Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(90)

The door isn’t shut all the way. I can see about a foot-wide space around the center of the room, and a little more to the left and right if I angle my position.

The matrone is kneeling in the middle of the floor. She looks so small and vulnerable—she’s removed all her grace bones.

They’re laid around her in a circle: the claw-shaped pendant of an albino bear, as well as the talon-shaped pendant of an eagle owl; the tooth band of a whiptail stingray; the vertebrae of an asp viper; and the skull of a giant noctule bat. She spoke truthfully about her crow skull not being a grace bone, because it isn’t set out with the others; it’s still hanging around her neck.

Odiva’s eyes are closed, her arms outstretched, and her cupped palms turned downward—the strange way I saw her praying on the night of Ailesse’s failed rite of passage.

I study her straight and silky raven hair, her chalk-white skin, and vivid red lips. I look nothing like her. How can she be my mother?

But then, with my keen vision, I take a harder look. The slope between her neck and shoulders has the same curve as mine. Her eyes are black, not brown, but the shape is similar. Above all, her smooth hands are my hands, her long fingers my fingers. Even the way her smallest finger angles away from the others is a mirror of mine.

She opens her eyes. I startle and pull away from the door. Once my heart stops pounding, I tiptoe forward and peer inside again. There’s a bowl within the circle now. And a bone knife. This isn’t a prayer. It’s a ritual. And bone weapons are only used for sacrifices.

What does Odiva mean to sacrifice?

She picks up the knife, and I wince, watching her cut a line across her palm. I shouldn’t cringe.

This is a standard part of sacrificial rituals. I had to cut myself with the bones of the animals I killed, as well. If Ailesse had completed her rite of passage, she would have cut her own palm with her bone knife, wet with Bastien’s blood.

Odiva reaches into the bowl. She doesn’t retrieve an animal bone or any blood; instead, she pulls out a lock of auburn hair, tied together with a white string. I cover my mouth to hold back a gasp. Ailesse is the only Leurress in our famille with hair that color.

Odiva drips her blood over Ailesse’s hair.

A sick rush of dread fills my stomach. What is she doing? This could be a ceremony to honor my sister’s life—maybe Odiva regrets not saving her—but that doesn’t make any sense. Odiva’s grace bones are placed around her, just like Ailesse’s were placed at the foundations of Castelpont so the bridge could represent her body.

I break into a cold sweat. What I fear can’t be happening.

My mother can’t be capable of murdering her own child.

My legs shake. I’ve lost all feeling in my arms. I can’t raise my hand to push open the door.

But I have to. I have to stop this. I can’t let—

“This is my hair, Tyrus. This is blood I share with my mother.”

I flinch back slightly. That isn’t how a sacrificial prayer begins. That isn’t how any prayer begins.

“Hear my voice, Tyrus, my soul’s siren song. I am Ailesse, daughter of Odiva.”

My heartbeat slows. Odiva isn’t trying to kill Ailesse. She’s trying to represent her before the god of the Underworld. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t raise the timbre of her voice to sound like Ailesse. The blood and hair must be enough to appease Tyrus.

“I revoke my birthright, my claim as my mother’s heir.”

My eyes widen.

“My word is my bond. Let it be so.” She releases a heavy sigh, and her posture wilts. Tears stream down her face, and she runs her fingers along the lock of Ailesse’s hair. “There, Tyrus. The ritual is done.” She places the hair back in the bowl and clutches her bleeding hand to her chest.

“Let that satisfy you. I am speaking now as your servant Odiva. Accept my many sacrifices these past two years. Let them make amends for the two years I shared with my love.”

Heat burns through my face. I hate that I’m the offspring of her betrayal to the gods.

She opens her eyes, but keeps her head bowed. “I have given you the Light of thousands of Unchained souls, Tyrus, instead of ferrying them to Elara.”

A wave of dizziness slams into me. What did she just say?

“Now I ask you to honor your end of our bargain.” She swallows. “Release my love from the Underworld. Let him hear my siren song and become my true amouré. ”

I blink, trying to scatter the black spots in my vision. Am I really understanding her? Did my mother really make thousands of souls wrongfully suffer—for eternity—in order to resurrect my father and bind their lives together?

She strokes Ailesse’s hair again with trembling fingers. “As for the child of the man you and Elara chose for me, I have all but done away with her.” Her breath shudders. “I beg of you, Tyrus . . . please alter the requirement you first gave me. Do not make me kill my firstborn daughter.”

My ears start to ring. Bile scalds my throat. Just when I thought Ailesse might be safe from our mother—just when I had the tiniest measure of relief, knowing even though she lost her birthright, she hadn’t lost the power of her graces—I finally understand the depths of what Odiva has done, why she’s committed such terrible crimes against the Unchained.

She gave Tyrus everything she could think of, if it meant Ailesse might live—everything except retracting her bargain. And that’s the worst crime of all. Because I believe she’d kill my sister in the end, if it was the only way to bring my father back.