Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(61)

“I’ve waited long enough!” he says, and shoves me back with surprising strength.

Just as I fall to the ground, Dolssa swings her staff. The man’s head jerks to the side, and he crumples. I blink at her in shock. “He was Unchained!”

Her face is severe and unrelenting. “All the dead are dangerous now.”

Another Unchained soul barrels into the cave. Dolssa runs to stave her off. More Chained are darting from the beach toward us—toward the hidden staircase in the cave. They’re after Ailesse.

I push to my feet and begin my chase up the flight.

I’ll battle every soul on the 167 steps, if I have to.

I’ll get to Ailesse first.





27

Ailesse

MY MOTHER IS CALF-DEEP IN the water above the sinking land bridge. Our eyes briefly meet as she charges forward, fighting three souls at once. She’s still struggling to get to me—to the flute—but she’s only made it halfway down the flooding bridge.

On my left, a flare of chazoure rises over the cliff—a man with a shaved head and a thick neck wrapped in chains. I bolt for him in one leap and strike his head with my heel. He loses his grip on the limestone and plummets off the cliff. I wish I had wings to fly with him. I need to get down to the shore and give my mother the flute so she can rein in this crisis. But dozens more souls riot between us and continue to flood toward me.

Another person climbs up the cliff on my right. She hefts herself up onto the grass and stands. I tense to attack, but I don’t see any chains.

“Help!” She clutches the loose-fitting gown over her stomach and runs to me. “They won’t let me see my baby.” Translucent tears spill down her cheek. “I need to go back. I didn’t even get to hold him.”

My heart squeezes. She must have died in childbirth. “I’m sorry, I can’t give you back your life.”

“Please.” She falls to her knees.

A broad-shouldered man races toward me from behind. I’ve no idea where he came from. He’s wearing a chain-clad uniform. A soldier, trained to fight.

“I killed in the name of my king!” he shouts. “You can’t drag me to Hell!”

“If the gods marked you with those chains, you must have lusted for your kills.”

He lunges for me with a savage growl. I pull back from the woman, but she catches my skirt.

I’m knocked off balance, and the man cuffs my jaw. I gasp with a bright shock of pain. He grabs my arms and slings me across the ground. I roll to the edge of the cliff.

“Ailesse!”

My heart kicks. Bastien. He sounds concerned. I want none of it.

I jump back up and duck another punch from the Chained. I barrel into his chest and push him to the brink of the cliff. His feet dig into the chalky dirt. Pebbles skid off the edge. He seizes my shoulders and shoves against me. He’s strong, but not as strong as my tiger shark. I can drive him over the edge. But if I do, he might pull me with him.

I wrest one of my arms away. I yank Marcel’s knife from my sash. With a cry of exertion, I stab the soldier in the chest. His eyes bulge in pain. If he were alive, this would be a killing blow.

It’s how I would have killed Bastien on the ritual bridge.

I swallow the bile scalding my throat. This isn’t murder.

Like my rite of passage would have been.

Another cry escapes me, this one mangled with rage. I stab the Chained again, but he only grips me harder. I keep stabbing, keep screaming. I fight to control my betraying thoughts—the image of Bastien if I’d done this to him.

No blood spills from the Chained, although my blade plunges deep. I’m hurting him, but not disabling him.

“Let her go!” the Unchained woman shouts, and rushes at him. “I need her to—”

I gasp as the soldier flings her over the edge, but I can’t pause to feel pity. While he’s distracted, I jerk away and swivel out of his hold. I whip my leg out and swing back for him. My kick strikes like a hammer, and he’s thrust off the cliff.

I’ve barely turned around when the next person confronts me. She doesn’t glow with chazoure.

She’s alive.

I slash my knife through the air between us, a warning. I’m all too aware she can bleed. “Don’t interfere, Jules.”

“With what?” she demands, but her wide eyes dart around us. “What are those voices? What are you fighting against?”

She knows—I told all my captors in the catacombs—but she’s still unbelieving. “The dead.”

She swallows and looks over the cliff, keeping as far back from the edge as she can. Jules doesn’t have the vision to perceive the chazoure of the souls, but she can hear their raging screams and see thirty-four women below battling an invisible army.

I scan past her while she’s stunned. A faint and deadly glow shines fifty yards away, limning two boulders. The entrance to the hidden staircase? More dead will emerge from there any moment and join those scaling the cliffs. I need my former captors out of the way. I need to get to my mother.

I whirl to my other side, feeling Bastien close in. Under the starlight, his rough-cut beauty is stark and raw, a siren song of its own. A rush of warmth prickles through me, but I stare him down.

“You shouldn’t have come here.” He’s going to get himself killed.