Daughter of Time (Prequel to The After Cilmeri Series)

Daughter of Time (Chapter Seventeen)

Meg

I slipped out of bed and pulled the extra blanket that lay at its foot around my shoulders, careful not to wake Llywelyn. For the third night in a row I was having trouble sleeping. Now, here it was at nearly dawn and I'd slept no more than a few hours. I knew why, knew not sleeping wasn't going to help me deal with what I was facing. But telling myself over and over to relax was helping no more this night than it had the one before.

I hopped onto the window seat the Bohuns had so generously built under the only window in the castle of any size at all, and pulled the curtain half-way across to hide the light from the open shutter.

Brecon was a fortress, built on a rise at the confluence of the Usk and HondduRivers. The HondduRiver rushed by in the moonlight thirty feet below my feet. The view was so spectacular I imagined I could see London from where I sat, though mountains rose between us and the plains of England. The water in the river was high from yesterday's heavy rain, muddy and full of debris washing in from the banks and tributaries. The snow had long since melted away and the spring rains had come.

I glanced at the curtain that separated our room from the one adjacent, but no noise came from behind it. Although reluctant, I'd bowed to the inevitable pressure and moved Anna out of our room to one where she now slept with her nanny.

After more than two months in Wales, I didn't know if she even remembered what home had been like. I imagined that if she were to see it again, it would come back to her, but she'd adapted well to the day-to-day life of the castle. I didn't know how I felt about that. She would grow up as a thirteenth century woman, and despite what Llywelyn had said about not seeing much difference between how people were on the inside, it worried me. At least I would ensure she could read, write, and do math. But she wasn't ever going to understand about dinosaurs.

The rushing water tempted me to dangle my feet as if sitting on a dock, but I resisted. Even I could see that it wasn't seemly behavior for the companion to the Prince of Wales, even when no one else was looking.

And then someone was looking.

Llywelyn slipped his arm around my waist, lifting me slightly so he could slide in behind me, his back to the wooden wall that formed the box of the window seat, and one leg braced against the stone of the window frame. I rested against his chest.

"Not sleeping again?" He shoved the curtain wide to let more light from the bright moon into the room and then pulled me closer.

I bent my knees and pulled my nightgown over them so it formed a tent over my legs and covered my feet. "What do you mean, again?"

"Tonight, last night, the one before. Did you think I wouldn't notice you were gone when I rolled over?"

"You seemed to be sleeping deeply."

"My hope was that you would share your concerns with me, and then we could both sleep, but clearly that hasn't happened."

"Oh, Llywelyn," I said. "I—"

A snick came from the door to the room as the latch lifted. We froze and watched, unmoving, as a crack appeared between the frame and the door. A hand clenched the edge of the door, silently opening it further to give room to an object that pointed at the bed.

A crossbow!

My breath caught in my throat. The sound I made was slight, but carried loudly enough in the silent room for the assassin to swing the point of his arrow from the bed, where he thought we'd be, to the window seat.

He hesitated, perhaps unbelieving, and then shot—but Llywelyn had already moved. Between one breath and the next, he pulled me with him into a dive out the window, headfirst towards the HondduRiver. Somehow, he was able to turn us in a complete flip so we hit the water with a mighty splash, feet first, before I even had a chance to catch my breath.