Dera's story continues in...
The Witch Queen's Secret
a TWILIGHT OF AVALON short story
from Anna Elliott
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.
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Between Books I and II in the Twilight of Avalon Trilogy
Dera owes Britain's former High Queen Isolde her life. But as an army harlot, the life she leads is one of degradation and often desperate danger, with small hope for the future either for Dera or for her small son.
Through a Britain torn by war with Saxon invaders, Dera makes her way to Dinas Emrys, last stronghold of Britain's army, to beg Queen Isolde's help once more. Isolde offers Dera a new life, both for herself and for her child. But when Dera and Isolde uncover a treasonous plot, Dera must leave her little boy and undertake a dangerous mission, the outcome of which comes to her as a stunning, but wonderful, surprise.
And as she risks her life, Dera also draws nearer to Queen Isolde's most closely-guarded secret: one that Britain's courageous witch-queen may be hiding even from herself.
A Note from the Author:
As an author, I fall in love with my secondary characters, and often feel a bit guilty 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.
Happy reading!
