She gives Pernelle a curt nod. “We hunt the jackal first. We are sacred Ferriers, and this is how Tyrus has chosen to help us take care of the dead. We must honor his wishes. Sometimes our loyalty must be tested again, even after our rites of passage.”
“Yes, Matrone.” Pernelle bows her head, but I can’t. My neck is stiff, and my head won’t bend. I can’t help thinking of Ailesse’s failed rite of passage. Odiva promised me the gods would protect her daughter. Now I wonder if she chose me to be Ailesse’s witness because she knew the gods wouldn’t—at least Tyrus wouldn’t—and I wouldn’t be strong enough to intervene.
Tyrus’s sign may be the golden jackal, but I’m starting to suspect the silver owl is Elara’s. If the goddess sent her owl to attack Odiva, then she doesn’t want Odiva to take the jackal’s life.
“Our plan remains the same,” Odiva tells the Ferriers. “Should any of you find the jackal before I do, capture it but do not kill it. As Matrone, I must be the one to make the sacrifice.”
Maurille squints at Odiva with her good eye. The other one has swollen shut from the blow she took tonight. “Forgive me, Matrone, but Ailesse already has a working bone flute.” Exactly. None of this is necessary. “Perhaps a few of us should search for her, as Pernelle suggested, while the others pursue the golden jackal. Surely Tyrus would understand our wish to work toward all options.”
Odiva remains perfectly still, except for a thin smile, while her gaze narrows on Maurille. “Then you do not understand Tyrus at all. Fortunately for our famille, I do. The god of the Underworld is a jealous and exacting god. If we do not demonstrate our full allegiance, do you really believe he will lead us to his jackal?”
Maurille slowly shakes her head and casts me an apologetic glance.
Odiva looks around at the others. “Does anyone else care to speak a contrary word, or can we agree to submit to the path Tyrus has shown us?”
More heads lower in obedience. I only lower my eyes.
Odiva exhales. “Good. Let us go home, then, and recover our strength for tomorrow.”
Go home? When Ailesse is known to be alive and missing? When the dead are loose and set upon Dovré?
Odiva never knew how to be a mother, and now she’s forgotten her priorities as our matrone.
She walks close beside me as we head back for Château Creux. My heart won’t stop pounding. I feel like I’m already in a cage, unable to run from her presence. By now, Ailesse could be anywhere in South Galle. I’m frantic to give her back her ritual knife. The more desperate I become to save her, the easier it is to stomach the thought of her killing Bastien.
“I feel your disappointment,” Odiva says. My skin crawls when I meet her probing black eyes. “I had such high hopes for your first experience at the soul bridge. It should have brought you joy, not grief.”
I don’t know how to respond. “Joy” is the last word I’d have used to describe ferrying.
“I would like to think that even Ailesse would have been happy for you when . . .” A faint blush sweeps across her pale skin. She looks radiant for a moment, warm and full of feeling.
“When what?” I ask.
Her raven brows pull inward as she searches my eyes. Her mouth opens, struggling to form words, then shuts tight again. She exhales through her nostrils and walks onward, looking away from me. Her ceremonial dress trails through the wild grass. “When you would have seen the great Gates of the Beyond,” she finally answers, a forced lightness in her voice.
Another lie. Another cover-up for secrets. My throat burns, but I’m tired of swallowing down the bitterness. I’m done shrinking from my matrone and accepting every excuse that falls from her lips. “Does that necklace you wear help you ferry the dead when the Gates do open?” I ask, my pulse racing from my boldness.
Odiva touches the three rows of her grace bone necklace and frowns. “Which bones do you mean, the bear’s or the stingray’s? They both help me ferry.”
“I mean your other grace bone—that bird skull you keep hidden under the neckline of your dress.”
Odiva freezes. Any color that remained in her cheeks drains away. “Go,” she tells the Ferriers following us. Her voice is strained, though she affects a calm smile. “We will meet you at home shortly.”
As they walk past, Odiva moves off the path and wraps her arms around herself. Pernelle shoots me an inquisitive look. Maurille squeezes my hand. I shrug at them like I don’t know why Odiva wants to talk privately with me. Like I didn’t just confront her with the crime of owning another grace bone. She already has five. A sixth is an offense to the gods and the sanctity of an animal’s life. Still, my limbs shake when Odiva returns to me after the Ferriers are gone. Her expression is eerily calm and resigned.
“This is not a grace bone.” Odiva withdraws the hidden necklace, and the ruby in the mouth of the bird skull glints in the sunlight. “It was a gift from my beloved.”
My lips part. I take a closer look at the skull. The bill is black and a little smaller than a raven’s but stouter than a rook’s. “Why would your amouré give you a crow skull?”
She grins at me, and my scalp prickles with uneasiness. “I see nothing escapes your notice, Sabine.” Her feather epaulettes rustle as she lifts a shoulder. “I suppose my love knew I had an affinity for bones.”
“You didn’t hide them from him?” A Leurress is supposed to put away her grace bones when she spends a year with her amouré.
“He was exceptional. He accepted me for what I was. He loved me without fear.”
I eye the ruby again. He was also wealthy and clearly powerful if he could be that kind of match to Odiva. “Then why do you keep his gift a secret? Ailesse would want to know that her father—”
“Enough about Ailesse,” Odiva snaps. I stagger back a step at her burst of frustration. She shoves the crow skull back under the neckline of her dress. “Not everything must be divulged, Sabine. Love is sacred. Private.”
I stare incredulously at her. She was the first to mention Ailesse a moment ago. But all Odiva’s warmth is gone now. I suddenly recall what she confessed after I killed the nighthawk. I was too distraught to give her words much weight, but now they tear through my mind: That does not mean I loved him. She was speaking of her amouré.
But then who gave her the necklace?
A small movement draws my keen eye to where the forest meets the plateau. There, perched on a low-lying branch of an ash tree, almost as if she’s heard my thoughts, is the silver owl.
A breath of hope fills my chest. The owl is a reminder of Ailesse. Odiva may have turned her back on her daughter, but Elara hasn’t forgotten.
The owl will lead me to her, just like she led me to the catacombs.
Odiva turns to follow my gaze. Once she sees the owl, she stifles a gasp.
I dash away toward the forest.
“Sabine,” Odiva calls after me. “Where are you going? I have told all the Ferriers to return to Château Creux.”
“I’m not a Ferrier,” I shout back. “But if you want me to be, you’ll let me hunt.”
“You need your rest.”
“I need a third grace bone. I’ll come home once I have it.” And once I’ve saved Ailesse.
I cast a fleeting glance over my shoulder, but my matrone isn’t racing after me. She stands frozen on the path, one pale hand on the claw marks the owl gave her.
When I reach the tree line, the owl flutters away. I pursue her deeper into the forest. Just like before, she lands within sight, and once I catch up, she flies off again. I grin, running faster.
We play this game, mile after mile. I pay little attention to my surroundings; I focus all my attention on keeping the owl’s gilded feathers in sight. But once I cross a thoroughfare to Dovré and spy a bridge twenty feet ahead, I stumble to a sudden stop. This bridge is made of stone and has a high arch and a dry riverbed beneath. It’s within view of Beau Palais, which looks down on the bridge from the highest hill in Dovré.
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 Château 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 Gaëlle, 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.”
My brows twitch. I’m openly staring at her. Did she just admit a pivotal event of her life could be wrong? “If you pray hard enough, do you think you can break our bond?”
She cracks the smallest smile. “So you believe the gods should be worshipped, after all?”
“Depends.” I suppress a grin.
Her shoulders shake with silent laughter, but then her expression falls. “Our bond is already set in motion, Bastien. Praying can’t break the inevitable outcome.”
“Is it really inevitable?” I scoot closer. “I mean, if we protect each other—and promise not to kill each other—then we’ll both come out of this alive and kicking, whether we’re soul-bound or not.”
She tugs on a thread of her ruined dress. “Actually, the outcome is more complicated than that.”
“How?”
“Once an amouré is claimed, his life is forfeit.”
“Claimed . . . as in killed?”
“No, claimed from the moment the siren song calls him to the bridge.”
My throat closes on a forced laugh. “Well, I’m still living, right?”
She swallows. “For now.”
“What do you mean?”
Ailesse tips her head back, like she’s staring at a sky I can’t see. “You have one year, Bastien.” Her chest sinks in. “If I don’t complete the ritual before then, you’ll die regardless. The gods always find a way.”
I grow silent for a moment, thinking about how Jules and Marcel’s father died. “And how are you punished if you fail?”
She draws a long breath and holds my gaze. “The gods find a way to kill me, too.”
My heart struggles to beat. “What kind of raw deal is that?”
Ailesse looks down at her hands. “No worse than the fate of Tyrus and Elara, I suppose.”
“What, eternal glory?” I scoff.
“They have suffered, too. They married in secret when the world was formed. Belin and Gaëlle forbade their kingdoms to join, but Tyrus and Elara wanted to be together. When Belin found out, he cast Heaven into the night sky, and Gaëlle opened the earth to swallow Hell. Tyrus and Elara have never been able to be together since.”
“So let me get this straight. They want you to feel their pain?”
“Or they want us to learn how to overcome it. Maybe it would show them how.”
I rub a hand over my face and push up to my feet. I have to get out of here. I can’t listen to stories of gods that punish mortals because they can’t figure out their own problems. “Stay here and rest,
all right? I’m going to find Jules and Marcel and get back your bones.”
“And the flute?”
I nod. “See you soon.”
She fists her hands. “I can’t stay down here for long, Bastien. I won’t. I’m a Leurress. It’s my job to protect people from the dead.”
“I know.”
But I have a job, too. And right now it’s to protect her. She’ll be able to defend herself best if she has her graces back. “Stay, Ailesse. I won’t be long.”
32
Ailesse
I PACE AT THE EDGE of the pit. I imagine I still have my tiger shark vision to see in the dark and the eyesight of my peregrine falcon to perceive what’s far ahead of me. Maybe then the weak light of my lantern would be enough to illuminate the limestone quarry at the open end of this room that I share with Bastien. But then again, if I had my graces, I wouldn’t be hiding down here, waiting for him with all my nerves strung taut. I don’t know how long he’s been gone—I can’t tell how long I slept—but I’ve been awake for at least ten hours.
What if one of the Chained attacked Bastien and that’s why he hasn’t come back? My stomach twists into a tight knot. I can’t stay here any longer.
I grab the lantern and hurry over to the scaffolding. My legs shake like brittle autumn leaves as I climb. I grit my teeth and push past my weakness. If the moon was full last night, it would have filled me with a greater well of Elara’s Light, but the strength I felt under the stars is gone, as well as the strength from my grace bones. No matter. If I killed the tiger shark after almost drowning in the lagoon, I’ll find the stamina to fight the dead.
There are only a few branching tunnels down here, nothing like the catacombs maze that led off the ravine. I hold my breath when I pass a section lined with bones. Soon enough, I find the door to the chapel cellar. I climb the ladder, open up the hatch, and shove the tattered rug aside.
Once I’m out, I lean against the altar for a moment. I’m already out of breath. Not a good sign. I glance around the chapel’s interior, and my gaze rivets to several boarded-up arched windows. The muted light from the heavens funnels inside through the slats. It’s nighttime. My heart pounds. I need that energy.
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