Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace #1)(80)

Dizziness racks my head. What she’s talking about is scandal. Sacrilege. I don’t want to be a part of it. “You betrayed your amouré!” I exclaim. The gods gave her a perfect match to spend eternity with, and she flouted it. “Didn’t you ever love him at all?”

“I loved your father, Sabine.” Odiva looks younger, reduced from the esteemed ruler of our famille to a girl with different dreams.

My legs threaten to buckle beneath me. I break away from her softened hold and sit down at the edge of the stream.

She drifts over and kneels before me. The skirt of her dress blooms wider in the water. “You look so much like him. The same olive complexion. The same beautiful eyes with that ring of gold in your irises.” She reaches to touch my face again, and I shrink back.

“I have a mother,” I say. “She’s my mother.” I’m not making any sense, but neither is Odiva.

She sighs heavily. “Ciana wasn’t your mother, but she was devout and ambitious. I told her the gods blessed me with two amourés, and that my gift was so sacred the rest of our famille couldn’t know. I said the gods trusted Ciana to uphold my secret, and in return I promised they would grant her greater glory in Paradise. She readily agreed to my plan. After her rite of passage, she left Chateau Creux to live with her own amouré. I also left to conceal my pregnancy and told our famille I was embarking on a great hunt. While I was away, I bore you and gave you to Ciana to bring back as her child.”

My head falls into my quivering hands. Odiva’s words rip at my heart. I mourn more than ever the loss of the mother who loved me, who cared for me, even if she didn’t share my blood. Even if I also feel betrayed by her.

“Two years ago, after Ciana died ferrying, I felt more responsible for you,” Odiva explains. “And the more you matured, the more you reminded me of your father. I felt an even deeper connection to him through you, and I realized more than ever how much I desperately miss him.” She pulls out her crow skull necklace and tenderly strokes the ruby. “He was a great man, Sabine.”

“What happened to . . . him?” My throat closes on my father. If I say it—if I even think it—I might accept what Odiva is telling me. This is all lies, the silver owl’s warning.

Her expression dims. “I never played the siren song for your father. He was never meant to be my sacrifice. But the gods took his life, anyway . . . shortly after I became pregnant with you. They punished me for loving him by wrapping him in chains.” Her eyes darken to a deeper black. “When his spirit met me on the land bridge, I tried to ferry him to Elara, but the waves crashed and the winds came, and he fell through Tyrus’s Gate instead.”

Her tears spill over. All of this is wrong. An innocent man shouldn’t have paid the price for Odiva’s sin. I shouldn’t pay it either. I don’t want to be their child.

But I am.

The thought is a sliver under my skin. I can’t pull it out—because I start to find proof. Odiva could have tracked me here because she shares a mother-daughter bond with me, too.

She shifts closer. “Do you not see you are special? The gods let you live.”

My muscles fall limp. I’m so tired. I didn’t think that was possible with my jackal grace. “They can’t want me to be your heir.” My breath hitches on a sob.

“They do, Sabine. I do.”

I look at the woman kneeling before me. Her dress is waterlogged. All her pride is gone. Even her majestic grace bones can’t draw focus from the pent-up misery written across her face.

“I need you,” she says. “I’ve come to realize Tyrus will not lead me to the golden jackal if I do not have an heir.”

Why do I feel so much pressure to say yes? The golden jackal is already dead. If Tyrus really did give Odiva a sign about me, it’s because I’m the one person who knows where the jackal is. “How is this going to work?” I ask. “Will you tell our famille you’re my mother?” They’ll think it’s just as ridiculous as I do.

“I cannot do that. You must understand, Sabine. What Ferriers are tasked with demands great faith. I would destroy that faith if they knew what I had done.”

“So you’re asking me to keep this a secret, too?”

“I am. You must. The Leurress will not question my choice. How can they when I tell them Tyrus is honoring Ailesse by choosing her dearest friend to rule after me?”

Ailesse.

Warmth creeps back into my limbs and wends its way toward my heart. All the Leurress call each other sisters, but now Ailesse really is my sister. That’s the one truth I can embrace without flinching. It’s the only part of this revelation that feels right.

Odiva takes both of my hands. Her firm hold makes my sliced palm throb harder. “The plain truth is you are, by all rights, my next successor, Sabine—blood of my blood. You must accept your fate.”

I’m shaking from head to toe. How can she ask this of me? Ailesse is alive. Odiva must feel it as well as I do. She’s disowning her firstborn by doing this. That can’t only be because she loved my father more. She’s still hiding something. I need to find out what it is.

“Very well.” I can retract my words once I rescue Ailesse and return her to our famille. Then the game will be up. The proper heir will be home. “I accept it.”