Ascendant
Page 34
“My grandmother had this hanging over our mantel,” she said as she began to undo the bits of twine holding it together. “But I put it away in the attic when I redecorated. I think it belonged to that ancestor of ours. The Llewelyn.”
Marikka pulled back the linen coverings. Within lay a small horn bow, gray and shiny with age. Perhaps four feet long unstrung, with a slight recurve and a grip made of creamy wood worn to a shine.
“There were arrows once, too,” she said, “but I can’t remember where I put those.”
I reached out to touch the bow with trembling fingers. “It’s beautiful.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Marikka said. “I don’t like weapons very much. But here, look. It’s carved.” She turned the bow on its side and indeed, I could see a faded engraving curving down the inside of both limbs, the part that would face the hunter whenever she went to shoot.
ANIMAM COGNOSCERE ANIMALIS
“Do you know what it says?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes. It’s a prayer.” Or a wish, or maybe just a hope.
The hope I’d had when I stood on the side of the road in the Alps and watched my einhorns disappear forever. The prayer I’d murmured every night above Angel as he slept in the enclosure. The only thing I’d wanted since the moment I’d been forced to kill my first unicorn and known both that I’d had no choice and that I hated nothing more. It was the dream I hadn’t wanted to admit I’d held, the power I was just beginning to wield.
This was Clothilde’s bow. I had the whole set: knife, sword, bow. And now I knew why she made the choices she had. Now I knew why, despite my training, despite the danger, despite all the hideousness and savagery I’d somehow managed to survive, that I was making the same choices. There were two sides to being a unicorn hunter, two gifts that made up our magic, and neither should take precedence over the other.
DOMITARE UNICORNE INDOMITUM: To Vanquish the Savage Unicorn.
ANIMAM COGNOSCERE ANIMALIS: To Know the Soul of the Beast.
Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Ascendant
Copyright © 2010 by Diana Peterfreund
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01267-8
www.harperteen.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peterfreund, Diana.
Ascendant / Diana Peterfreund. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When sixteen-year-old Astrid Llewellyn, now a fully trained unicorn hunter, joins the quest to discover the Remedy at a laboratory in the French countryside, she begins to question her love for Giovanni, her loyalty to the Cloisters, and even her duty as a hunter.
ISBN 978-0-06-149002-6
[1. Unicorns—Fiction. 2. Hunting—Fiction.
3. Supernatural—Fiction. 4. Dating (Social customs) — Fiction. 5. France—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.P441545Asc 2010 2010003097
[Fic]—dc22 CIP
AC
Typography by Larissa Lawrynenko
10 11 12 13 14 CG /RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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