A HEAVY MIST and thin gray skies greeted the new day and Kiaran mag Raith as he walked out of the stronghold. Such damp chill spelled the end of summer in the Scottish highlands, or so he recalled from a time now made equally foggy. He could blame too many centuries and his general disinterest for his fading memories, but that had become a convenient excuse.

“Fair morning, Brother,” Broden mag Raith greeted him as he walked out from the barn. The smile on the trapper’s handsome face echoed the glowing joy in his eyes. “I’d offer to take morning patrol for you–”

“–but I will hurt him if he does,” Mariena Douet said as she joined them. Tall, slender and strong, the pale Frenchwoman also appeared blissful. “Of course, I will feel guilty after and heal him. Absorbing his wounds will then make me suffer, which will hurt him more, and he will–” She broke off in a laugh as Broden scooped her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

“Another time, Brother,” the trapper said as he carried his lover toward the stronghold.

“Never fall in love, mon ami,” Mariena called back to him. “It is the mess.”

Of all the things Kiaran might assure her, it was that. “Aye, my lady.”

Once they entered the stronghold the falconer didn’t bother to continue feigning a smile. Appreciating or even envying the happiness Broden and his lady had found together wasn’t impossible for him. It simply required more effort than he cared to make. Since coming to the ruined castle of Dun Chaill with his band of Pritani brothers, Kiaran had felt himself growing quieter, more detached, and less interested in everything. He’d also done things of which he should have felt ashamed, but truly didn’t. The changes had not been entirely unexpected, but they now added to the inescapable burdens he had brought with him.

Soon, Kiaran thought as he rolled his aching shoulders, he would have to act, before he no longer cared about the consequences.

A flutter of black-spotted wings fanned his face before a small, gray-headed kestrel alighted on his shoulder. Sift chittered, his dark eyes catching the first rays of sun and turning a rich golden amber. Through the mind connection Kiaran shared with the raptor he saw a flash of his own strong features, carved stark and cold by weariness. The red-gold mane that framed them looked tangled and wild, but it was the dark blue eyes staring at him from his own thoughts that made him end the link.

He hated seeing the flat lifelessness in them.

Sift pecked at his ear and uttered a scolding sound. Hardly larger than a man’s fist, the raptor had been the first male kestrel Kiaran had tamed. Sift usually wasn’t the first to greet him in the morning, however, which stirred his sluggish curiosity.

“Where is your lady and the flight?” Kiaran murmured to the kestrel, who cried sharply before he flew off toward the forest.

Following the bird took less effort than reaching out with his tired mind to locate the rest of the kestrels. Using his power to see through the eyes of his raptors had become more difficult since his nights had grown sleepless and dreary. More often now, when he tried, the images from the birds returned in a nonsensical jumble.

’Tisnae the lack of sleep. You’re losing your power. Soon the kestrels shall fly away from you.

Kiaran shoved aside that growing fear as he made his way into the ancient forest. While his raptors meant everything to him, even that worry no longer preyed on him as it had.

At last he saw all the kestrels hovering over a small clearing with a swath of broken, wilting lilies and fern. The flowers and plants had been wrenched out of the ground by some disturbance, and lay heaped over a long narrow mound along with many slender branches from the surrounding trees.

Drawing his sword as he scanned the clearing for signs of intruders, Kiaran called out,  “Who comes here? Show yourself.”

A low, soft moan came from the lilies, and the kestrels floated down and disappeared beneath the debris.

Quickly he waded into the ruined greenery, halting as he saw what had fallen into the forest. “Fack me.”

The female lay on her side, her long hair spilling like spun garnet across her face, shoulders and breasts. Petals from the lilies covered her as if she’d been strewn with them by an adoring lover, and their cool sweet scent enveloped her. The rose-gold tint of her skin and faint shimmering movement of her hair assured him that she was alive. All around her his kestrels nestled as if trying to warm her with their small bodies. Dive, the flight’s dominant female, looked up at him with something like despair in her dark eyes.

“’Twill be well,” Kiaran said. “Let me see to her.” He sheathed his blade and kneeled down as he gently turned her onto her back, scattering the birds.

Her young, strong body had not a mark on it, and appeared to be as well-nourished and cosseted as that of a noble woman. She wore nothing but a loop of thin leather with a gleaming pendant around her throat. Looking over her torso and limbs to check for injuries, of which he saw none, he pulled off his tartan and covered her with it. Only then did he brush the hair back from her mouth and eyes.

She might have the body of a queen, but she had the face of a goddess.

Kiaran slowly took his hand away from her, but he couldn’t stop himself from staring. Throughout his long life he’d seen many lovely females, including the four that had mated with his Mag Raith brothers. This lady made all of them pale and vanish from his thoughts.

Was it the pure symmetry of her features that bewitched him? From the elegant wings of her dark red brows to the superb camber of her jaw, she seemed unearthly faultless. Glints of gold tipped her auburn lashes. Her full lips, slightly parted, showed a tiny glimpse of teeth like pearls. Surely she had the most beautiful skin he’d ever beheld. To look upon her was to believe in the Gods again, for no hand but those of the almighty ones could have created such a female.

Blindly Kiaran reached for her hand to hold it between his own. “My lady?”

She didn’t stir, and when he glanced down he saw the small black-inked glyphs that covered her right hand from wrist to fingertips. Like him and the rest of the Mag Raith Clan she had been a slave of the Sluath, stolen from her time and taken to their underworld. She must have escaped the demons as they had, with the help of the traitor, and been sent here to be reunited with them.

With me.

Kiaran released her hand to rub his own over his sweating face. All four of the ladies who had found their way back to the Mag Raith had once been lovers with each of his brothers in the underworld. He had been the only one for whom no one had come, which had never greatly concerned him. He’d bedded enough wenches over his long life to satisfy his physical needs, but his heart had never once been stirred by any female. Only now this magnificent lady lay before him, like some boon for a wish he’d never made.

No, she cannae be mine.

Taking hold of the pendant around her neck, Kiaran examined it more closely. It had been fashioned from a carved shell that, like the leather strip, looked very old and worn. He could almost make out a face that had been etched into it, perhaps that of a man. He’d seen similar pendants made by ancient Pritani, usually exchanged and worn by mates. Could she have come from the distant past instead of the future?

How long he knelt there studying her Kiaran didn’t know. Only when Dive made a sharp sound did he shake off his bewilderment and try gently to wake her again. She remained limp and still, so he would have to carry her back to the stronghold. His arms shook as he reached for her, and lifted her out of the flowers, bringing with her a heady wave of greenery and lilies.

The kestrels took to their wings and hovered, watching him.

The weight of her felt soft rather than heavy against Kiaran’s chest, and when he turned to leave the clearing her face touched his neck. He could feel her lips against his skin as if she were kissing him, and it sent a rush of weakness through his belly and legs. At the same time his blood roared in his ears, and his heart pounded like a war drum. He felt more alive than he had since awakening in the ash grove after escaping the Sluath. She might not be his, but she’d made him hers.

Gods help her.