Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace #1)(5)

I picture the shark’s grotesque face. I see her trying to wring the life out of Ailesse. She isn’t majestic like the alpine ibex or beautiful like the peregrine falcon. She isn’t even charming like the fire salamander. I won’t mourn to see her dead.

But does that mean she deserves to die?

“I . . . I can’t.” I’m freezing in the water, but shame still flushes my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

Ailesse looks at me for a long moment. I hate myself for turning away the most generous gift she’s ever offered to me. “Don’t be sorry.” She manages a small smile as her teeth chatter. “We’ll find you another grace bone when you’re ready.”

With a sure grip on her knife, Ailesse descends below.





2


Ailesse


THE CHILL OF CHTEAU CREUX brushes my skin as Sabine and I walk down its crumbling stone staircase and through the entrance of the ancient castle’s ruins. Long ago, the first king of South Galle built this fortress, and his descendants ruled here until the last of his line, King Godart, died an unnatural death. The locals believe he still haunts these grounds. Sabine and I hear them speak of the old days as they travel the rutted roads outside the city walls. They don’t see us perch in the trees or hide in the tall grass. But we don’t have to hide near Chateau Creux. The locals never venture here. They believe this place is cursed. The first king worshipped the old gods—our gods—and the people do their best to pretend Tyrus and Elara never existed.

My bandaged hand burns and throbs. I accidentally sliced my palm with my ritual knife when I sawed off the shark’s fin. I’m still upset with myself for its drawn-out death. I feared the gods wouldn’t find the kill honorable, but they must have; I received the shark’s graces when I chose a bone and pressed it into the blood of my wounded hand.

At my side, Sabine totes a sack of shark meat over her shoulder. She grips the cinched rope with ease. Her injuries from the coral reef have almost healed. She dismisses her salamander skull as a pitiful grace bone, but it was a clever choice. What she really regrets is killing the creature. One day she will see she is meant for this life. I know Sabine better than she knows herself.

We duck under fallen beams and a collapsed archway. The Leurress could fortify the castle if my mother so desired, but she prefers it to look desolate and disturbing. If our home were beautiful, it would attract people. And a Leurress should only attract someone once in her life.

I adjust my shoulder necklace and trace the largest shark tooth, my newest grace bone. The other teeth are only ornamental, but they’ll make me look formidable when I ferry the dead. After my rite of passage, I can finally join the Ferriers in their dangerous work.

“Are you nervous?” Sabine asks me.

“Why should I be?” I flash her a smile, though my heart drums. My mother will approve of my kill. I’m just as clever as Sabine.

My friend’s presence behind me tickles my spine. Now she’s ten feet away. Eight feet. Seven. As the vibrations grow stronger, the sixth sense I wanted so badly begins to annoy me. I prance farther ahead so Sabine can’t see the frustration on my face. If she thinks I’m nervous, she’ll be nervous, too.

We descend to a lower level of the chateau, then plunge deeper. The manmade stone corridors, carved with King Godart’s crest of the crow and the rose, give way to tunnels shaped by tides of the sea. No water remains here, but pearlescent shells shimmer, embedded in the walls like ghosts clinging to the past.

Soon the tunnel opens to an enormous cavern. I blink against the sunlight bouncing off the limestone ground. A magnificent tower used to rise above this place, but it couldn’t withstand the gales of the sea. After Godart died, the tower fell. It crushed and demolished the cavern ceiling. The Leurress chose this chateau as our home for that very reason. A clear view of the skies is necessary. Half our power comes from the bones of the dead, but the other half flows from Elara’s Night Heavens. Our strength diminishes if we spend too long sheltered away from the goddess’s moon and starlight.

Twenty or so women and girls mill about the cavern, the vast space we call the courtyard. Vivienne carries a freshly tanned deer hide. élodie hangs rows of dipped candles on a rack to harden. Isla weaves white ceremonial cloth on her loom. Little Felise and Lisette carry baskets of garments to be washed. Two of the elders, Roxane and Pernelle, are off in a corner, training with their quarterstaves. The rest of the Leurress must be hunting for meat, gathering berries and herbs, or tending to chores within the depths of the chateau.

Isla moves away from her weaving loom and steps in my path. Her ginger brows lower as she scrutinizes my shoulder necklace. I purse my lips to keep from smiling. She can’t identify the beast I killed from its teeth. “I see you’ve had a successful hunt,” she says. “It certainly took you long enough. You girls have been gone almost a fortnight.”

Girls, she calls us with her nose in the air. She’s only three years older than me and four years older than Sabine. Isla completed her rite of passage when she was eighteen, but I’ll do so in my seventeenth year—and with better graces.

I thrust my shoulders back. Until now, no Leurress has ever killed a shark. Probably because they never had help from a friend like Sabine. “The hunt was exceptional,” I reply. “And more so because we took our time.”