Everybody betrayed her, so why expect otherwise? But it turned out that distrust could fool you and endanger you, just as trust could.

Humans living and dead might suddenly turn on you, but wild things just lived on in their brute, wild way, caring nothing for you. When they died, they left no ghosts.

Even when she slept, her anxieties did not.

Before her escort could react, she sprinted out from their little pool of lantern-light into the darkness, her feet pounding the soft, treacherous clods of the field. The guards called after her for a while, but did not pursue, In a lost city, how could they chase down every lost soul who became a little more lost?

Habits, places and faces grew into you over time, like tree roots burrowing into stone work.

Lord Fellmotte was not a man. He was an ancient committee. A parliament of deathly rooks in a dying tree.

I died recently, and I am in no hurry to enjoy the experience again just yet.