Free Prince of Time by Sarah Woodbury Page B

seconds, it was like my mom had forgotten why I’d called. She sent her best to you, though she called you ‘Jill,’ and asked after ‘Mark’.”
    “You don’t have a friend named, ‘Jill,’ and who’s ‘Mark’?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I dated a guy named Russ for a while during my junior year in college, but it didn’t click for us and I don’t recall mentioning him to my parents anyway.”
    Kate looked at me with unmistakable pity. She opened the little white bag on her lap. “Here, have a doughnut.”
    I took a cream-filled one. Great . I was reduced to sponging doughnuts off my friends. So much for improving my diet.
     Thus, after a fabulous day, it was nearly midnight before I was able to wave my ID at the guard on duty at the entrance to the library and make my way down into the basement stacks. In the archaeology building, Tillman’s lab was on the fifth floor and you knew how well a professor rated by the location of his office. That was fine within our own department, but to the University as a whole, we belonged in the basement. This was about where the funding for projects was too, unless you were a philandering full professor, that is.
    I’d come out of the elevator and turned the corner into the stacks, sucking down the last of yet another coffee as I did so, when a familiar figure stopped me in my tracks. Him . How did he get in here without any ID? Probably sweet talked a woman at a back entrance. I eyed him, uncertain as to whether I should turn around right then or risk a conversation. Every time he opened his mouth, I found myself succumbing to his words, even when they made no sense.
    David’s sword was on the table beside him and he was well-wrapped in his cloak. Just as well, as it was cold down here. I always wore a sweater or coat to work, even in summer.
    “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, without turning around to look at me.
    Does he have eyes in the back of his head?
    “How did you know it was me?” I said, not moving.
    “Your fragrance is quite distinctive,” he said, turning around now and smiling at me.
    I didn’t even wear any perfume. Was he talking about the smell of my shampoo? A weird sort of compliment. The violent man of this morning was gone, replaced by the kid who I’d met at first, who only wanted to help his friend.
    Trying not to let him know that this was a capitulation of sorts, and that I kind of liked him, I moved to the other side of the table and put my backpack down. His more scary-looking, but incredibly handsome friend was wandering the stacks a short distance away. I was pleased to see him upright and realized that he was over six feet tall too, with the dark hair and blue eyes that screamed “Welsh!” to those in the know. He looked over and I gave him a little half-wave, before quickly putting my hand down. What am I doing?
    “They let you out?” I said Ieuan, in Welsh.
    “This afternoon,” he said. “The wound wasn’t deep, just bloody. I’m taking a ‘pill’ that Prince Dafydd tells me is an ‘antibiotic’. He says that is why he brought me to this land, because he was afraid that I would die without it.”
    “Prince Dafydd?” I said and then covered my ears. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
    “It’s nothing,” David said, “just a nickname between the two of us.”
    I looked at him, and then at Ieuan, who was staring at his feet. Deciding to get down to business, since I was never going to get a straight answer out of these two, I pulled out my laptop, set it down on the table, and opened it. “What are you doing here?” I asked David. “Ieuan shouldn’t be on his feet, surely.”
    “Ieuan says sitting hurts more than standing, so I’m taking him at his word. I’m trying to find a knife similar to mine, so that when I attempt to sell it, I’ll already have done some of the work for the buyer.”
    Of course. Silly of me to think that I was the only one to have this idea. “Did you