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certainly do want to marry the Raven.”
    Linnet’s brow furrowed. “But you just said —”
    “I meant that, hearing all this, I can’t just ride off to wed the man as I was fully prepared to do.” Leaning back in the
     chair, she smiled. “What I meant was that I now need to learn everything I can about the clan and their curse before I meet
     the Raven. Only then can I help him.”
    “Help him?” Her father looked as if the two words tasted of ash.
    “So I have said.” Gelis smiled. “And I can only do that if you tell me the tale. All of it and from the beginning, just as
     Uncle Marmaduke suggested.”
    As she waited for her father to begin, she strove not to appear smug. But it was hard. Difficult, too, to smother the laugh
     bubbling in her throat. Gelis MacKenzie, the Devil’s own daughter, afraid of ancient curses and dark glens. Hah!
    Truth was, she was anything but afraid.
    She was eager.
    Days later and many leagues distant, in a dark and still corner of Kintail, Ronan — the Raven — MacRuari lit the wall torches
     in his bedchamber, his mood worsening when the additional light failed to banish the room’s shadows. A good score of fine
     wax candles burned as well, as did a particularly fat hearth log, its crackling, well-doing flames only underscoring the futility
     of such measures.
    At least here at Castle Dare.
    His family’s home since time uncounted and a place so blighted that even a candle flame burned inward, keeping its light and
     warmth to itself and letting the castle residents shiver in the gloom.
    A plague and botheration so vexing he burned to tear down the entire stronghold, stone by accursed stone. The saints knew,
     the reasons for doing so were beyond counting. Unfortunately, so were the circumstances that made him banish the thought as
     quickly as it’d come.
    Clenching his fists, he closed his mind to the blackness and glowered at the thick gray mist floating past the windows. Impenetrable
     and cloying, each billowing drift filled the tall, unshuttered arches, curling, fingerlike tendrils seeping over the stone
     ledges and into the room, penetrating just enough to annoy him.
    Ronan set his jaw, his entire body tensing. Once, in younger years, he’d whipped out his sword with a flourish and leaped
     forward, lashing at the window-mist only to watch the cold, damp tendrils slither away over the sills like a swarm of writhing,
     translucent snakes.
    Now he knew better.
    All the massed steel in the Highlands couldn’t stand against such unholiness.
    He bit back a curse, refusing to let the darkness win, even if a stony-faced mien was a notably hollow triumph. Unclenching
     his fists, he ran a hand through his hair, not surprised to catch the smell of rain in the air. Elsewhere in Kintail, he was
     sure, good folk were enjoying a fine autumn afternoon, a notion that squeezed his heart and caused a tight, pulsing knot to
     form in his gut.
    He, too, would revel in standing on some mighty headland beneath a blue, cloudless sky, the wind fresh and brisk around him.
     Or, equally tempting, riding hard and fast along the edge of a sea loch, free of cares and curses, sun-blinded by the light
     glinting off the rippled water.
    Light he meant to bring back to Castle Dare. If the sun had ever even touched its oppressive walls.
    Which he sorely doubted.
    What he didn’t doubt was his ability to break the curse.
    His face still grim-set, he cast a glance at the iron-banded coffer across the room. It was time to put his plan into motion.
     But before he could stride over to the chest, the dust-covered receptacle of his traveling clothes, the door to his bedchamber
     flew open and his grandfather burst in, a wine-bearing wraith of a serving wench close on his heels.
    “Ho, lad! I bring good tidings.” A big burly man, fierce-looking for all his shaggy, gray-shot hair, he swept past Ronan,
     his great plaid swinging about his knees, his long two-handed sword clanking against his side.