Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(39)

Bastien huffs. “She’s lying. Everyone would know if that many Bone Criers lived around here.

We certainly would.”

My gaze flits between the boys. I wasn’t lying. “Would you like to know more?” I ask Marcel, making a point to speak to him and not Bastien. I can test Marcel’s knowledge of the Leurress while he tests mine—and make sure he doesn’t know anything more that can endanger my famille. Better yet, I’ll distract him from plotting a way to kill my mother.

He gives an unabashed laugh. “I always like to know more. About everything.”

I smile. I shouldn’t like him, but I do. Marcel’s candidness reminds me of Sabine. He’s a year or two younger, like her, maybe fifteen or sixteen. “Then why don’t we strike a bargain? For every question I answer, I’ll do so truthfully, but you must answer one of mine in return.”

“This is ridiculous,” Bastien says, but Marcel waves him off like he would a gnat.

“Agreed.”

I scoot into a more comfortable position and prop myself against the wall of the slab. “Do you know why the Leurress exist?” I begin.

Marcel cocks his head. “Leurress?”

“You call us Bone Criers.”

“None of my books mention that name.”

“I doubt any were written by my famille.”

He gives a conceding nod. “Well, you exist to—”

“Torment men,” Bastien interjects. “Murder them. Sacrifice them to your gods.”

“She wasn’t asking you,” Marcel says. Bastien rolls his eyes. “You Bone Criers— Leurress, that is—are parasitic in nature. You can’t thrive on your own. You need the moon and stars and animal bones . . . and, well, what Bastien said—human sacrifice.”

“What if I told you that you were wrong?”

Lines pinch between Marcel’s brows. “Isn’t it my turn to ask a question?”

“Yes.”

He shuffles another step forward and sits on the stone anchoring the rope I’m tied up with.

“So”—he scratches his head—“why am I wrong?”

“We aren’t parasites. We exist to ferry the dead.” I wait, hook baited, for Marcel to bite, to tell me if he knows where we ferry the dead. But his expression is blank.

“Pardon?”

“We labor to obtain the sacred gifts that give us strength and skill to guide souls into the eternal realms.” Doesn’t he know about the soul bridge? “The rite of passage is our test of loyalty to become a Ferrier. That’s the whole point.”

Marcel’s mouth slowly parts. “Oh.” He nods a few times. “Well, that’s illuminating.”

Bastien’s vivid eyes narrow on me. He looks . . . conflicted.

“You really weren’t aware that the Leurress are Ferriers?” I ask Marcel. He shrugs. Once more, I’m amazed at the holes in my captors’ knowledge. If they don’t know something this fundamental, maybe I shouldn’t worry about them knowing my biggest secret—that no one but me can kill Bastien or I will die; the curse goes both ways. For that reason, my mother won’t kill him when she comes for me. If she did, she’d sacrifice her only heir. I’d lose all my leverage if Bastien knew that.

“One of the folktales does mention the dead being ferried,” Marcel says. “But I thought that part was mythical—something that happened when you killed your victims. I didn’t realize you were the Ferriers, or that Ferriers were real at all.”

“Believe every story you hear,” Bastien murmurs, his gaze distant. Marcel and I pause to look at him. He blinks and rolls a crick from his neck. “How kind of you to lead souls to Hell after you slaughter them.”

I take a steeling breath. He’ll never understand the Leurress aren’t evil. I turn back to Marcel and pose my next question. “Was your father chosen by the gods, too?”

Bastien scoffs. “Meaning did he have the good fortune to be murdered by your family?”

My fingers curl, but I ignore him and wait for Marcel to answer. Marcel’s still acting a little dumbfounded, hunched over and resting his elbows on his knees. “My father? Um, yes . . . I was seven when he . . .” He clears his throat. “Jules was nine.”

Marcel and Jules are siblings? Except for rare twins, siblings are unheard of among the Leurress. We don’t live with amourés long enough to bear more than one child.

“He fell ill after the Bone Crier left us.” Marcel’s gaze drops, and he rubs a stubborn stain of limestone sludge on his trousers. He isn’t bitter like Jules or vindictive like Bastien. Marcel must have stayed with them all this time to survive—and because they’re family.

Bastien’s jaw muscle flexes. “He didn’t deserve his fate.”

“No one would, but . . . well, he was a great father.” Marcel’s mouth quirks in a half smile. “He used to make up songs while he was working. He was a scribe, you see, and some of the texts he copied were tragedies. So he’d change up the words and set them to a silly tune. Jules and I would roll on the ground laughing.” He chuckles, but doesn’t stop picking at the stain.

A surprising wave of sadness wells within me, and I forget about our game of questions. “I never knew my father,” I say quietly. “He died before I was born, like every father of every daughter in my famille. I’ll meet him in Elara’s Paradise one day, but . . .” My voice quavers. “The ache of not knowing him in this life is very real.” I press my lips together and inwardly shake my head at myself. I sound so much like Sabine. She’s the one who laments the cost of being a Leurress. I spent so much time striving to ease her conscience that I never allowed myself to mourn and wonder what if.