BENEATH THE BLACKEST skies in Scotland a large, rocky island awaited the dawn. Shaped like an immense claw swatting the icy strait that embraced it, Skye had been known by many names over the millennia. Norse invaders called it the isle of cloud, while the Celts had dubbed it the winged island for the sweeping shape of its coast. Since the Scottish had taken it back and settled it they had the final word in naming it: Skye, the misty isle.

To the south, in the heart of the island’s Black Cuillin mountain range, lay two ancient secrets: Loch Sìorraidh, the largest body of fresh water on Skye, and Dun Aran, the stronghold built by Clan McDonnel. No outsider had ever beheld the mirror-still waters of the magical loch, or the immense, broad stone towers and soaring ramparts of the castle. Its foundation, hewn from the veins of basalt and gabbro that made up the Cuillin, lay deep within an extinct volcanic crater. From far below the earth a subterranean spring, heated to boiling by the molten stone beneath it, surged up to feed a huge cistern that warmed the rest of the stronghold.

Lights shimmered in the depths of the loch, growing brighter until they took on the shape of warriors. Waves churned as the McDonnel men began to rise from the waters to walk to shore, their wounds rapidly shrinking and disappearing as they were healed by the life-giving waters. Each man took up one of the torches they had left burning on the rocky shore. From there they mounted the hidden stone stairs and climbed up to the entrance of Dun Aran, where the clan’s mortal servants waited to welcome them home.

Evander Talorc’s tall, lanky form moved with silent purpose as he caught up with Lachlan McDonnel. He handed off his spear to a clansman as he regarded the soaked, unconscious woman in his laird’s arms.

“You need not attend to the wench, my lord. Give her to me.”

Lachlan eyed his stern-faced seneschal. While Evander was one of his most lethal fighters, he had a hard head and a cold heart. “You’ve done enough, man.”

“Have you forgot I am seneschal, my lord?” Evander said. His tone suggested the answer was a resounding yes. “This wench attacked you. She is a threat. ’Tis my duty to deal with her now.”

“Do you no’ ken when to piss off, Evander?” said Tharaen Aber, Lachlan’s bodyguard, as he moved between them. His dripping, silver-streaked black hair framed a face made jagged on one side with thin, gray lighting tattoos. “Shall I explain with my boot and your arse?”

The seneschal took a step closer. “Since you’re an arse watcher, I reckon it’ll be a change.”

“Leave him be, Raen,” Lachlan warned before he jerked his chin toward the loch. “Stand first watch, Talorc.”

The seneschal gave them both a narrow look before he turned and walked back toward the shore.

“There’s stew and bread set out in the main hall for ye,” Margret Tally, the clan’s chatelaine, called out to the men before she smothered a yawn. “More in the kitchens as well if ye’re a mind to waste the night drinking again. Saints defend us.” Her drowsy eyes widened as she stared at the limp form in Lachlan’s arms. “Who is this, milord? One of the legion’s blood thralls?”

“We dinnae ken, Mistress Tally,” Lachlan said as he passed the old woman. “Heat some wash water, and brew a calming blend with some honey. She’s had a shock.”

“Ye’re keeping her, milord? Here?” the cook called after him.

“See to your work, Meg,” Raen told her before he followed the laird into the main hall.

Lachlan had no intention of handing off the drenched, half-naked lass who had saved his life to anyone else. As he crossed the hall his clansmen parted to make way, but as he reached the steps to his tower chamber he could feel their eyes and hear their mutters.

The short, stocky form of Neacal Uthar stepped into his path, his usual cheerful grin not quite reaching his eyes. “Stay and drink with us, Laird. Meg and the maids can tend to the wee lass before she’s sent back to her kin.”

The clan’s armorer and sword master, Neacal also served as the chieftain of the Uthar tribe, who numbered one in every five among the clansmen. As such Neacal answered to no one but Lachlan, and held great sway over the clan. Keeping on his good side was one of Lachlan’s perpetual aims, so he made no reproof for the unsubtle warning.

“Aye, but I owe her my life, and I’ll thank her for it when she awakes.”

“As you’ll have it, then,” Neacal said and nodded. He rubbed a hand across his bald head, and turned to toss a gauntlet onto the huge table where the men sat eating. Both arms sported huge tattoos of hammers that flexed with his muscles. “Break out the whiskey, lads. We’ve a victory to toast.”

At the top of the tower stairs Raen reached the door to Lachlan’s chamber before him, and opened it. “Neac’s right, my lord. ’Tis no’ your work.”

“And ’twas it hers to save my hide?”

He carefully lowered her on his bed. His savior’s long, slender form and gilded golden hair looked exotic against the plain weave of the linens, as if she deserved instead to be wrapped in silks. Her pretty lips looked a little swollen, which had been his doing. He’d meant to give her a kiss of gratitude, but tasting the lush sweetness of her mouth had made him go daft with woman hunger.

Raen came to stand beside him, his shadow stretching long and wide across the still, sodden form on the bed. “She’s no’ awakened, then?”

Lachlan shook his head and bent over her. She hadn’t stirred once since they’d left the battlefield, but when he touched her neck the steady thrum of her heart danced under his fingertips. He breathed in her scent, which even after being doused in rain and mud smelled of strange flowers.

“Talorc shouldnae have coshed her so,” he muttered. The feel of the soft, thin skin over her delicate bones made his jaw set. “She’s all but a wisp.”

“Doubtless his spleen prodded him. Evander has but two names for females: hoor, or hoor.” Raen gave the woman a perplexed look. “What is this she wears now?”

Lachlan straightened and inspected what there was of her only garment. From her collarbones to her thighs it clung to her, pale and thin as noble linen, but it had not been dyed or worked with colored thread. The tiny, flowerish marks on it seemed to be stained into the very stuff of the cloth.

“I cannae say,” he said and plucked at the strings knotted at the back of her neck. “I’ve naught seen the like. Appears to be tied on her.”

“Seems finely made,” his bodyguard said as he touched the blade-straight hem. He turned it up to reveal dense needlework of perfectly uniform stitches that appeared to have no beginning or end. “A bodice, donned in haste, mayhap? Or some new manner of mantle?”

“Aye,” Lachlan said, “but would she scamper about without kirtle or drawers?” He gently rolled her to her side to expose the three ties on the back. As he did he saw the odd white and blue strip encircling her left wrist. “Look at this cuff.”

They discovered they could not unlatch the strange, tight bracelet, which had tiny English letters and numbers stained on it like the flower pattern of the woman’s garment. It felt like painted parchment, so Lachlan cut it off with his dagger. Once he flattened it he was able to read the words.

“‘Chandler, Kinley, CPT.’ Kinley would be her given name, I think, and Chandler her surname. Or she might be a slave, owned by a candle-maker.” He turned the flimsy strap and tried to sound out the last four letters. “You-saff?”

“Sounds Moorish,” Raen said. He frowned and nudged up one of the gown’s tiny sleeves. “My lord, she’s marked. Could she be one of ours?”

The inked design on Kinley Chandler’s arm had been fashioned with colors more vivid than any Lachlan had ever seen, and were far more intricate than any known to his kind. The red, blue and black art showed a stylized bird clutching a banner. Beneath the starred and striped design had been written two more odd words.

“Aff-sock. You-saff again,” Lachlan said. “And such skinwork, there never was.” He met Raen’s troubled gaze. “Ken you any mortal clans by such names?” When his bodyguard shook his head, he tried to think of why the lass might have been inked. “Have the mortals given up branding yet?”

Raen shrugged. “She’s no’ a slave. Her hands are too soft.”

When his servants delivered a steaming ewer of tea and a mug of Meg’s brew, Lachlan told Raen to bring one of his semats as he stripped off Kinley’s wet gown to reveal her fetching, willowy body. As he gently washed the mud and gore from her flawless skin he felt desire pour hot and heavy through his veins. She had the loveliest breasts he had ever seen, high and ripe with dark pink nipples. All of her had been fashioned with long lines and sweet curves, from her delicate shoulders to the lyre of her hips. A neatly-trimmed thatch of gilded curls over her womanhood made his fingers itch to touch her there. His gaze reluctantly shifted from her sex to her right hip and thigh, which bore more tattoos.

Written along Kinley’s thigh the words “These things we do, that others may live” stretched in bonny, flowing script beneath a scattering of stars. Reading it on her skin made something twist in his heart. Above it on her flank a shield with a red-hilted sword sprouting golden wings had been inked, along with the words “Air Combat Command.” The final mark beneath the emblem seemed to be only more numbers.

“Fack me.” He felt completely bewildered now. Air combat? Surely the lass had appeared out of thin air, but how could she lead or fight in it?

Raen returned from his dressing room with the semat, and helped Lachlan ease Kinley into the old, soft shirt before they swaddled her with a warm woolen. The raucous sounds of the men celebrating in the hall below drifted into the room until the bodyguard went and shut the door.

“Mayhap I need this more than the lass,” Lachlan said and drank some tea.

Though he wanted to hover by the bed, he forced himself away. Instead he sat down in his great chair by the hearth to stare into the flames as he recalled everything that had happened from the moment he’d first seen Kinley Chandler. Raen offered to bring him food, which he refused, and then the bodyguard tended to the fire.

“She’s fashed me but good,” Lachlan said finally. “I cannae even tell if she’s Scots, Britanni or, Gods save us, a Norsewoman.” A thought occurred to him. “I spied her first by the stones. Do you ken the direction from whence she came?”

“I didnae see her until she ran at the undead, my lord.” His bodyguard hesitated before he added, “The fire she used to burn them, to me it looked as if…but I’m addled, surely. She must have thrown torches.”

“No, lad. The flames came from her hands. I saw it myself.” During his long life he had witnessed many outlandish things, but never the like of this woman. “She has skin like a newborn. Did you see? No’ a mark on her, anywhere.”

“’Tisn’t natural,” Raen said, sounding as grim as Lachlan felt. “We should watch her teeth.”

“If the legion turned her, she would never have attacked them, or saved me.” He rubbed his brow. “Tomorrow we’ll send word to the druids. Mayhap they can make some sense of her.”

His bodyguard glanced past him and tensed. “My lord.”

Lachlan looked over at his now-empty bed, and the woman backing away from it. Her long, pale gold hair had almost dried, and waved around her face like spun sunlight. Her arms and legs trembled, but her gaze remained steady and clear. A rosiness had flooded her pale face, tinting that marvelous skin back to life. Her blue eyes made him think of a loch struck by lightning, but held such terror they tore at his heart.

“Easy, lass.” Slowly he stood and held up one hand. “You’ve naught to fear. You’re safe now.”

Her lips thinned and her fists curled at her sides as she studied him from boots to brow. That she didn’t believe him showed plainly in her narrowed, thunderstruck eyes.

“I am Lachlan McDonnel, Laird of the McDonnel,” he said, keeping his voice as low and soft as he would with a spooked mare. “Tonight, on the battlefield, you saved my life. Do you remember it? I was cut off, and surrounded.”

Kinley’s gaze shifted to Raen.

“My bodyguard, Tharaen Aber.” He took a step toward her. “We dinnae mean you harm, Kinley Chandler.”

Hearing her name made her stumble backward until her shoulders hit the door. She spun about, fumbling with the latch pull before she wrenched it open and fled.

With a curse, Lachlan ran with Raen after her.