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The realization shocked Amber. She, the Untouched, wanted to risk agony by touching a stranger.

“Was the rowan blooming?” Erik asked.

Amber started and looked at him warily.

“It hasn’t bloomed in a thousand years,” she said. “Why would it offer this stranger a lifetime of blessings?”

Erik said only, “What else did you see in the pendant?”

“Nothing.”

“Talk about plucking feathers,” he muttered. “All right, then. What did yousense?”

“I felt…”

Erik waited.

And waited.

“God’s teeth! Speak to me,” he demanded.

“I have no words. Simply a feeling, as though…”

“As though?” he prodded.

“…I am balanced on a cliff’s edge and have only to spread my wings to fly.”

Erik smiled with a combination of memory and anticipation.

“A fine feeling, is it not?” he asked softly.

“Only for those who have wings,” Amber retorted. “I have none. I have only a long fall and a harsh landing.”

Erik’s laughter filled the small cottage.

“Ah, little one,” he said finally, “if it wouldn’t hurt you, I would hug and pat you like a child.”

Amber smiled. “You are a dear friend. Come. Take this man to my bed until Cassandra can care for him.”

An odd look was Erik’s only answer.

“I would hate to lose to simple cold a man who can walk between the sacred stones,” she explained.

“Perhaps. But on the whole, I think it would be easier for me to order his death if he weren’t a guest in your cottage. And your bed.”

Shocked, Amber stared at Erik.

The smile he gave her was as cold as the wind prowling beyond the cottage.

“Why would you condemn a stranger found in the sacred grove?” she asked.

“I suspect that he is one of Duncan of Maxwell’s knights come to spy out the land.”

“Then the rumor is true? A Norman granted his Saxon enemy the right to rule Stone Ring Keep?”

“Aye,” Erik said bitterly. “But Duncan is no longer Dominic’s enemy. The Scots Hammer swore fealty to Dominic at the point of a sword.”

Amber looked away from Erik. She didn’t have to touch him to gauge the extent of his leashed rage. Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer, was both bastard and landless. Nothing could change his bastardy, but Duncan had been given control of Stone Ring Keep and its surrounding land by Dominic le Sabre.