Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(82)

She juts up her chin. A waft of rosewater hits me square in the face. “What are you going to do, torture me for the truth? I’m not going to snitch on Marcel.”

I tap my foot, trying to figure out how to crack her. I’ve trailed Birdine three times after the perfumery has closed up for the day, and all she does is hurry home to a room she rents above a nearby tavern. Marcel’s never there.

“Look, I know you’re trying to protect him, but you’re putting Marcel in more danger by not telling me where he is. You’re putting all of Dovré in danger.” I lean closer over the counter. “You ever hear a bone-chilling whisper when you’re walking home at night? Does it ever make you think you’re going mad?”

Birdine shrinks back and bites her lower lip.

“How about your customers or your friends in the tavern? Notice any of them growing sick with a strange weakness they can’t explain?”

She folds her arms around herself. “Marcel says there are bad humors in the air.”

“Marcel’s lying so you can sleep at night.”

She suppresses a shiver.

I sigh. I don’t want to scare Birdine. I just need her help. “Will you at least tell him something for me? Say people are going to die if he and Jules don’t bring back what they stole.” Ailesse might die, too, if she has to stay underground any longer. I can’t allow that to happen.

“What did they steal?” she asks.

“I’ll let Marcel explain that part. Tell him he and Jules can find me round about the place we ran to when we first got into this mess.” I don’t spell out the location, in case any of the dead are listening, but Marcel should know I mean our old chamber in the catacombs. If Ailesse is strong enough, I’ll take her there tonight.

I step away from the counter and adjust the pack on my shoulder. “Will you do that for me?” I shrug off my needling doubts about Jules. I have to trust she won’t harm Ailesse when we’re all back together again. She shouldn’t as long as the soul-bond holds. Jules and Marcel clearly haven’t found a way to break it yet, or they would have come out of hiding already. “You’d be doing Marcel a favor. All of Dovré, too.”

Birdine looks down and rubs the callus on her finger. She gives me a slow nod. “Will you do me a favor, too, whenever you do see Jules again?”

“Name it.”

She tucks a frizzy curl behind her ear. “Ask her to give me a chance with her brother.”

Birdine’s brows lift shyly before she lowers them in a firm line. “I’m not another flighty Dovré girl from the brothel district. I love Marcel. I would do anything for him.”

The earnestness in her voice makes me pause. Birdine’s only sixteen, but she knows her heart.

More than that, she’s willing to fight for her chance at happiness.

I can’t help thinking of Ailesse. I hate being away from her when I’m searching for my friends every day, and once I am back with her, it takes all my energy to resist touching her—and everything else I’d like to do when I find myself staring at her lips. I hold back because . . . I don’t know why. It seems selfish, I guess. Our fates are stacked against us. There’s also the part of me that wonders what my father would think.

But maybe . . . just maybe my father would want me to be happy.

At least for as long as I can be.

“Marcel’s lucky to have a girl like you,” I tell Birdine. “I promise to say so to Jules.”

Her face lights up. “Thank you, Bastien.”

I give her a parting nod and stride outside. I set a quick pace for the castle district. I’m going to comb the cellars, sheds, and stables there one more time in search of my friends, in case Birdine doesn’t get a chance to talk to Marcel today. Then I’ll hurry back to Ailesse. Tonight is the full moon. Being stuck in the dark will be miserable for her—maybe even deadly.

I’m going to find a way to help her, whether or not I get her bones back.





37

Sabine

THE SILVER OWL STARES AT me from the stone parapet of Castelpont, but I refuse to set foot on the bridge. I understand now what I didn’t when the owl first asked me to dig up the golden jackal. And tonight it will be possible.

The sun is setting, and the full moon above me grows sharper and brighter. I have my three grace bones ready. I even have Ailesse’s ritual knife and a new bone flute. I spent most of the last three days hollowing it out and carving the tone holes. I’ve left the instrument simple, no engraved embellishments like the original flute. It should be enough that the flute is made from a true golden jackal bone.

Everything has fallen into place for my rite of passage.

Everything except my courage.

“I can’t,” I tell the silver owl. I can’t kill a human being, even though the Chained are on a rampage in Dovré. Even though the Leurress need all the Ferriers they can get, and the savage graces of the jackal are diminishing my reservations to shed blood.

The owl drags her claws across the stones, and screeches.

“Why me?” I ask, even though some of the answer is obvious. As the heir to the matrone—as blood of her blood—I can open the Gates to the Underworld and Paradise. But to open the Gates, I need to be on the land bridge. And to be on the land bridge and survive the dead and the lure of the Beyond, I have to be a committed Ferrier. I have to complete my rite of passage.