As Logan rounded the corner of the chapel, his gaze immediately sought Helena. The simple act of laying eyes on her after only a moment apart felt as good as drawing air after being submerged underwater.

His lips began to lift in a smile, but then they froze.

Something was wrong.

Helena’s gaze was fixed on Mairin, who stood a few paces away beside the chapel. But her wide eyes were vacant and unseeing.

Just like they’d been when he’d woken her from a nightmare.

“Helena,” he called. Her gaze flickered to his for a moment, but then she turned her dark head back to Mairin.

He glanced at his sister, but she was smiling, saying something to Helena as she glanced at the work being done on the chapel’s roof.

Helena suddenly tore the blanket from her lap and flung herself from the wagon’s bench toward Mairin.

Just then, a scraping sound filled the air over Mairin’s head. Logan looked up to find a stack of large stone tiles wavering on the edge of the partially finished chapel roof—right above Mairin.

Logan flung the sacks of grain from his shoulders and dove toward his sister, but he knew even before his feet moved that he wouldn’t make it in time. The slate tiles tumbled from the roof toward Mairin.

Mairin screamed. Distantly, Logan heard his own bellow of fear and agony as he watched helplessly, the distance between them closing, but not fast enough.

But Helena was suddenly there. She plowed into Mairin a heartbeat before the tiles hit her, sending them both flying.

Helena and Mairin hit the ground at the same instant the tiles did. More than twenty slabs of slate larger than Logan’s hand span shattered as they connected with the earth only a foot away from Helena and Mairin.

Uncaring of the tile fragments littering the ground, Logan staggered to their side and fell to his knees.

“Mairin! Helena! Oh God, are ye all right?”

Mairin sat up slowly, blinking at Logan. “A-aye,” she breathed.

Helena pushed herself onto her hands and knees, then sat down hard on her bottom. “I…I am all right.”

She brought a hand to her face to push away her disheveled hair, and Logan didn’t miss the trembling of her fingers.

He suddenly realized they were surrounded by a circle of concerned villagers.

“Lord, forgive me!” A portly man in simple brown robes pushed through the onlookers. “Was anyone hurt?”

“What…what happened?” Mairin said, gazing around at all the faces staring at her.

“I was working atop the roof,” the portly man said. “I stepped backward, and my foot knocked into that stack of tiles.” He shook his tonsured head and looked heavenward. “I could have killed ye, lassie. Thank the Lord for his mercy and grace this day.”

The man, who must have been the village priest, fell to his knees and began to pray.

“Mairin!” Lillian’s high, fearful voice cut through the murmurs of the crowd. She wedged her way into the small circle that had formed around Helena, Mairin, Logan, and the kneeling priest.

“Move along,” Logan barked to the onlookers. “Give the lasses some room to breathe.”

As the crowd slowly began to disperse, abuzz with the near-tragic accident, Lillian sank to the ground beside Mairin.

“What happened?” she asked, her dark eyes round with fear.

“I…was just standing there.” Mairin pointed to the pile of rubble a pace away. “The priest accidentally knocked those tiles down. Helena saved me.”

“Get her to the wagon,” Logan said to Lillian. Lillian helped Mairin rise and walked her to the cart, murmuring reassurances along the way.

Logan turned to Helena, who still sat stunned, her eyes glassy with shock.

“Can ye stand?” he asked gently.

She nodded, letting out a shaky breath.

Logan helped her rise, then guided her a few paces away from the priest.

“How did ye do that?” he asked, dropping his voice. “How did ye reach Mairin in time?”

Helena swallowed, her gaze tracing the ground. “I…I saw the tiles begin to fall and I just reacted. I was lucky.”

“Nay,” he ground out. “I saw ye. Ye couldnae have reached her in time if ye had only acted when the tiles fell. Ye moved before the tiles were knocked over. If ye hadnae, Mairin would likely be dead right now.”

She shook her head in denial, but Logan went on.

“I saw ye,” he repeated. “Yer eyes were blank, like they were when I woke ye from yer nightmare all those sennights past. It was as if…as if ye were seeing something else as ye stared at Mairin—right before ye saved her.”

Helena at last lifted her gaze to his. Her emerald eyes were sheened with raw fear.

“Nay,” she said, her voice edged with desperation. “I was lucky. That is all.”

“That is no’ what—”

“Please,” she hissed, her eyes darting furtively around his shoulders, though no one was near enough to overhear them. “Leave it alone, Logan. Do not make me say aught more.”

Stunned shock made the wheels in Logan’s mind grind to a halt. It had terrified him to watch helplessly as his sister had nearly been killed, but what sent icy trepidation into his veins now was Helena’s reaction.

How had she known harm was about to befall Mairin? What had come over her in the moments before the tiles dropped that caused her to dive for Mairin a heartbeat early enough to save her? And what scared Helena so much now that she was pleading for Logan to leave it alone?

“I willnae push ye,” he murmured at last. “But remember my promise—ye are under my protection. With me, ye dinnae have aught to fear—no’ even the truth.”

She nodded but evaded his gaze, instead dropping her eyes to her feet once more.

Gently taking her by the arm, he guided her back to the wagon. Lillian and Mairin were already hunkered down in the back among the supplies, waiting in silence.

Logan lifted Helena onto the bench once more, then hurriedly gathered the two sacks of grain he’d flung to the ground beside the chapel. Once they were loaded into the back, he swung up next to Helena and snapped the reins, urging the mare into motion.

The four of them rode under a heavy mantle of silence. Though the wagon was weighed down with supplies, Logan urged the mare faster. He needed answers, and to get them, he needed to speak with Helena. Alone.

He thought he’d at last earned her trust, for she’d told him of her family, her home, and why she’d fled to Scotland. Yet the look of terror in her eyes when he’d asked what she’d seen a moment before saving Mairin still haunted him. What was she so afraid of? And what did she still hide from him?

Fat flakes of snow began drifting from the iron-gray clouds overhead just as they reached the outskirts of the camp. Logan guided the mare toward the barn, but before he reached it, his eyes caught on a flicker of activity in the middle of the practice field.

The men were all gathered around a dark-haired warrior wearing the Sutherland plaid around his hips and over one shoulder. He held the bridle of a large horse, as if he’d arrived only moments before.

Logan reined in the mare at the edge of the clearing and hopped down from the bench. The men turned toward him, their faces grim.

“What has happened?” Logan asked, striding toward the others.

The man in Sutherland colors swiveled his dark head and his gaze locked on Logan. He stepped through the group and began slowly stalking toward Logan until the two of them met partway across the field.

“Ye are the Mackenzie who worked for the Order of the Shadow, are ye no’?” the man asked in a low voice. His dark eyes crackled with something akin to fire.

Familiarity rippled across the back of Logan’s mind, but he couldn’t quite place the man.

“Aye,” he said cautiously.

Before he could react, the man drew back his fist and slammed it into Logan’s jaw.

Logan staggered back under the force of the blow, already tasting metallic blood in his mouth.

“That was for kidnapping Rosamond,” the man ground out. He recoiled his fist to deliver a second punch. “And this is for burying two daggers in my back.”

“Stop!”

Helena suddenly flung herself between Logan and the Sutherland stranger. She put her back to Logan and stretched out her hands before her as if she could halt the man.

“Helena, nay,” Logan snapped.

The man froze, his fist cocked in the air. “I dinnae ken who ye are, lass,” he said flatly. “But the man ye are protecting isnae worth the shite under my horse’s hooves. Get out of my way.”

Helena held her ground, but now that Logan had regained his footing from the first punch, he straightened and pulled Helena behind him. If the circumstances had been different, her protective gesture would have made his heart swell against his ribs, but now all he could think of was getting her out of harm’s way.

The other men suddenly surrounded them.

“Finn!” Ansel barked, wedging himself between Logan and the newcomer. “That is enough. He is one of us now.”

His eyes still blazing with dark hatred, the man slowly lowered his fist. “He may be training with ye and the others, Ansel, but this bastard will never be one of us.”

Logan spat on the ground. The blood from his mouth mixed with the first flakes of snow clinging to the mud and grass.

“I take it ye must be Finn Sutherland.”