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bright gold palm, light-headed and tense, uneasy. She’d been waiting for the sky to fall and it was falling now—this was it, she thought anxiously. The white moonstone blinked merrily at her. She remained aware of the boy and the woman with black power, of all the emotions that were somehow associated with the amulet, or An Tùir-Tara, or Blayde and the warring clans. Just as she had the odd notion that the amulet was protecting her from getting too close to emotions that might be dangerous for her—or a life that might be dangerous for her—so much grief consumed Tabby that she cried out.
    It sent her right down to her knees.
    It was the kind of grief she’d never felt in her life. It resonated with so much male warrior power and so much rage. On her hands and knees, Tabby somehow looked up.
    A Highlander towered over her. He was a huge and muscular man, dark of complexion and hair, his face a mask of fury. His face was blistered, burned and bleeding. She recoiled in fear. He was holding a long sword, his knuckles blistered and bloody, too, and a red-and-black plaid was pinned to one shoulder. Otherwise he was clad in a short-sleeved tunic that hit mid-thigh, and it was charred and sooty. She inhaled—his arms and thighs were also burned and bloody!
    His enraged and anguished blue eyes locked with hers.
    In his grief, the Highlander looked ready to commit murder.
    Uncertain if he was real or not, she somehow got up and reached for his hand. Her fingers grazed his.
    Her heart leaped as they made contact for one split second.
    And then he vanished.
    Tabby reeled backward, her fingers burning from the heat of his hands, until she leaned against the case. Her heart was pounding with explosive force. She somehow saw a Met security officer begin to hurry toward her, but she couldn’t move off the display. She was shaken to the very core of her soul, his blue eyes engraved in her mind. Finally, she whispered, “Come back. Let me help you.”
    The security officer grabbed her arm. “You can’t lean on the case, miss. Are you all right?”
    Tabby barely heard him. She pulled away, rushing to the nearest bench, where she collapsed. She inhaled, her mind racing. She had to cast a spell to bring him back to her while he was still close, before he vanished into time. She had to help him.
    Tabby closed her eyes. Beginning to perspire, focused as never before, she murmured, “Come to me, Highlander, come to me now. Come to my healing power. Come to me, Highlander.”
    She knew she had to help him. Somehow, it was the most important moment of her life.
    Tabby waited.

CHAPTER TWO
    The Past
Blayde, Scotland
1298
    “Y E HAVE NO HEART !”
    “Aye.” The Black Macleod stared coldly down at his mortal enemy. The man crouched on his hands and knees, shaking like a leaf, as pale as any ghost, clearly terrified. Panic showed in his eyes. Macleod felt nothing in return.
    Alasdair would die that day. It was that simple. He could beg for mercy, but there would be none. He had been hunting down the MacDougall kinsmen since he was fourteen years old. He had lost tally of all the MacDougall men he had wounded, maimed and killed. He did not even care what that count was. Maybe, as his enemies said, his heart was truly made of stone.
    “A Uilleam,” he said softly.
    Images from the past flashed. He fought them, unwilling to ever see them again. His father being stabbed, repeatedly, while he helplessly watched…his father, a still and lifeless corpse, being sent to his burial at sea…Blayde in ruins, a pile of scorched black stone, the sun bloodred as it was rising in the smoke-filled dawn…and a jumbled, unfocused image of the desperate, grief-stricken boy he’d once been.
    “My wife is with child, Macleod, I beg ye!” The MacDougall of Melvaig screamed. “What happened at Blayde was long ago. I wasna even born yet! Yer father tried to make peace, Macleod. Let us do what our fathers failed to do!”
    His father, William, had tried