Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(23)

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.”

“The witness, Marcel!” Jules points wildly, unable to get to Sabine fast enough on her wounded leg. “Hurry! She’ll bring more of them. They’ll kill Bastien!”

Marcel wheels around and stares dumbly at Sabine, a few yards away from him. She’s bent over from another dizzy spell.

“Did you hear your friend?” Ailesse hisses in my ear. “He hasn’t seen another soulmate.” I turn to her, drawn to the gaping black of her pupils. “You are mine,” she says.

Faster than seems possible, Marcel drops his pack and pulls an arrow from his quiver.

Ailesse gasps. “No. Sabine, run!”

Sabine painstakingly lifts her head. She looks feral with a stripe of blood smeared down her face and over one eye.

Marcel strings his bow. His shoulders bunch up like he’s about to be sick.

“Run!” Ailesse shouts again.

Marcel startles and lets his arrow fly. It whizzes past Sabine, just shy of her head. She snatches something from a tree branch and rushes away. The forest swallows her from sight.

“Merde!” Jules buckles to the ground.

Ailesse’s spine relaxes under my fingers. Her gloating eyes flick back to me, and my jaw muscle clenches. Her friend is free, and now Ailesse thinks I won’t dare to slit her throat because we’re soul-bound. Or so she says. I’ll find out soon enough. Then I’ll make her suffer. She’ll beg me to end her life.

“You will die, Bone Crier.” My scathing tone cools to a deadly simmer. “Because you are mine.”





10

Sabine

I RACE INTO THE RUINS of Chateau Creux and past King Godart’s carved crest of the crow and the rose. Fire and ice chase through my veins with each thunderclap of my heart.

Ailesse is gone. Her amouré killed her. I’m too late.

I swipe my tears with shaking hands. My fingers come away sticky with blood. It’s everywhere —on my neck, in my hair, all over my dress and sleeves. It’s in places I can’t see. Ailesse’s throat.

The stones of Castelpont. Her amouré’s knife.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Calm down, Sabine. You don’t know Ailesse is dead.

The boy kept hesitating. She could still be alive. I’m not too late.

I bolt through the tide-carved tunnels beneath the ancient castle, then down the last tunnel toward the courtyard. The night is half spent, but Odiva should be awake and awaiting our return.

How will I explain what happened? This is all my fault.

I’m about to burst inside when a rush of dizziness seizes me. I grit my teeth and brace my hand against the tunnel wall. My salamander grace has helped me recover from the hooded girl’s attack, but I’ve lost too much blood. On the way here, I nearly passed out and had to rest with my head between my knees. It cost me precious time. I can’t let that happen again.

“I have given you everything possible these past two years.” Odiva’s voice is a murmur, but it resonates throughout the large cavern.

My chest tightens. For a moment I think she’s speaking to me—my mother died two years ago —but when the black spots clear from my vision, I see my matrone standing under a pool of moonlight in the center of the courtyard. Her back is turned to me and her arms are outstretched.

She’s praying—fervently—or else she’d notice me. Her stingray’s sixth sense and bat’s echolocation would have picked up on my arrival.

“Now the time is nearing an end,” she continues. “Grant me a sign, Tyrus. Let me know you honor my sacrifices.”

Tyrus? I focus on Odiva’s cupped hands. They’re turned downward to the Underworld, not upward to the Night Heavens. I wrinkle my brows. The Leurress worship Tyrus—we offer him souls of the wicked on ferrying night—but our prayers travel to Elara, who hears the pleas of the righteous. Or so I was taught.

I push away from the wall. It doesn’t matter. Ailesse is in danger. I’d pray to any god to save her. “Matrone!”

Odiva stiffens. I emerge into the silvery glow of Elara’s Light, and she turns to face me. At the same time, her hands close around something dangling from a gold chain over her three-tiered grace bone necklace. She quickly tucks it into her dress, and I catch a glint of sparkling red.

“Sabine.” Her ebony eyes narrow as they flick over the gashes on my arm, my head, and waist.