Death's Mistress

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Another skull crunched under Nicci’s boot, but she kept trudging forward nevertheless. In the thick forest, she could not avoid all the bones underfoot or the clawlike branches that dangled near her head. The way would have been treacherous even in full daylight, but in the deep night of the Dark Lands, the trail was nearly impossible.

Nicci never bothered to acknowledge the impossible, though, when she had a task to complete.

Piles of moss-covered human remains cluttered the shadowy forest. Yellowing bones stood out in the gloom, illuminated by moonlight that seeped through the leafy vine-strangled boughs overhead. When she climbed over a rotted oak trunk that had collapsed across the path, her heel crushed the old shell of another skull, scattering ivory teeth from a gaping jaw—as if these long-dead victims wanted to bite her, like the cannibalistic half people who had recently swarmed out of the Dark Lands.

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