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"Where'd you get that?" His sister's voice was sharp, unreasonably so, but not enough to make him look up from his inspection of the stone.
"Some old woman down by the loch shore—she practically made me take it. It's pretty rough, but I think it might just be diamond. Hard to tell in this light…"
He stood up out of the shadows where they'd pitched the picnic blanket, and wandered along the wall into the sunlit space of the former bailey to get a better look.
"Nate, stop where you are."
Her warning registered, eventually, but not before he'd taken a few more steps. A low chiming sounded from somewhere—it seemed close, but he couldn't locate it—and he was startled to feel the crystal grow warm in his hand.
"Hey, Lisbet, check this ou—" He looked up at his sister, grinning, only to see on her face a look of such terror that he stopped mid-syllable. "What?"
"Nattie! Drop the bloody stone and get the hell away from there as fast as you can!"
He looked down at the crystal in his palm, still warm and now giving off a faint glow, and back again at the others. Alec had already scooped up Colin, he saw, and was sprinting from the spot as fast as he could manage. Which, given his brother-in-law's ground-eating lope, was pretty fast indeed.
Elspeth herself seemed torn, perched on the balls of her feet as if to run after her family, but with one arm outstretched to him to pull him back from whatever abyss she could see yawning behind him.
"Now, Nattie! Drop it now!"
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