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thick as cook’s porridge. “Is she a wolf, too?”
    “Of course not! Don’t be a ninny.” Bryanna tossed her hair from her eyes. “Lil’s a girl.” Impatient with her older sister’s open mockery, Bryanna had motioned to her friend. “Lil, come out from behind there.” But the girl, as had been her wont, disappeared when Bryanna hadn’t been looking. “Oh, now she’s gone and hidden herself again.”
    “By the gods, Bryanna, you are daft.” Morwenna had been as cross as she had been concerned. “There is no wolf, nor a girl hiding behind the well like a thief.” To make her point, Morwenna had tossed her half-eaten apple at the well, knocking the pail and sending it downward, its rope uncoiling and twisting like a dying snake.
    Wolf scuttled away from the well. Bryanna looked beseechinglyafter the little she-wolf, the distinctive ring of shaggy black fur around her neck in stark contrast to her silver coat. The boy she hadn’t mentioned, with his thick shock of black hair and disturbing silver eyes, had looked at her before diving behind a hayrick piled high with straw. Not that Morwenna had been able to see him, of course. When it came to friends, it seemed, Morwenna was as blind as the old hermit monk in the south tower.
    “Listen, Bryanna. I don’t know why you insist you see these people and animals, but it’s got to stop. It’s embarrassing. You’re seven years old now, nearly eight, and everyone in the keep is talking about how strange it is . . . how strange you are.”
    Bryanna had bristled.
    “I don’t mean to be unkind, but—”
    “Yes, you do.”
    Morwenna had rolled her eyes to the sky, as if contemplating the thickening clouds. “’Tis true. I want you to stop this. You worry Mother and Isa as well. Come now, don’t be cross with me. Just, please, for Mother’s sake, do not be crazy.”
    “I’m not.” But Bryanna had felt more than a little stab of guilt when she thought of her mother.
    “Good.” Morwenna had nodded, as if satisfied. Then she’d yanked on the reins of her horse. The big gelding sidestepped. “Race you to the portcullis!”
    “The captain of the guard won’t like it.”
    Morwenna’s eyes had sparkled and a wicked little grin had slid across her lips. “I know. All the better. Sir Hennessy is such an old bore.”
    Bryanna had laughed as Morwenna had leaned forward, pressing her knees hard against the horse’s flanks. Her mount shot forward, taking off at a dead run.
    On her smaller horse, Bryanna had been quick to follow, her hair streaming behind her, the thrill of the race causing her heart to pound.
    She’d lost, of course. She’d lost all competitions when it came to her older sister. But Bryanna had learned her lesson. From that day forward, she had held her tongue about the special friends who would visit her. She pretended to see only what her siblings confirmed, and over the years those ethereal friends—the wolf, Lil, and the boy—had faded to the point that she’d decided they had been nothing but a creation of her own bored mind.
    Until recently.
    When Isa, the old nursemaid had died and had begun speaking to Bryanna.
    Worse yet, Isa was just as bossy dead as she had been while she was alive!
    “’Tis a curse,” Bryanna muttered under her breath as Alabaster flew over the frozen earth, her hooves thundering, throwing up bits of mud as they passed two huntsmen heading in the opposite direction. Over the back of one man’s steed was a gutted stag, while the other man had a thick pack that no doubt held rabbits, squirrels, and perhaps a pheasant or dove.
    Oh, this was surely a fool’s mission. “Worry not, Bryanna, ’tis your destiny.” Isa’s voice rang clear as a church bell in Bryanna’s head.
    “’Tis naught but a batty woman’s folly,” she groused under her breath.
     
The woman came to Gavyn at night, in his dreams. When he was close to consciousness but hadn’t quite awakened.
    She was a woman with pale skin and