Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace #1)(22)

“You can’t save me! Go warn my mother. Tell her the flute fell in the riverbed and . . .”

I stop listening. My attention snags on the moonlight reflecting off my blade. Ailesse’s neck tendons strain beneath its sharp edge. What am I waiting for—her to scream or act more afraid? This moment is supposed to be my ultimate victory. It will be. I can slit one Bone Crier’s throat, and then deal with the other.

I grind my teeth in determination, but my stomach churns.

Do it, Bastien!

“Bastien, the witness! She’s getting away!” Jules’s voice rings closer. She’s climbing up the riverbank, pursuing Sabine.

I jerk around in Sabine’s direction. She’s already off the bridge. She and Jules will cross paths at any moment. “You can grab her before I can!”

“Hurry!” Ailesse calls to her friend.

Thump, drag, thump. Jules clears the top of the riverbank. She’s limping.

Sabine tries to get past her, but Jules whips out her knife. Sabine shrieks as it slices across the side of her waist.

“No!” Ailesse wrestles against me. “Run, Sabine!”

Sabine barely dodges another swipe from Jules. Both girls are slow from their wounds.

Jules misses again. Sabine takes her opening and kicks Jules’s hurt leg. Jules cries out and clutches her knee.

Ailesse’s muscles tense. “Now’s your chance! Go, Sabine!”

Sabine shoots Ailesse a fierce look. “I’ll come back for you!” She whirls away, hurrying as fast as she can down the road to the forest. One of her hands presses to her bleeding head. The other holds the gash at her waist.

Jules struggles to stand upright again. “Bastien, we have to do something! She’ll go back and get the rest of her people. She told me they can track us with their magic.”

I shift, suddenly dizzy. “Marcel would have said if that were possible.”

“Marcel doesn’t know everything!” She stumbles after Sabine.

Marcel. He’s off the road and in the trees somewhere, on the lookout for Ailesse’s soulmate. But now I need him here. He can prove Jules wrong. I shout his name, but he doesn’t call back.

Ailesse’s upper lip curls. “None of you fathom how deeply this night will cost you.”

I draw my knife back a fraction from her throat, then check myself. What does she know? I’ve thought through my revenge countless times—through every possible scenario. If one of the Bone Criers happened to escape, we planned to kill the other and— “Leave her bones! The ones belonging to her.” I rattle Ailesse, and she almost falls off the parapet. Jules must have stolen her last bone, and Ailesse’s balance with it. “That’s how their magic works. If we don’t have them anymore, her people can’t find us.”

Sabine, who is ten feet from the border of the forest, freezes. Her pained eyes flash to Ailesse. Jules turns and considers me. I nod to show I’m serious. I’ll kill Ailesse, then hunt down her friend. But if Sabine manages to outrun me, we don’t have to worry.

Ailesse’s glare holds steady. “They’ll still find you.”

I snort. “Your people won’t stand a chance. I’ve lived on the streets of Dovré since I was a child. The best hideouts in the city and the places beneath it—they’re my territory.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she spits. “My famille doesn’t need my grace bones to track you. You and I are soul-bound. That’s enough.” She draws herself taller. Blood trickles down her neck from my blade. “You’re right that our magic lies in bones. I used them to summon you here. You came when you heard my song, and the gods let you because they chose you for me. Now your soul is mine in life and in death.” The mist rises behind her, clinging to her body. “If you kill me, you’ll die with me.”

My palms sweat. I tighten my grip on the knife. “Nice try, but you’re a terrible liar.”

I start to drive in my blade, but Jules shouts, “Bastien, wait! What if she’s right?”

“About what—that I can’t live without her?” I scoff. “You really believe that?”

“Think about it. What if that’s why my father died, because he was soul-bound to Ashena? She died soon after she left him—the witness told me so tonight. Her death might have set off his.”

I breathe harder, faster. Could I really be soul-bound to a Bone Crier? Waves of hot and cold crash through me. If Ailesse is telling the truth, she wouldn’t have been so scared of dying a moment ago. Then again, was she really so afraid? I caught that spark of confidence behind her terror.

Marcel doesn’t know everything.

Maybe I haven’t thought through every outcome tonight.

Now I’m the one who’s shaking. I need Ailesse’s death. The words sear inside me, and I press even closer to her. Her foot slips off the edge of the parapet. I catch her back. My blade wavers at her throat.

“Bastien, stop!” Jules cries.

“Shut up!”

I’ve planned for this moment for eight long years. It can’t end with letting her go.

“Are you about finished?” Marcel calls. Hazily through the mist, I see him lumber toward the bridge. At the same time, Sabine reaches the forest border behind him. Marcel doesn’t see her. He’s found his own path here through the trees. “I haven’t seen any soulmate,” he confesses, taking no pains to be quiet. “The man must live on an island. Either that or he’s as slow as molasses—or crystallized honey. That’s thicker.” He shuffles to a stop and takes in the three of us. Ailesse. Jules. Me. “Oh. Not finished, then.”