Daughter of Time Read online

A Prequel to the After Cilmeri Series

  Daughter of Time

  By

  Sarah Woodbury

  Copyright ? 2011 by Sarah Woodbury

  Cover image by Christine DeMaio-Rice at Flip City Books

  Daughter of Time

  A medieval man with an uncertain destiny, Llywelyn, the Prince of Wales, faces treachery and deceit at the hands of friends and foes alike ...

  A modern woman with a troubled past, Meg's life is in tatters when she slips through time and into medieval Wales ...

  Only by working together can Meg and Llywelyn navigate the shifting allegiances that threaten the very existence of Wales--and create their own history that defies the laws of time.

  Daughter of Time is a prequel to the After Cilmeri series.

  **A note from the author: I am so happy to be able to share with you this prequel to the After Cilmeri series.?I created Footsteps in Time and Prince of Time first,?and only wrote Daughter of Time after so many readers wanted to know how the story began.?Meg's journey is continued in Footsteps in Time and Winds of Time, a novella that is meant to be a companion to the series. Happy reading!

  To Brynne

  Books in the After Cilmeri Series:

  Daughter of Time (prequel)

  Footsteps in Time (Book One)

  Winds of Time

  Prince of Time (Book Two)

  Crossroads in Time (Book Three)

  Children of Time (Book Four)

  Exiles in Time

  Castaways in Time

  Ashes of Time

  Warden of Time

  Guardians of Time

  Masters of Time

  Outpost in Time

  The Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mysteries:

  The Bard's Daughter

  The Good Knight

  The Uninvited Guest

  The Fourth Horseman

  The Fallen Princess

  The Unlikely Spy

  The Lost Brother

  The Renegade Merchant

  The Unexpected Ally

  The Worthy Soldier

  The Lion of Wales Series:

  Cold My Heart

  The Oaken Door

  Of Men and Dragons

  A Long Cloud

  Frost Against the Hilt

  The Last Pendragon Saga:

  The Last Pendragon

  The Pendragon's Blade

  Song of the Pendragon

  The Pendragon's Quest

  The Pendragon's Champions

  Rise of the Pendragon

  The Pendragon's Challenge

  Legend of the Pendragon

  www.sarahwoodbury.com

  A Brief Guide to Welsh Pronunciation

  c a hard 'c' sound (Cadfael)

  ch a non-English sound as in Scottish 'ch' in 'loch' (Fychan)

  dd a buzzy 'th' sound, as in 'there' (Ddu; Gwynedd)

  f as in 'of' (Cadfael)

  ff as in 'off' (Gruffydd)

  g a hard 'g' sound, as in 'gas' (Goronwy)

  l as in 'lamp' (Llywelyn)

  ll a breathy /sh/ sound that does not occur in English (Llywelyn)

  rh a breathy mix between 'r' and 'rh' that does not occur in English (Rhys)

  th a softer sound than for 'dd,' as in 'thick' (Arthur)

  u a short 'ih' sound (Gruffydd), or a long 'ee' sound (Cymru-pronounced 'kumree')

  w as a consonant, it's an English 'w' (Llywelyn); as a vowel, an 'oo' sound (Bwlch)

  y the only letter in which Welsh is not phonetic. It can be an 'ih' sound, as in 'Gwyn,' is often an 'uh' sound (Cymru), and at the end of the word is an 'ee' sound (thus, both Cymru-the modern word for Wales-and Cymry-the word for Wales in the Dark Ages-are pronounced 'kumree')

  Chapter One

  Meg

  My husband's body lay cold on the table in front of me. A sheet covered all but his face, but that didn't stop me from imagining the damage to his body-from the car accident and from wounds inflicted long before tonight.

  The chill in the room seeped all the way through me, nearly as cold as the January air outside. The morgue was just as I'd imagined-feared-it would be. A classroom-sized box with fluorescent lights, sanitized metal tables, sinks and counters lined against one wall, with implements whose function I didn't want to know. I tried not to look anywhere but at Trev, but as I began to struggle against the rushing in my ears and the narrowing of my vision, I had to glance away, my eyes skating over the rest of the room. The police officer took my right elbow and spoke softly in my ear. "Come sit, Mrs. Lloyd. There's nothing you can do here."

  I nodded, not really listening, and pulled my winter coat closer around me. The officer steered me out the door and into the hall, to an orange plastic chair next to the one in which my mother waited. It was the kind of hallway you could find in any public building: utilitarian, sterile, with off-white tile flecked with black, off-white walls, and thin, metal framed windows that wouldn't open, holding back the weather. I met my mother's eyes, and we shared a look that needed no words.

  What the officer didn't understand-couldn't understand-were my conflicting emotions: horror and sadness certainly, anger, but overlying all that, relief. Relief for him, having had to live for six months with increasing despair, and relief for me that he had self-medicated himself into oblivion, releasing me from living with a man I no longer loved and couldn't like.

  "It's nothing to do with you," Mom said.

  I turned to look at her. Her face was nearly as white as her hair, but her chin jutted out as it always did when she was determined to get her point across, and she thought I was being particularly stubborn.

  "I know, Mom. I know that." I leaned forward and rested my head in my hands. The tears I'd controlled in the morgue finally fell, filling my eyes and seeping between my fingers.

  My mother's voice came softly. "He made his choice, cariad. Even he could see that this was a better end."

  "I know that too."

  I stand on the porch of my mother's house, my hands on my hips. Anna is napping in her room, and I've been enjoying a quiet hour alone. The bright sunlight of the August afternoon heats my face. I shield my eyes with one hand, wondering where I left my sunglasses, as Trev parks his car and gets out, coming around the front to stand on the sidewalk, his arms calm at his sides.

  I brace myself for his plea. He's going to ask me to come back to him. I'm ready to say no; strong enough now to say no, as I should have been the first time he hit me.

  It's been three months since I've seen him. Three months, which I spent reveling in my new-found independence and planning the rest of my life, and as always, thankful that I had somewhere to go-that my mother had been willing to take us in. I've already started at the community college; I'm going to get myself back on track to the future I'd had before Trev interrupted it.

  "I need you, Meg," Trev says.

  "No you don't. Or only as a punching bag."

  "You don't understand." He takes a step forward.

  I hold out one hand. "Don't come any farther. You need to stay on the sidewalk or I'll call the police."

  He knows now that I'll do it and takes one step back. He raises his hands, palms out, as if in supplication, except that he's never asked me for anything in his life, never stooped to saying please. This time he does.

  "Please come home, Meg. I'm dying."

  I gape at him. "What?"

  "It's the reason I've been unstable recently. The reason I've lost so much weight."

  "The reason for that is that you've stopped eating and opted only to drink straight scotch. That or bourbon."

  Trev shakes his head. "It stops the ache. I've just come from the doctor. He says I have a chance to live-chemotherapy and medicines that will make me even sicker. I can't do this alon
e. I need you."

  So I'd gone with him, out of guilt and obligation and pity. Trevor Lloyd: my husband of two years and the father of our little girl, Anna. It was for her that I'd initially stayed with him, and because of her that I'd left him. Returning because he had stage-four pancreatic cancer at twenty-three may have seemed the right thing to do at the time, but it had been a mistake, one to which the bruising from the black eye he'd given me only the night before testified. How he'd even been able to stand I didn't know, nor why I'd not been smart enough to get out of his way. That had always been my problem. I'd let him go, incapacitated as he was, strung up on who knew what cocktail of medications and alcohol, thankful that he was leaving me alone.

  And now he was dead. Was that my fault?

  And now he was dead, and I was free.