Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(80)

“Don’t be rash.” She draws taller with poised confidence. “This is a great honor. Why are you so resistant?”

“Because I can’t be Ailesse!” I shout. Angry tears scald my face. “Because you have a daughter you don’t love!”

“You are wrong.” Her tone rises, just as furious and passionate as mine. “I do love Ailesse.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“I’ve told you.” Her voice breaks. “Tyrus says it must be so.”

“Tyrus can rot in the darkest pit of his Hell.”

“Sabine.” Odiva pulls me around, but I keep my head turned. “Look at me.” She grabs my chin, but I squeeze my eyes shut like a stubborn child. “Do you not believe I love you, too?”

“You shouldn’t. You should love Ailesse more.”

“Sabine . . .” The fight drains from her voice. “You are my daughter, too.”

My shock is so deep that all the breath leaves my lungs. I open my eyes and stare into hers.

They’re shining with tears. “You are my daughter,” she says again, a sacred whisper this time. She lifts her hand to my cheek and cradles it. “I have wanted to tell you for so long.” Her brows lift inward. “I promised myself I never would.”

The stream rushes over my feet and splashes at my ankles. I don’t feel the cold. “What—what are you talking about?” My voice barely rises past my throat.

“Your father . . . he wasn’t my amouré. He wasn’t Ailesse’s father either.”

Every word she speaks falls like a hammer. “But”—I shake my head—“Ailesse and I are too close in age.” I have to concentrate on facts, logic. They’ll prove Odiva is wrong. “You can’t be mother to both of us.”

“You are barely sixteen. Ailesse is almost eighteen. There was time.”

Dizziness racks my head. What she’s talking about is scandal. Sacrilege. I don’t want to be a part of it. “You betrayed your amouré!” I exclaim. The gods gave her a perfect match to spend eternity with, and she flouted it. “Didn’t you ever love him at all?”

“I loved your father, Sabine.” Odiva looks younger, reduced from the esteemed ruler of our famille to a girl with different dreams.

My legs threaten to buckle beneath me. I break away from her softened hold and sit down at the edge of the stream.

She drifts over and kneels before me. The skirt of her dress blooms wider in the water. “You look so much like him. The same olive complexion. The same beautiful eyes with that ring of gold in your irises.” She reaches to touch my face again, and I shrink back.

“I have a mother,” I say. “She’s my mother.” I’m not making any sense, but neither is Odiva.

She sighs heavily. “Ciana wasn’t your mother, but she was devout and ambitious. I told her the gods blessed me with two amourés, and that my gift was so sacred the rest of our famille couldn’t know. I said the gods trusted Ciana to uphold my secret, and in return I promised they would grant her greater glory in Paradise. She readily agreed to my plan. After her rite of passage, she left Chateau Creux to live with her own amouré. I also left to conceal my pregnancy and told our famille I was embarking on a great hunt. While I was away, I bore you and gave you to Ciana to bring back as her child.”

My head falls into my quivering hands. Odiva’s words rip at my heart. I mourn more than ever the loss of the mother who loved me, who cared for me, even if she didn’t share my blood. Even if I also feel betrayed by her.

“Two years ago, after Ciana died ferrying, I felt more responsible for you,” Odiva explains.

“And the more you matured, the more you reminded me of your father. I felt an even deeper connection to him through you, and I realized more than ever how much I desperately miss him.”

She pulls out her crow skull necklace and tenderly strokes the ruby. “He was a great man, Sabine.”

“What happened to . . . him?” My throat closes on my father. If I say it—if I even think it—I might accept what Odiva is telling me. This is all lies, the silver owl’s warning.

Her expression dims. “I never played the siren song for your father. He was never meant to be my sacrifice. But the gods took his life, anyway . . . shortly after I became pregnant with you. They punished me for loving him by wrapping him in chains.” Her eyes darken to a deeper black. “When his spirit met me on the land bridge, I tried to ferry him to Elara, but the waves crashed and the winds came, and he fell through Tyrus’s Gate instead.”

Her tears spill over. All of this is wrong. An innocent man shouldn’t have paid the price for Odiva’s sin. I shouldn’t pay it either. I don’t want to be their child.

But I am.

The thought is a sliver under my skin. I can’t pull it out—because I start to find proof. Odiva could have tracked me here because she shares a mother-daughter bond with me, too.

She shifts closer. “Do you not see you are special? The gods let you live.”

My muscles fall limp. I’m so tired. I didn’t think that was possible with my jackal grace. “They can’t want me to be your heir.” My breath hitches on a sob.

“They do, Sabine. I do.”