Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(70)

I’m at Castelpont.

And the silver owl is gone.

My breath scatters on a swirl of morning mist. Why did the owl bring me here? Would Bastien really take Ailesse back to the place where she tried to kill him?

Tentatively, I walk toward the bridge. Maybe the owl knows something I don’t. Maybe there’s another entrance to the catacombs nearby. But a dark sense of foreboding tells me something more dangerous is at play.

I slip my bow off my shoulder. I draw an arrow from my quiver. My muscles string taut as I step onto the bridge. I glance to my left, to my right, and to the riverbed below. I see nothing.

I take another step and freeze. My graced sense of smell catches a musty and sharp scent, like damp leaves and wet fur. I’ve almost placed what it belongs to, when a creature comes bounding for me. Fangs bared. Hackles raised. Incredibly fast.

Time slows my pounding pulse to a sluggish beat as I meet the jackal’s golden eyes. The silver owl swoops in behind him. She shrieks and goads him forward with her claws.

She brought him to me.

The jackal is halfway over the bridge. A fleeting thought crosses my mind. I’m meant to injure the jackal. Capture him, not kill him. Odiva’s command.

The jackal pounces at me. Leaps into the air. Opens his jaws.

The owl didn’t want Odiva to kill him. The owl wants the jackal’s graces to be mine.

I nock an arrow.

Blow out a shuddering breath.

And shoot straight for the golden jackal’s heart.





31

Bastien

AILESSE’S GRIP TIGHTENS ON MY hand as we walk by the arranged bones and skulls along the tunnel walls. “We’ll be past them soon,” I tell her. After a few branching corridors, the catacombs open into one of the old limestone quarries under Dovré. My lantern only shines a little way into the wide pit before us.

“Please tell me that has a bottom,” Ailesse says.

“It’s a forty-foot drop to the ground,” I reply. Still enough to kill a person if they took a fall, but the lines of worry smooth from Ailesse’s forehead.

We climb down scaffolding on the near side of the pit. She’s still weak. Her legs are shaking, and she has a strained expression like she can barely keep herself upright. I want to carry her again, but that’s impossible at the moment. When we’re twenty feet down, we step off the scaffolding and into a quarry room, half the size of our last chamber and open to the pit on one side.

I set my lantern in the middle of the floor. It barely casts enough light to fill the space. Ailesse looks around at what will be her home for the next who-knows-how-many days, and heat creeps up my cheeks. I shove a few crates aside and shake the dust from a moth-eaten blanket. “We’ll make this place comfortable, I promise.”

“Who made this?” Ailesse asks reverently.

“Made what?” I turn around and find her staring at the far wall of the room. It’s a relief of Chateau Creux. My chest twinges with pain. I’ve only seen the castle ruins from a distance. The old fortress looks nothing like it does here—majestic, with tall towers. On one side are the sun god and earth goddess, Belin and Ga?lle, and on the other side are Elara and Tyrus, the goddess of the Night Heavens and the god of the Underworld. I fold my arms and unfold them. “My father carved that.”

“Your father?” Ailesse turns to me. For a moment, I stop breathing. I can’t look away from her large and beautiful eyes, her wavy hair, the fullness of her upper lip . . . If I had my father’s talent, I’d carve a statue of her.

I finally nod and dig my hands into my pockets. “He was a sculptor, a struggling one.” I tip my chin at eleven figurines I salvaged after he died. “He sold these at the market to make ends meet. He couldn’t afford blocks of limestone, so he snuck down here and quarried them out for himself.”

Ailesse’s gaze travels over the figurines I’ve arranged on the ledge of the right wall. Eight are sculptures of the gods, two are miniature carvings of Beau Palais, and five are forest animals and sea creatures.

A soft smile lifts the corners of Ailesse’s mouth. “Your father was a master, Bastien.”

Warmth stirs deep inside my chest. Then I remember that a Bone Crier—someone like Ailesse —killed my father and a rush of coldness chases it away. The hunger for revenge I’ve harbored for so long hasn’t stopped gnawing at my gut, but I don’t know what to do about it anymore. I sit down and lean against the wall, opposite from her, putting as much distance as I can between us. “My father’s name was Lucien Colbert,” I say, my voice suddenly hoarse. “Did anyone in your famille ever mention it?”

Ailesse’s auburn brows draw inward. She shakes her head slowly and eases down on the ground to sit across from me. “I’m sorry. Not everyone in my famille speaks about their amourés.

Some never take the opportunity to know them before they . . .” She lowers her eyes.

I shrug a shoulder like it doesn’t matter, when of course it matters. “If the gods truly singled out my father to die, then no one should worship them.” The edge in my voice is back. Good.

Ailesse winces. “You can’t speak like that.”

I shoot her a dark look. “Are you joking?”

She presses her lips together and rubs the lump on the back of her head. It’s probably bigger now. “Maybe there’s another way to complete a rite of passage . . . I don’t know.” Her words come haltingly and with great effort. She pulls her hand away and folds it in her lap. “Maybe no one prayed hard enough to find out.”