Her teeth chattered and her fingers turned icy as she held her cowl tightly over her head against the cold winter wind. After three days of riding away from Calon, Bryanna knew that if it weren’t for the ugly fact that she was running away because she was half in love with her sister’s husband, she would never have listened to the voices in her head. Never! But what about the visions? The strange dreams? She gritted her teeth and pushed away thoughts of the images that flowed through her head. Gems raining from the sky and a red-haired woman on a galloping horse. Absently, gloved fingers holding tight to the reins, she made the sign of the cross over her chest. Guiding her mare along the rutted road, she considered for the hundredth time if she were slowly but surely going out of her mind. As Alabaster raced easily past a fallow field where the earth was already turned, she wondered why she was haunted by such vivid nightmares of dark omens and jeweled daggers. “Bother and broomsticks,”
