniform was ripped and stained, its light blue fabric covered in filth. His father’s hand descended onto his shoulder, squeezing it roughly. He let out a burp, then lurched toward the table.
“Shut the door,” his mother said, her tone barely above a whisper as her eyes followed her husband on his uneven cour
His father sat down heavily, one hand landing in a bowl of stew. He lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed at them, then grimaced and burped again, this time gagging, and Braken thought he was a moment away from vomiting up the moonshine he’d spent the evening swallowing down. Spreading his arms and knocking a bowl of stew over in the process, he set his head down on the table. All the tension in him fled, and Elden Weiss collapsed into a heap where he sat.
“We should get him to bed,” his mother fretted, trying to hide the disappointment in her features. It was clear that she wasn’t sure how to handle her normally straight-laced husband coming home so inebriated. “He can sleep this off, and everything will go back to normal by tomorrow.”
Despite the surety his mother injected into her voice, Braken wasn’t so certain things would go as she predicted. Just to see his father in such a state had rattled him. His childhood, though not ideal, had been a stable one, and his father had served as a paragon in his young eyes. This was not the man he was used to greeting with a straight spine and respectful tone.
Braken took a couple steps toward his father, ready to assist his mother in helping him to the bed they shared, but before he reached the table, there was a pounding at the door. It wasn’t like the thud of earlier, which Braken realized must have been his father’s frame hitting the door. This was the firm insistence of a fist.
His mother scurried to the door, her face full of worry. She pulled it open, exposing three men in crisp, clean uniforms with identical dour expressions. The man at the front, tall and distinguished with an elaborate braid holding his silver hair tightly, took a step across the threshold, his eyes finding Braken’s father and his lips turning down at their corners. “Commander Weiss, is this any way to behave? You’re a disgrace to your uniform.”
Braken found himself crouching beside the table, intimidated by the men who outranked his father. What are they doing here? he asked himself, but the answer was evident. His eyes found his father, who was muttering to himself with closed eyes, his face still pressed to the tabletop. Two of the soldiers moved to grab an arm apiece, tugging Braken’s father to his feet as if he were a doll made of rags.
His young eyes watched the men drag his father out the door and into the stormy night. Those same eyes watched from the gallery in the balcony of the military court. His fingers clenched tightly to the wooden railing, Braken saw his father, a broken man, wearing his defeat like an iron cloak. Sitting in a silver cage barely larger than he was, Elden Weiss was accused of crimes against the Realm. Dereliction of duty. Desertion.
Cowardice.
“This man,” the young lieutenant proclaimed, his shaking finger pointed in Braken’s father’s direction, “this commander of his own unit of strong, honest Fae, led his troops into danger then abandoned them there.” The blue-eyed Fae’s face fluctuated from an angry red to an earnest pink as he made his case against the man in the cage.
“What sane Fae finds himself less than a mile from the Wilds, let alone leads his men there? He took them into the Wilds, knowing full well the peril he was putting each of his loyal fighters in. And fight they did, against an undefeatable foe, while that man ran. He turned his back on them, not even having the decency to watch the carnage he’d unleashed.”
It was hard to believe, harder still to see his father’s response. All the steel was gone from his spine, and he said not a word in denial of the charges against him. Row after row of stunned faces in the packed room listened as the details of his father’s shame were laid bare.
Braken pictured the chain of events uncoiling: His father and his contingent had been following reports of travelers disappearing from a stretch of road north of the capital. The northern reaches of the Fae Realm were an untamed area, and the Wilds were never far from one’s mind. His father had made the trek several times before, returning with stories of a feral wilderness, dotted by a handful of remote villages where the Fae kept to themselves and distanced themselves from outsiders. They were hardy folk; they had to be, to hold out against the Wilds which seemed to creep closer every year.
They’d reached the area of concern, setting up camp in a nearby field with the intent of patrolling the road while speaking to travelers about the disappearances. The Wilds weren’t far, a few miles off, but his men were veterans who were well-versed in protocol regarding avoidance of the woods around them. But no one could have avoided what happened on their third night.
No one but Elden Weiss, it seemed.
Although Braken’s father was the only surviving witness to what had happened, the lieutenant was eager to paint his version of events for the room of staring faces. “A roar rent the night, the roar a warning that should not have been ignored. Elden Weiss, instead of beating a retreat, instead of following protocol, actually led those men closer to the source of the roar. Closer to the Wilds. Closer to their deaths.”
The courtroom was filled with a quiet tension. Braken’s eyes were on his father, and with all his strength, he willed his father to speak, to explain how he could have done as the lieutenant accused. But Elden Weiss was silent, and his silence only served to make his guilt seem more certain.
“That roar was the call of a Beast, a fearsome creature that few have seen, but we do have records of its brethren coming from the Wilds to take prey and haul it back to their dens to devour. An entire unit of brave, fighting Fae, taken as a meal by a hungry predator. And yet, their commander survived! He had enough life left into him to hightail it back to the capital, to his home, no doubt to collect his family and continue running. But we cannot let him escape his crimes!”
Hot tears spilled down young Braken’s face. He wiped them away, holding his breath as the verdict was given. “Although no one can doubt the cowardly actions of Commander Weiss, there are some doubts as to the veracity of the events as they have been reconstructed. Without the bodies of the missing or any eyewitness accounts of the events themselves, save the accused, we cannot say beyond a shadow of a doubt that Weiss is guilty of the crimes as they’ve been charged. However, one thing is not in doubt: You abandoned your men to their fate, which is a serious dereliction of duty. You are hereby stripped of your rank and formally expelled from the service of the king.”
His father was not imprisoned that day, but it didn’t take long for his freedom to grate on him. No one would employ the disgraced Elden Weiss. No one would even speak to him beyond whispered curses under their breath. His dishonor was all-encompassing, the shame extending to his wife and child as well.
It was less than a year later when Braken, stewing over his treatment by the other Fae his age in the neighborhood, looked up to find his father muttering to himself. Braken assumed he was again full of Elven moonshine, which was the way he seemed to end the evenings more often than not since his trial, and ignored him until his father slammed his fist against the table, toppling the goblet he’d been drinking from.
“They should have run, every one of them! No sense, going up against a Beast like that. Fools, refusing to run.” Elden Weiss looked up at the ceiling and let out a wail that shook his son. “I am cursed!”
Braken’s stomach roiled, his appetite vanished. Like those soldiers, disappearing like mist into the dimness of the forest. He’d felt tainted by his father’s shame, smothered under the weight of it. Perhaps it is a curse. A curse that I share.
They were cut from the same cloth, he and his father. They shared the same genes. And now the same curse. Does that mean I’ll cut and run too, abandon my duty just as shamelessly as he did?
A sudden thump drew his attention. Something had hit the house. His mother was the first to the window, slowly pulling back the shade, only to let out a squeak of fear and duck, sliding down the wall and letting out a sob. More thumps followed the first, along with the sound of many voices speaking as one. Braken saw a tomato splat against the window where the shade was askew. The voices resolved themselves into a chant, a single word, repeated over and over, while the house was pelted with rotten produce.
