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Prologue
Deep in the Highlands of Scotland, they said the law of magic still applied. It hid between the thistle and the lavender, but its heartbeat lived on. There were creatures that still cried out to the moon on the moors, and farmers still left faerie gifts on their doorsteps.
The most skeptical of mortal men could go walking through the valleys there and see things they couldn’t explain. It was a wild land, where the most random stones might have proved a portal to another realm. The flowers could come alive, and wulver waited in silence. The baobhan sith were to blame for every roving husband. Not even the water was safe, lest the bean-nighe sat in wait for you or a kelpie strayed too close to land.
That magic had been dying for almost three-hundred years. There were still magical communities throughout the world, some mingling with humans while others lived in seclusion. A handful of those communities had never left while others had abandoned the human realm with the ever-encroaching rise of man. Every human knew they were there, but they left it well enough alone.
Not in Scotland.
Magic could only exist in wildness, where the land was as untethered as the weather. The Highlands was one of those places, yet its power remained unseen and unused. The land cried out for its magic, and the moor’s inhabitants fed it the best that they could, through stories that kept its legends alive.
Scotland’s magic slowly eroded to the thing of myth. The power of the Highlands was bound all those years ago, not squandered. It laid there beneath the surface of the heather, like a current running through the earth.
When the tide turned at the Battle of Culloden, every citizen of Scotland knew their way of life was over. The British had squashed them under their thumb, the first in a long line of bloody conquests. They outlawed the tartan, and they banned the songs and poetry of the moors. Even clan names weren’t allowed.
There was one woman, a Pictish witch, who knew Scotland’s magic could never get into the hands of the British. It was too powerful, too great. Only when Scotland was independent again would its power be unleashed.
Except the spell was strong, stronger than it needed to be. The witch accidentally hid Scotland’s magic not only from the English army, but from Scotland herself.
All the portals across the moors closed, abandoning fair folk and creatures to the other side. It cut off all contact between Scotland and Faerie, draining the magical inhabitants on this side of the divide. The memory of Scotland’s magic was wiped from most of its inhabitants. They said nothing about the loss as the British swept through the land.
Over the centuries, those who remained sought each other out. They forged new alliances and formed their own clans. Old grievances didn’t matter; there was only the magical and the non-magical. Those who remembered and those who didn’t.
The noose on the Highlands’s magic had been slowly tightening over the centuries. There was almost none left in the mortal realm, and the magical inhabitants grew anxious. A prince, now deposed, led them. If his throne was still standing at all remained to be seen—no one had been home since 1746.
But the law of magic still applied.
It was time to find a curse-breaker.
* * *
At the edge of conquest, close off our hearts,
Let not a drop of power through,
Until Scotland stands apart.
And only when it stands alone,
It will kiss magic and atone,
All will be right, but only then.
Chapter One
Fern arrived in Edinburgh in a bad mood. First, the flight had been delayed on the tarmac in New York for two hours before take-off. They had experienced horrible turbulence going over the Atlantic, and worst still, the flight attendant had been out of Diet Coke when she got to Fern.
How in the sweet hell does a plane run out of Diet Coke? If sitting in an overly sterile tube for eight hours wasn’t enough, now she was positive everything was conspiring against her. By the time Fern deplaned, she wasn’t sure what she needed more: a nap or a sweet, sweet hit of caffeine.
The weather upon her arrival might have further depressed someone else, but not Fern. September in Scotland fluctuated between a crisp fifty and a cool sixty degrees while New York was still shaking off the remnants of her August heatwaves. It was a drizzly, foggy afternoon in Edinburgh, and the sight of rain lifted Fern’s mood for the first time since she arrived at JFK.
She sped through the gate and maneuvered towards immigration. Jet lag was addling her brain as she handed over her passport to the gate agent.
I need a nap more. I definitely, definitely need a nap.
“Ma’am?” The agent tapped the glass partition between them, trying to get her attention.
“Oh, sorry—yes?”
