Deirdre, princess of Gleannmara, is kidnapped when she sets sail to Albion with a king's ransom to redeem her abducted brother. No matter that she'd rather run the Saxon raiders through with her ancestor's legendary sword. Though why her priestly companion wants to save the souls of such savages is beyond Deirdre's grasp—especially when their ship is captured by a brash Saxon pirate! In the face of faith-battering desperation, Deirdre becomes a heavenly—albeit reluctant—instrument, endowed with an unsettling gift and charged with the ultimate challenge: love thine enemy. Alric of Galstead has one god: ambition. The illegitimate son of a Saxon king and an enslaved Scottish princess, Alric no more believes in his mother's deathbed vision of his "kingdom" than he does in her Christian God. But when he captures an Irish princess and her treasure, what was incredible no longer seems so. Alric is willing to risk his very life for his destiny...but now his heart is at stake too. Is this prickly Irish rose the prophesied key to his birthright...or the herald of his downfall?