a druid witch. But everyone agreed, it represented the heart of Scotland and had been entrusted to the Sinclair clan for safekeeping.

And everyone agreed, the Sinclairs had failed in this task.

Rosslyn had been the last of the line to hold it. Incited by greed, the bastard had traded the icon to their greatest enemy, the brutal English king Edward I, in exchange for a great treasure and the title of the Duke of Caithness.

Little did Rosslyn know, in doing so, he had incurred a deadly curse. Oh, not on himself. As the portrait showed, he lived a long and prosperous life. The curse was on his son. And his sons. And his. On all heirs of the Caithness title until the end of time. Or until the crossreturned to Sinclair hands.

But the cross would never be returned. It could never be. In the manner of the Hammer of the Scots, the man who wanted nothing more than to crush the hearts and spirits of the northern-dwelling clans, Edward had smashed the cross into three pieces and thrown them into the sea.

At the time, no one paid any attention to the ramblings of the old crone who lived in the woods, the one who called herself the Keeper of the Cross, as she wailed her grief over the loss of the icon. No one paid any mind to the curse she levied. Not even when the famously tainted Rosslyn Treasure, which had been the duke's "thirty pieces of silver," mysteriously disappeared.

But when the second Duke of