Helena’s blood roared so loudly in her ears that she hardly heard Logan’s barked command.

She stumbled through the gaping mouth of the tunnel, remembering at the last possible moment to duck so as not to lose the top half of her skull.

Logan’s hard body collided with hers, sending her careening forward.

“Go!” he shouted.

Her breath came fast as she lurched deeper into the tunnel, her heart squeezing so hard she feared it would stop.

They’d failed.

Not only had they been unsuccessful in reaching the portcullis, but now Geoffrey knew about the tunnels, which meant that any future chance to infiltrate the castle was ruined as well.

Belatedly, she realized that unlike their journey toward the castle, which had been pitch-black, the moss-covered stone walls were faintly illuminated. Weak beams of orange light were coming from Geoffrey’s chamber.

Her stomach dropped like a stone and she came to an abrupt halt. They hadn’t closed the door when they’d fled. Geoffrey not only knew about the tunnel, but he was likely entering it right now. To hunt them.

Logan gripped her arm, drawing her attention to him. “Helena, run and dinnae look back,” he said. But when he released her and gave her a shove toward the other end of the passageway, he did not move. He planted himself between her and the tunnel’s open door, his sword raised.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“I’m buying ye time,” he ground out. “I’ll face Geoffrey. Ye get back to the camp.”

“Nay!” she cried. But the refusal wasn’t just for his mad plan. A strange sensation washed over her, as if she were falling into a dream even as she stood awake.

Nay, not a dream. A vision.

Oh, God. This couldn’t be happening. She looked up at Logan’s hard features, the shadows flickering as someone moved toward them from the illuminated doorway in the distance—Geoffrey. It was all so familiar.

“Nay, Logan!” she cried again. “You don’t understand. You have to run.”

“I willnae,” he rasped. “No’ anymore. If it means giving ye the time to escape, I will hold my ground.”

The cave from the vision. The one Logan had been standing in when he’d taken a blade to the belly and collapsed, his life blood draining from him. It wasn’t a cave—it was this tunnel.

“I have seen your death!” she screamed, tugging on his arm. “Please, Logan. Please! Run with me.”

Before he could respond, the shadows suddenly seemed to come to life. Geoffrey emerged from the gloom, his long night tunic hastily stuffed into his breeches and a sword held before him catching the faint light.

“Well, well,” he said, his blue eyes wide with rage and anticipation. “What do we have here?”

“Helena, get back!” Logan barked even as he lowered his sword toward Geoffrey.

A distant voice screamed in the back of Helena’s mind to move, but time seemed to slow, just as it had when she’d seen Mairin standing beneath the falling roof tiles. She watched, helpless, as the two men lunged for each other.

Logan deflected Geoffrey’s blow, parrying both of their swords into the stone wall. They slid apart, only to crash together again, this time their blades hitting the other wall.

The space was so narrow that their shoulders nearly spanned from one side of the passageway to the other. Both crouched in a fighting stance, but the low ceiling would not allow for overhead swings or blocks.

Geoffrey lunged forward, but Logan had no room to parry, forcing him to shuffle backward into Helena. She tumbled to the wet stones with a cry. The two men locked blades, pressing in on one another for position.

The blue fog from her visions seemed to roll across Helena’s eyes.

Nay! This couldn’t be happening. Logan could not die like this. She tried to scramble to her feet, but she felt as though her legs were stuck in quicksand. With aching slowness, she reached out, willing the vision away, willing herself to stop it somehow.

Just then, Geoffrey lurched downward, breaking the bind he and Logan had locked themselves into. But just as abruptly, he jerked back up, right as Logan moved in on him.

Helena saw with horrifying clarity what Geoffrey had done. He’d bent to pull a dagger from a sheath around his calf. Even as he ceded the momentum to Logan, he used Logan’s sudden step forward against him.

Geoffrey lifted the dagger and drove it into Logan’s unprotected middle. With a grunt, Logan halted, his gaze dropping to the dagger protruding from him. Then he sank to the ground with a rattling exhale.

“Nay!” The scream ripped from Helena’s throat. Her feet finally moved, but it was too late. She surged forward, collapsing to the ground next to Logan.

He huffed a breath, looking up at her. His face swam before her as tears filled her eyes.

“Time to finish this, witch.”

Before she could turn, Geoffrey grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her away from Logan.

She screamed again and twisted against his hold. She fought wildly, like an animal, all thoughts scattering to the wind.

Slow, a voice whispered in her head. Remember what Adam taught you.

So frantic with fear and shock was she that she’d forgotten everything her brother had drilled into her. He’d made her practice until the moves were automatic, warning her that if she ever needed to use them, panic would prevent her from thinking clearly. All she would be able to do was act.

Dragging in a breath, she latched a hand over Geoffrey’s where he gripped her hair and spun in a tight circle, torqueing his arm until he was forced to release her.

“Bitch!” he hissed. He tossed aside his sword so that both his hands were free, then lunged for her. He slammed her so hard against the tunnel’s stone wall that she saw white for a terrifying moment.

His hands wrapped around her throat, squeezing until no air could get through. She clawed savagely at his face and eyes, drawing another curse from him. With a jerk, she brought her knee up, aiming for his manhood, but he twisted out of the way at the last moment.

“You Quinceys,” he snarled, his spittle pelting her face. “You have fight in you, don’t you? You are struggling nearly as hard as your father did when I held a pillow over his face and ended his miserable life.”

Helena cried out in horror, but it left her choked throat more like a croak.

“Aye, that’s right, little witch,” Geoffrey said. “That fever should have been the death of him, but just when I secured what I wanted—your promise to wed me—he began to improve. So I had to take matters into my own hands. If I hadn’t, who knows how much longer I would have had to wait to take Craigmoor for myself.”

A terrible quiet descended over Helena’s mind. Spots floated before her vision. Distantly, she heard a moan, but she wasn’t sure if it had come from her squeezed throat or if it was the sound of her heart rending in two.

Father. He might have lived. And she might not have fled. She wouldn’t have ever met Logan—which meant he wouldn’t be lying in a pool of his own blood, fighting for each breath even as his last approached.

It was all because of Geoffrey.

Just as darkness began to descend, he jerked his hands away. “I have waited patiently for this moment, witch,” he sneered. He suddenly yanked her wrists together and began binding them with a strip of cloth. “I will give you the death you deserve—a witch’s death.”

Cold terror seeped through her hazy mind. Nay. How could this be happening? First the vision of Logan being stabbed had come true, and now so too would she be burned at Geoffrey’s hands.

As Geoffrey began to drag her down the tunnel toward the castle, a terrible realization slammed into her through the fog in her pain- and fear-addled brain.

She had been wrong. She could not control her fate. The visions hadn’t been mere warnings. They had cruelly shown her a future she could not change.

“Helena,” Logan moaned from the ground. He lifted his head weakly, but he did not rise.

She tried to call to him, but only a sob came out.