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    The Witch Queen's Secret
    The Witch Queen's Secret
    The Witch Queen's Secret
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    The Witch Queen's Secret

    By Anna Elliott

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    About this ebook

    In the shadow of King Arthur’s Britain, a young mother will need all her courage to save the Queen’s castle from the hands of a traitor... A stand-alone story of Trystan and Isolde featuring a secondary character from the universe of Anna Elliott’s Twilight of Avalon.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnna Elliott
    Release dateAug 3, 2010
    ISBN9781452346755
    The Witch Queen's Secret
    Author

    Anna Elliott

    A long time devotee of historical fiction and fantasy, Anna Elliott lives in the DC Metro area with her husband and two daughters.  She is the author of Twilight of Avalon and Dark Moon of Avalon, the first two books in the Twilight of Avalon trilogy.  Visit her at www.annaelliottbooks.com.

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      Book preview

      The Witch Queen's Secret - Anna Elliott

      What others are saying about the TWILIGHT OF AVALON Trilogy

      Elliott brings the Arthurian world to rich life, creating a Britain both familiar and distinctly alien to fans of medieval romances.

      —Publishers Weekly

      Passion, conflict, danger and magic combine for an irresistible love story that will keep you turning the pages!

      —Michelle Moran, author of Nefertiti & Cleopatra’s Daughter

      … unique and delightful … filled with passion, courage, and timeless magic.

      —Library Journal

      … reinvigorates the celebrated romance between Trystan and Isolde … Fans of the many Arthurian cycles will relish this appropriately fantastical offshoot of the Arthurian legend.

      —Booklist

      Strongly recommended. (Editors’ Choice Review)

      —Historical Novels Review

      … a worthy addition to the Arthurian and Trystan and Isolde cycles, weaving their stories together with Isolde’s personal one. This Isolde steps out from myth to become a living, breathing woman and one whose journey is heroic.

      —Margaret George, author of Helen of Troy

      Our heroine has the spunk of a woman of our era, and this Isolde is one we can all admire and aspire to.

      —Anne Easter Smith, author of The King’s Grace and Daughter of York

      * * * * *

      THE WITCH QUEEN’S SECRET

      A story of TRYSTAN AND ISOLDE

      from the TWILIGHT OF AVALON universe

      by

      Anna Elliott

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      * * * * *

      The Witch Queen’s Secret

      Copyright © 2010 by Anna Elliott

      All rights reserved.

      If you enjoy this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by Anna Elliott, or look for her paperbacks and e-books available from Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone imprint. Thank you for your support!

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Please report errors to Anna Elliott at ae@annaelliottbooks.com so that they can be corrected in future versions. Anna would also love to hear your comments.

      * * * * *

      Author’s Note

      AS AN AUTHOR, I fall in love with my secondary characters, and often feel a bit guilty that their story has to take a backseat to narrating my main characters’ journey. Dera, the salty-tongued army harlot, was my favorite secondary character in Twilight of Avalon, and she tugged on my conscience all the time I was writing the next two books of the trilogy. I couldn’t find a way to fit her into the story arc of either Dark Moon of Avalon or Sunrise of Avalon—and yet I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about her, wondering what happened to her and her little boy Jory after we left them at the end of Book 1. The story I imagined for her grew more and more real in my head, until I just had to write it down.

      So here is Dera’s story. Chronologically, it takes place between Twilight of Avalon and Dark Moon of Avalon. But it is self-contained; you don’t have to have read any of the Trystan and Isolde books to understand The Witch Queen’s Secret. Whether you know Dera already from Twilight of Avalon or are completely new to the trilogy, I hope you’ll come to care about her as much as I do, and I hope you’ll enjoy watching Dera win the ending I always knew she deserved.

      To learn more, visit me on the web at www.annaelliottbooks.com. Happy reading!

      * * * * *

      * * * * *

      PART I

      KNOWING THAT YOU’D GOTTEN your own self into a mess wasn’t all that much consolation when you were about to die.

      Stop that. Dera made herself take a breath to quiet the drumming of her own heart in her ears. It was pitch-dark here in the forest. So dark it felt like dirt pressing against her face, and it didn’t matter whether her eyes were open or closed, Dera couldn’t see a thing either way. The spring thaw had come—but just now, you couldn’t prove it by her. Her fingers felt cold enough that she’d not have been surprised to hear them tinkle together like icicles when she moved. And the night air felt like knives stabbing her in the chest.

      But she made herself draw another breath, then another after that. She wasn’t going to die. Jory needed his mam. And she needed to see her boy grow up.

      The pounding of her heart kept on getting mixed up with her thoughts, turning them into a tangled, soggy mess like wet knitting yarn. But all right, she wasn’t going to die. It might seem about as likely as having a chat with one of the dragons that were supposed to live under the ground here—but she was going to keep Britain’s army from falling to Lord Marche and his traitor warriors tonight. Then she was going to get back to Jory and find a way to have a real, proper home for him.

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