The skeleton paused, shifting on its feet, neither attacking nor dropping its guard.
“What did you say?” I whispered. The wind carried its scent to me, the smell of meat gone bad tangled with the sharp spice of an unfamiliar magic. I had thought that I had seen nightmare made real in Clareath’s court, but this… This would haunt my dreams, I was sure.
“I know his maker,” Rivyn replied. “She is a friend of mine.”
“Someone made this monster?” I was appalled.
Rivyn laughed, stepping back to my side and returning his arm around me comfortingly. “Ecaeris is a necromancer. She would be my brother’s betrothed, were we of mankind. Their arrangement is more... informal, however.”
A woman strode out of the ruins of the mage college. She paused, looking over at us, and the wind caught
