Daughter of Time (Prequel to The After Cilmeri Series)

Daughter of Time (Chapter One)

A Prequel to the After Cilmeri Series

Daughter of Time

By

Sarah Woodbury

Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Woodbury

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!

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.