Highland Jewel (Touchstone #5)

Prologue

Scottish Highlands

Four centuries earlier

The seer arrived on the eve of battle, her hair matted with rain, her eyes the gray of distant storms. “Ye’ll lose what ye love most,” she warned him, “unless ye bind your heart to time itself.”

MacDuff didn’t believe in prophecy—but when dawn came and the woman he adored was gone, he took an axe to an oak.

Beneath a waning moon, the Laird of MacDuff carved the box from a single piece of oak felled on his land.

His hands were steady, though his heart was not.

The wood sang beneath his blade. He carved through grief until blood mingled with sap.

Each cut was a vow. If love must be lost, let it find its way home again.

“A keeper for what should never be lost,” the seer had told him.

When he pressed the final knot work into the lid, the air stilled, and the scent of peat and heather rose as if the earth itself approved. He laid a single brooch inside, and the air thickened. A token forged in war and meant to outlast it.

Guard the heart within, until the heart without is ready, the seer’s voice had said.

And in the hush that followed, the box began to hum.