corridors where the cold bite of the wind sliced through cracks in the ancient fortress. He headed, as he always did, for the gallery, which held the portraits of his ancestors.

There were many long-dead Sinclairs on these walls, all portraits of young men in their prime. There wasn't a gray hair among them, because, as a rule, the Sinclair lairds never lived past thirty. Lachlan stopped before his father's portrait, the newest in the series, and stared at the familiar face. The face that visited him every night. He couldn't bear to look at it for long — it was far too painful — so he moved on, to the portrait around the corner and tucked in a niche, as though hiding his likeness could make anyone forgetwhat the villain had done.

Contrary to the others, this man was aged; his skin was wrinkled, his face weathered, and his hair flecked with silver. Unlike each and every one of his descendants, the Baron of Rosslyn had lived to the ripe old age of sixty-five. Dressed in the costume of the early 1300s, he stood, tall and proud — too proud, it turned out — staring out at the world with a slight smirk on his lips. Mocking his progeny perhaps. In his hands, he held the MacAlpin Cross, an ancient relic hewn of gold and jewels, emblazoned with the Red Stag of Clan Sinclair.

Some said the relic had been brought from the holy lands on some long-forgotten crusade, and others insisted it had been created by