Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(62)

“You shouldn’t have left.” He glances around us. “You were safer in the catacombs.”

Is he mocking me? He starved me of Light. Stripped me of my grace bones. He might as well have cut out a vital organ. “Is that why you came back, to keep me safe?” I chance another peek at the boulders. If I make a run for the stairs, maybe I’ll have fewer Chained to fight there. “Are you going to protect me or kill me?” I throw a pointed look at the crude knife in the white-knuckled grip of his hand.

“Excellent question.” Jules briefly tears her gaze from the growing roar of the dead.

Bastien’s jaw muscle flinches. “Wouldn’t you kill me if you were able to?”

“Gladly,” I snap, but my conviction dies in the truth blazing between us. My heart skips faster.

He knows I spared his life tonight when I ran away. And he spared mine when I fell into the pit.

Still, how does that change our fates? “I’ve trained all my life for this. I don’t need your protection.”

He doesn’t look so sure. “Why are the shouts coming louder now? The land bridge is gone.”

My chest tightens. I spin around. The soul bridge has submerged so deeply that no one is standing on it anymore. My mother is in the shallow water near the beach, wrestling two Chained.

Maybe I can throw the flute down to her. Maybe it’s not too late. If she can’t raise the Gates tonight, we’ll have to wait another month for the next new moon.

A glowing hand slams over the edge of the cliff. A woman’s hand, close to Bastien. Her chazoure wrist bears chains.

“Move away!” I reach for him. Jules dives at me. I twist to dodge her, but not in time. She grabs the bone flute from my sash.

I gasp. “Give that back!”

The Chained woman drags herself up. Her hair glitters with jewels. I don’t have time for this.

“Please, Jules, you don’t know what that really is.”

“It snared Bastien to you, and now it’s summoned the dead. It’s evil and needs to be destroyed.” She arcs her arm back to throw it into the sea.

“Stop! My mother needs that,” I rush to explain. “When a different song is played on the flute, it opens the Gates of the Beyond—the afterlife, Heaven, Hell, whatever you want to call it.”

“It’s a key?” Marcel lopes toward us. “Then it may help break the soul-bond.”

That’s the last of my worries right now. “If the dead can’t cross the soul bridge, they can’t leave this world.”

“I will never leave this world.” The Chained woman stalks forward and unties a velvet ribbon from around her neck. “My riches are mine.”

The color drains from Jules’s face. She looks to Bastien. “Did you hear that?” she rasps.

He nods soberly. “Don’t throw that away.”

The Chained woman doesn’t bat an eye at them. She stretches her ribbon tight between her hands.

Jules shoves the flute in her pocket. “Fine. Then let’s get what we really came for.” She twirls her knife. “Come on, Bastien.”

His face hardens, but I note the tremor in his knife hand. He and Jules draw in closer toward me. They don’t know it, but they’re flanking the Chained woman.

I backtrack for more room to fight. I can handle four people.

Marcel retreats in a different direction. “Ailesse has my knife,” he points out.

Jules turns worried eyes on him. “Stay near, do you hear me? We don’t know what . . .” He hurries away. “Marcel, wait!”

Three people, then. Even better.

Jules looks back at me with gritted teeth. She’s the first to attack. No surprise. When her blade slices for me, I leap into the air and cartwheel over her head. The move is so quick she doesn’t have time to react before I land and nick her arm. She hisses and whirls to face me. She tries to stab me three times, in places she won’t kill me, but her strikes are easy to block. She fights in an identical style as Bastien did at Castelpont.

He hovers at the edge of our struggle, his brows pulled tight. Is he hesitating or just trying to find a way to cut in?

Flares of chazoure burst above the cliff like twin suns. Two more Chained climb over the top.

They’re not stealthy like the jeweled woman. Once they’re on their feet, they race toward me, but Jules stands in the way.

“Watch out!”

She doesn’t. One of the Chained—a man—grabs her by the waist and heaves her aside. She screams and flies several feet before tumbling to the ground. The Chained man comes at me next. I prepare to strike, but I’m snagged back. I can’t breathe. The Chained woman has her velvet ribbon wrapped around my neck. I choke and struggle, and the Chained man punches me in the stomach.

My eyes squeeze shut against a shock of hot pain. I sense the third Chained circling like a vulture.

My vision pulses as I open my eyes. I see Bastien in flashes. He’s trying to get to me, aimlessly slashing his knife through the air. He can’t abduct me if I’m dead.

He can’t live if I’m dead.

And I can’t get the flute to my mother if I’m dead.

Think, Ailesse. My brain is foggy, starved for air.

I lean back against the woman to support myself. When the second Chained rushes at me again, I swing my legs up and kick him hard. He’s thrown onto his back and skids across the ground.