Blog tour: Centuries of Blood by S.I. Hayes + excerpt & giveaway
Author: S.I. Hayes
Genre: Historical Paranormal Romance
Tour Host: Lady Amber's Tours
16th Century England. A land at war. It's people fighting, dying for a king who chases skirts and takes heads on a whim. It is a time of reformation, of love, lust, betrayal and secrets. Catharine Morrigan Cecil is but sixteen years old as the tale unfolds, but her soul screams to be free of Glastonbury. Named for a child lost, she is chained to a life she doesn't want. Promised to a man whose ways foretell an unhappy life while still in love with another who will not fight for her.
Left rejected, in a reach for freedom she runs. Finding a mysterious town with an even more mysterious stranger. Alexandarious (Darious) is young, strong, and Immortal. A Blood Devourer. Knowing his nature, Catharine Morrigan dares to give him her heart. She has pierced him through and through, but his people are waring and her safety is in peril. He wants and needs the beautiful woman "Morrigan" is becoming. But his heart knows better. She deserves a full life, one he can not give her.
The marriage bed awaits her as the Ottoman War zone calls him. The pair must separate to save the people to whom they are bound. While Darious fights for his Lord and Lady, Morrigan must fight for her survival at the hands of the man she calls husband.
Can they beat the odds, find each other once more and prove that love truly is Eternal?
Chapter 1
Rain poured down in dime-sized droplets, and violent thunder shook the house of Jonathan Cecil as he watched his wife Willomeina, heavy with child earnestly tending to their only daughter Catharine, whose body was wrecked by a long illness. According to the doctor the fight was lost, he believed she would not last much longer this was probably the girls last night on earth.
When the priest came, Jonathan tried to pull Willomeina from Catharine, protesting, "Think of the Child!"
She would not heed the disputes; she would sit the night out, if she were going to lose her daughter tonight than she herself had to be there at that moment, when Catharine’s spirit released.
He understood, after all this was his child too, but it had taken so long for the blessing of the child she now carried. What of its life? The Doctor told them that Willomeina needed rest, that she should distance herself from sickness of any kind, she was fragile, and so was the pregnancy.
*
Willomeina’s mind and body fought against her. Lightning surged and the wind tore open the shutters causing the candles to flicker wildly against the onslaught of rain. She tried to close the shutters as Catharine began to cough fiercely, blood staining the cloth at her lips.
"Mother" She gasped her voice broken, consumed in pain. "Please, do not try your time with me, I am forsaken."
Willomeina’s eyes were red rimmed, her face stained with tears as she wiped the beaded sweat from Catharine’s brow.
"You waste your tears, Mother." She reached out touching Willomeina’s rounded belly, "Love her." She gasped again, "Love her." Her eyes fluttered fleetingly as she let out one last exasperated breath, and was gone.
Willomeina collapsed upon her, sobbing penetratingly, her gentle woman Marian, now came to her; she too had been crying, silently outside the room, with the Cecil’s five year old boy, who had sprung out of bed with the lightning, and now clutched her skirt.
Taking Willomeina by the shoulders, Marian softly urged her to come away, but it was young Jonathan’s little hands wrapped around her belly, which brought her back.
Defeated, Willomeina calmed herself, as the boy helped Marian with his mother.
They found Jonathan senior, sitting by the fire, a log book in his lap; it was used to record the life and deaths of the family. He looked up at them, reading their faces. He scribbled in the book a moment and then closed it solemnly.
"Then it is finished." He reached out his hand to his remaining family, beckoning to them. Willomeina went to his side, little Jonathan embraced between them.
They needed father’s strength now; moreover, his strength was what they would get. Through all the months of Catharine’s sickness, he had never waned, however, when he was alone at night and the house was quiet, he would cry. As the man of the house, he did love his child, but it was his duty to show strength, always. Least he be thought woman like and weak.
This was the opinion of the men of his century. In 1525, a man was the head of the house and must always act accordingly. They stood silently together, as Marian went to attend to Catharine’s body. The Priest would return in the morning, as well as the doctor, and neither was to see her in such a state. Marian would before then, bathe and clothe her properly. For Marian this was a daunting task, and she herself was the same age as Catharine, merely fourteen years. Saddened by all of this, for promised Catharine was to a young man, Henri Vanden Meyre only months before her sickness had taken hold. The thought that this match would now, never take place broke her heart.
About the author:
S.I.Hayes is the Co-Author to Awakenings: The Wrath Saga, a Paranormal drama likened to Big Brother meets The Real World, of the Preternatural.
She is currently working on the third novel in her In Dreams... Series, Due for release in 2014.
In her own words... I have a mind that is easily distracted and prone to wandering. Tangents are my forte, and if you think my characters are going to fit a cookie cutter shape of any kind, think again. They live, they love, they eat, sleep and f***. I believe that people are inherently sexual creatures and my characters be they human or something all together else are no exception.
I don't adhere to a single genera, I toe the line on several and wouldn't presume to be a master of any. So I suppose you could call me jack-of-all-trade-paperbacks.
I am a truth seeker, in my life, in my work. I’d apologize for it, but I kinda can't help m’self. It's my best and worse personality trait, well mostly, being Bi-Polar I guess you could say that is the worse. But I believe that the disorder have made me, well... Me.
I have taken this life and twisted, carved, shaped and molded it in to the worlds of my characters. Albeit with a chainsaw, and it has made all the difference.
Links: A Writer’s Mind, More or Less | The 131 Preview Review
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