THE DAPPLED PEARL of the full moon rose in the cloudless, star-speckled sky over the sacred grove. Night seemed to imitate day as thin, colorless light illuminated the ancient stones, and their guardian oaks. Every living creature that inhabited the grove had already fled.

If time had possessed breath, it would have held it.

Kinley reined in Tama, and held up her torch to wave it from side to side to signal the all-clear. She then dismounted, taking care to adjust the edge of Lachlan’s tartan to cover her hair. Behind her the hundreds of tartan-clad fighters marching in three ranks merged into single-file to follow her in.

She stopped beside the time-spelled stone. It was strange to be leading an attack. She’d never fought anyone except to defend herself or others. If this went the wrong way a lot of blood would be spilled, and it would be her fault. How had Lachlan done this for centuries?

An archer trotted up to her and nearly tripped over his own feet. Once he righted himself, he said in a loud, overly-gruff voice, “We are assembled, my lord, and prepared for your commands.”

“Ready for orders,” she corrected him in a low murmur. “No offense, Cailean, but if I’m going to make them believe I’m the laird, I need someone with a deeper voice.”

“Will I serve?” Bhaltair said. He wore Neac’s tartan and chain mail. “Stand up straight, brother. You’re supposed to be a McDonnel.”

“Aye, Master…I mean, Chieftain.” Cailean frowned and waved his hand before he rejoined the ranks of the druids behind them.

“Do you truly believe the undead will think us the clan?” Bhaltair asked as he watched the shadows moving through the oaks.

“As long as they don’t come too close, and everyone keeps covered up, we should be able to fool them long enough for Lachlan to get the kids from the tunnels.”

At least that’s what she hoped.

Having the druids swap their clothing with the McDonnels had been the key to the success of their plan. While they pretended to be the highlanders surrendering to the legion in the grove, Lachlan and his men would enter the lair and grab the children.

“The legion’s sentries must have spotted us coming into the grove,” the old druid said. “Do you think the commander will order all of his men out of the tunnels?”

“Probably not, but he’ll want most of them to see this. Lachlan and the guys can deal with the guards they left behind.” Kinley peered as she saw the glint of metal shields, and the first line of undead soldiers emerge from cover. “Okay, it’s show time.”

Romans marched into the grove, spreading out in neat ranks around two men on horseback.

“I need you to do your best imitation of the laird now,” Kinley told Bhaltair. “Don’t let them see your lips moving.”

The druid nodded and pulled up a fold of his neck scarf to cover his mouth.

“Tribune of the Ninth Legion,” Kinley whispered, and waited for Bhaltair to shout her words at the Romans. “I am Lachlan McDonnel, Laird of the McDonnels. My clan and I have come to surrender to you, once you have freed the mortal bairns, as you promised.”

The two mounted men trotted their horses toward the center of the grove. Both wore heavy armor, plumed helmets and red cloaks. One had festooned himself with glittering objects. They both removed their helmets and handed them off to soldiers on the ground. Kinley could see the younger Roman sneering, but his older companion had a shrewd, detached look that immediately troubled her.

“Tribune Gaius Lucinius,” Bhaltair muttered to her, nodding at the younger of the pair. “The other is his prefect, Quintus Seneca.”

“I promised you nothing, Highlander,” Gaius shouted, sounding almost excited. “You will surrender to me, or I will have my men butcher you where you stand.”

“Put down your weapons,” Quintus said in a cold, calm voice that carried clearly. “Once you have disarmed, and kneel before the tribune, we will consider releasing the children.”

Kinley hoped Lachlan and Raen had already found the kids, because she suspected this was going to be over in about a minute. She extended her arm, and rolled her fist. Behind her the front line of the druids pretending to be the McDonnels did the same, signaling all of their troops to prepare to run.

“Well?” Gaius rode closer, stopping only a hundred yards from Kinley before he dismounted and drew his sword. “Will you kneel before me, or must I lop off your legs, Highlander?”

Kinley swatted the air, signaling for the druids to run.

“We dinnae kneel before walking corpses,” Bhaltair shouted, and turned only to stop and backpedal. “Oh, gods, no.”

He and the other druids hurried toward Kinley as dozens of undead came out of the trees behind them, cutting off their escape route.

* * *

Lachlan carried the last two infants out of the tunnel. He handed them off to the clansmen who were waiting with the carts they had filled with the other children.

“Drive them to town,” he ordered over their pitiful shrieks. “Guard them and their parents until dawn.”

Raen pulled off his druid robe and used it to cover the sobbing babies before the cart pulled away from them.

“I set fire to the bodies,” he declared. “And the altar, the pens, the dais, and anything else I passed that would burn.” He spat on the ground. “Facking Romans.”

It would be a long time before Lachlan could forget what they’d seen below in the legion’s lair. The bones of their victims lay everywhere, as if the bodies had been left to rot where they dropped. The pens where they had kept captives as blood thralls had been carpeted with filth and rags. The worst sight had been the Temple of Mars, where they had found the bairns in cages, and a charnel pit filled with the decomposing bodies of sacrificial victims. The stench of rotting flesh had been so thick it made the air taste like poison.

He’d let the woman he loved more than his own life lure the undead from the lair, for she had convinced him that her plan would save the villager’s bairns. Now that it had, he felt ice creeping through his veins.

“Kinley and the druids should be here,” he told Raen, scanning the empty woods around them. “Something has gone wrong. We must get to the grove, now.”

Lachlan rode as if chased by demons, pushing Selon as hard as he could to cover the distance quickly. As he reached the edge of the grove he saw the druids who had disguised themselves as the clan, surrounded on all sides by the legion. The undead jabbed at them, driving them as cattle to the slaughter, but the magic folk were gathering in small clusters, kneeling before the Romans, and joining hands as they looked up at the stars.

Kinley was in the very center, held between two Romans.

* * *

Kinley tried to shove the tribune away, but his grip on her arm only tightened as realization dawned on his colorless face.

“You are not the McDonnels,” Gaius said, his voice growing shrill as he looked at the faces of the druids around them. “You but dressed in their clothes. Quintus, how can this be?”

“It was a trick, Tribune,” the prefect said, and backed away from Kinley. “We must go back to the lair. That is where the highlanders will be waiting.”

“No, we shall not walk into our own graves,” the legion’s commander screeched. He grabbed Kinley by the hair, and jerked her around to see the druids kneeling in the grass. “Now you will watch them die, as the highlander did his men.”

“You were the one who did that to him?” She smiled a little. “How did you like getting kicked in the balls? Did they fall off before the druids cursed you and your boys?”

The tribune’s eyes went squinty-crazy as he looked at the men and women kneeling before his legion. “You know about the curse.”

“It’s your own damn fault. If you hadn’t slaughtered the clan, they would never have been able to cast their deaths on you.” She saw him smile, and felt suddenly uneasy. “You think it’s funny?”

“I think if my men kill all these druids as tribute to Mars, the Great God, we shall be released from the curse.” He turned her and dragged her back against him, pressing the edge of his sword against her throat. “You will watch them die.”

“Gaius, leave her. The McDonnels are coming,” Quintus said before he fled for the trees.

“Coward. Mars will not release him this night.” He turned her around to see Lachlan and the McDonnels running toward the grove. “Ah, the Pritani scum are arrived. They can watch the heathens die, too.”

Kinley struggled to free herself, but went still as the blade cut into her neck. In the next moment Gaius would shout the order to execute the druids, who were doing nothing to save themselves. All of them would die. Their blood would stain the sacred grove and her hands forever, unless she stopped the tribune from giving the order, and bought them a little more time.

“Let’s give them something else to see,” she muttered and lifted her flaming hands.

As fury and fear twined inside her, the flames raced up her arms. In moments they engulfed her and the tribune.

Gaius screamed, flung her to the ground, and thrust his sword down at her chest. She tried to avoid it, but the blade rammed through her shoulder. Though agony exploded through her, she kicked viciously at the tribune’s ankles. As he collapsed on top of her, the weight of him and the blade held her pinned.

The flames spread to her tartan, and for the first time Kinley felt the heat of fire. When the tribune lifted his head as if to call out, she wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him back into the blaze. Her hair was burning now, charring and falling away, but still she held on. The fire swelled around them so that they became the center of a giant geyser of flame. Through it she saw the other undead back away from the druids, turn and flee.

The smell of burning flesh choked her, and Kinley knew she was dying along with the repulsive tribune. But somehow it didn’t hurt. Nor was she afraid.

These things we do, that others may live.

It was her time.

I love you, Lachlan.

Tribune Gaius Lucinius gurgled something as he rolled away from her into the blackened grass. His body glowed red and white as it was reduced to charcoal and finally ash.

Kinley felt her own body growing lighter and lighter as she burned, until all that was left was a final prayer. She reached up to touch the winged serpent on the Pritani stone.

Thank you for Lachlan. Thank you for his love. Watch over him.

* * *

Lachlan fought the undead as he always had, with unrelenting speed and power. Raen and the clan joined him, spreading out to meet the legion’s line on both sides and preventing it from flanking them. He worked both blades as he cut down every Roman who came at him, and strode over the fallen to move closer to the center of the grove. He kept his eyes on his woman, convinced he would reach her in time.

But seeing the huge burst of flames that consumed Kinley and the Roman made the laird go mad.

The battle became a nightmare of heads and limbs and screaming mouths as Lachlan hacked his way through the men between him and Kinley. He tried to plow through the line, only to be dragged back again, and nearly gutted Raen as he turned.

“Head down, arse up,” Lachlan ordered.

His bodyguard lowered his interlaced fingers, and Lachlan planted his boot on them. With a colossal heave Raen tossed him over the heads of the legion attackers. When his heels touched earth he ran for Kinley, and roared her name.

“Kinley. I’ve come, I’m here, I’m–”

Lachlan stumbled to a halt as he saw the two burned bodies by the sacred stone. He heard the men fighting behind him, and the blast of the Romans sounding their retreat horn, but all he could do was stare.

“No.”

One corpse had fallen into heaps of ash. The other was Kinley. She had rested a slender hand against the ancient etched lines, that even now glowed red from the intensity of the flames. She didn’t move or breathe. The flames had burned off her hair and clothes and skin, leaving a blackened husk.

Lachlan’s swords fell from his hands to thump on the ground. His knees rammed into the earth as he dropped beside her.

“Oh, no, lass, no.”

He thought of his mother and sister, holding each other as they coughed away their last breaths to the white plague; his men on the shores of the loch, silently going to their deaths; the mortals they had not been able to save from the legion, their bones carpeting the undead’s lair.

And now his sweet lass. His love. His Kinley—gone.

He wanted to drive his fists into the stone until it shattered, but instead he reached for her burned hand, and gently held it between his.

“You couldnae wait for me, my darling? I would have gone with you. Gladly.” A sob tore from his throat. “You cannae leave me behind, lass. I’ve naught without you.”

Lachlan pressed her hand to his face, weeping against her poor charred palm until he felt magic pressing in all around him. He lifted his head to see every druid in the grove standing in a perfect circle around the stone, their hands joined and their eyes glowing with the white light of the moon.

“My lord.”

When Lachlan looked up, Cailean Lusk had tears in his eyes. They were dreamy, and yet as ancient as the grove stones, and full of sorrow for this woman warrior who had saved them all.

“Give her my life,” Lachlan begged him. “Let me go instead of her. I beg you.”

Bhaltair came to stand beside the ovate. “Come, Cailean. ’Tis time.”

Like the loch where Lachlan had awakened, moonlight bathed the grove in its cool white glow. The druids stood as they had then, hands joined. Light traced the carvings on the ancient stones, and suddenly rayed out to form an enormous circle over Lachlan’s head. It floated down to the druids and poured over them like water, drenching them in power as they murmured in low, hushed voices.

Kinley’s hand slipped from his as her burned body floated up from the earth. Slowly it turned until it was upright, and became infused with the druid’s power. Her form glowed for a moment with a white-hot intensity that made Lachlan’s eyes hurt. But he could not look away. Instead he watched, slack-jawed, as her form drifted back down to stand by the stone.

The druids dropped their hands and stepped backward from their circle, all eyes on Kinley.

Lachlan staggered to his feet. “Kinley?”

She opened her eyes as the last of the light faded from her body. She wore the pale robe of a druid initiate, and her golden hair hung down to her waist. He looked into her eyes, and saw love so pure and powerful that it nearly drove him to his knees again.

“Don’t faint,” Kinley whispered as she reached for him. “It’ll make you look bad in front of the guys.”

Lachlan simply grabbed her, and held her against his heart as he touched her face and wept into her hair and kissed her smiling lips.

Bhaltair Flen cleared his throat, and when Lachlan and Kinley finally looked at him, said, “Mistress Kinley Chandler, you went willingly to your death, that we might live. Now you are reborn, our daughter of the dragon, and you shall never die.”

“Really? You made me…?” Eyes wide, she touched her cheek. “Thank you.”

All of the druids bowed to Lachlan and Kinley and silently retreated from the grove.

“The legion has fled, my lord,” Raen said as he joined them, and smiled at Kinley. “My lady, you look…much improved.”

“I feel like a new woman. Again,” she said, and glanced down at her robe. “But this thing has to go. I don’t do robes. Someone bring me boots, trews and a decent tunic, please.”

“We’d be glad to, my lady,” Neac called, and waved in the direction the druids had gone. “Only they took all of our clothes with them, the magical scoundrels.”

“Well, I’m no’ wearing this back to the castle,” Tormod announced as he divested himself of his robe. He swung his tattooed arms out to stretch before he strode, naked, back to the stream.

Raen went after him. “You cannae come naked out of the loch, you shameless Viking. You’ll scare all the maids witless.”

Kinley shook her head. “And I get to live forever with them. Okay.” She looked up at Lachlan. “You do an excellent come-back, you know.”

“I had some help,” he said smiling. For which Lachlan would offer thanks every day of his eternal life. “Have you an answer for me, then?”

“Aye. Yes. Of course.” Kinley erupted with laughter as he picked her up and swung her around. “I will marry you, Lachlan McDonnel, Laird of the McDonnel. My lord. My love.”