I sit down and pull out a knife to gut the fish, but not the one I meant to. I quickly sheathe it. Ailesse’s bone knife was made for one purpose only—to kill her amouré. I selfishly used it when I killed the nighthawk and stabbed the Chained man, but I won’t do so again.
I withdraw another knife. Just as I make a slice across the fish’s belly, I hear, “Hello, Sabine.”
I drop the fish. Whip out my knife. Point it across the stream. Spikes of adrenaline shoot through me. Odiva is standing there. My graced ears didn’t even hear her approach.
“You’ve cut yourself.” Her black eyes lower to my hand.
My stinging pain finally registers. A red gash on my palm is pooling blood.
“I will help you clean the wound,” Odiva says with a calmness I don’t trust. My heart drums as she slowly advances across a shallow part of the stream, and the hem of her sapphire-blue dress drags against the rocks in the water.
She joins me on the pebbled ground. I set down my knife with trembling fingers. I pray she won’t notice the new addition on my shoulder necklace among its shells, beads, and graceless shark teeth. But Odiva misses nothing.
“What is that pendant you are wearing?” She affects an indifferent tone, but a ragged edge of suspicion cuts through it.
“My new grace bone,” I confess. She must realize that much.
“It looks like Ailesse’s pendant,” she muses, wetting her bloodred lips as she traces the crescent moon I’ve carved from the golden jackal femur.
“I wanted it to match hers.” And I carved it into a pendant so the bone would be unrecognizable.
“I presume it’s not also from an alpine ibex.” Odiva arches a humored brow, but her eyes bore into me like the eyes of the Chained.
I force a thin smile. Why has she come here? Why isn’t she reprimanding me for running away? “No, I haven’t managed a journey to the northern mountains and back again in the last few days.”
“Of course you haven’t.” She takes my hand and dips it in the water. Her touch is gentle, but her sharp nails scrape against my wrist. “You’ve been wandering through the catacombs instead.”
My eyes fly up to meet her gaze. Cold sweat flashes across my skin.
“Your dress is covered in silt.” She answers my unspoken question.
My muscles tense with the urge to run, but there’s no use in denying where I’ve been. “I had to. I can’t bear to think of Ailesse down there. I’ve looked through so many tunnels and walked past so many bones—human bones.” I swallow and shake my head. “Maybe she isn’t down there. Bastien could have taken her into Dovré or sailed away on a ship with her and left Galle completely.”
Odiva holds my hand under the water. Blood swirls from my wound. “Three grace bones do not make you invincible, Sabine. You need to be careful.”
My defenses flare. Did she hear a word I said? Ailesse is the one she should be worried about.
“You’ve proven to be a good huntress over the past few weeks. The other Leurress should take note. The golden jackal still evades us.”
“No one’s found him?” My voice cracks, but I try my best to sound surprised.
“Not even his shadow.” Odiva’s eyes drift to the bubbling waterfall. “I was so certain Tyrus was ready for me to have him back.”
Back? I open my mouth to ask what she means, but then her eyes refocus and examine mine. Can she see through me to my deceitful heart? Can she smell the jackal’s carcass where I buried him in this very hollow?
“Let us hope we find him before the new moon. I have told you what the Chained will do if they are loose for too long.”
I shiver under her heavy stare. The full moon is in three days, which means the new moon is a little over two weeks away. I have that long to decide if I should ignore the silver owl’s warnings and dig up the jackal to take another femur bone. Odiva would still have time to carve a new flute.
She pulls a slim hunting pack off her shoulder and removes a rolled strip of cloth, an item any good huntress carries in case of wounds. “I have tracked you here for a solemn purpose, Sabine.”
Misgiving spools inside me. “Oh?”
She takes my hand again, dips it once more in the water, and begins to wrap it. “It is about Ailesse.”
All my nerves stand at attention. “Did you find her?”
Odiva’s eyes fill with sorrow—too late for me to believe. “You need to prepare yourself. I know how much you care for my daughter.”
But how much do you?
She sighs and looks down. “Ailesse is dead. I am sure of it this time.”
My hand tenses, but she doesn’t let it go.
“Tyrus gave me a sign.”
The god who won’t tell you where his jackal is?
“I trust him. The bond between a mother and a daughter carries a grace of its own. I’ve searched myself deeply, and my attachment to Ailesse is gone.”
Was there ever one to begin with?
Odiva finishes binding my hand. “I am sorry I had to be the one to tell you. I can see how shocking it is.”
“Yes.” My voice scratches on a whisper. Ailesse isn’t dead. I know it just like the first time Odiva spun this lie. If I look shocked, it’s because her heartlessness knows no end. Why is she so determined to abandon her daughter and the bone flute?
“I have grieved more than you know for Ailesse. Every Leurress in our famille has. But we must not fall into despair. The gods expect us to perform our duty, no matter our hardships. That is why they have intervened.”
What is she talking about? Perspiration trickles down the back of my neck as her grip subtly tightens.
She inhales a long breath through her nostrils and lifts her chin. “Tyrus has also given me another sign. He has chosen you to be my heir.”
I stare incredulously at her. “What?” I yank my hand away and scoot back. “No. Ailesse is your heir. She’s alive, Matrone. You can’t really believe—”
“You have to stop living in denial. You need to embrace your destiny.”
“My destiny?” A humorless laugh escapes me. “I never wanted to be a Ferrier. I didn’t even want these.” I tug at my grace bones.
“You are modest to a fault, Sabine. I see what you can become.” Her voice fills with urgency. “You need to see it, too. Once you complete your rite of passage—”
“No.” I stand and cover my ears. She can’t say things like this to me. It isn’t just a betrayal to Ailesse; it’s preposterous. “Heirs are always daughters.”
“Unless there are none.” She swiftly rises.
I stumble backward from her. “No one in our famille will accept me.”
“I’ll tell them what I told you: Tyrus gave me a sign.”
“Then he’s mistaken!” I fight to breathe. “I’m not qualified. Every Leurress is more talented. Everyone has better graces.” I was right—Odiva did want Ailesse to fail her rite of passage. She knew she’d be reckless, and she hoped she’d die without having to kill her directly. I just don’t understand why. Why does she want me instead?
“You have the bone of a black wolf, Sabine. That is nothing to be ashamed about. And when you become matrone, you can claim two more grace bones.”
My heart pounds out of my chest. I can’t listen to this. I have to get away from her. But she’s blocking my path out of the hollow. I turn and rush toward the other path. My feet splash through the stream. She catches my arm when I’m halfway across. I yank against her. “Let go!”
“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 ro
t 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 Château 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.”
I look at the woman kneeling before me. Her dress is waterlogged. All her pride is gone. Even her majestic grace bones can’t draw focus from the pent-up misery written across her face.
“I need you,” she says. “I’ve come to realize Tyrus will not lead me to the golden jackal if I do not have an heir.”
Why do I feel so much pressure to say yes? The golden jackal is already dead. If Tyrus really did give Odiva a sign about me, it’s because I’m the one person who knows where the jackal is. “How is this going to work?” I ask. “Will you tell our famille you’re my mother?” They’ll think it’s just as ridiculous as I do.
“I cannot do that. You must understand, Sabine. What Ferriers are tasked with demands great faith. I would destroy that faith if they knew what I had done.”
“So you’re asking me to keep this a secret, too?”
“I am. You must. The Leurress will not question my choice. How can they when I tell them Tyrus is honoring Ailesse by choosing her dearest friend to rule after me?”
Ailesse.
Warmth creeps back into my limbs and wends its way toward my heart. All the Leurress call each other sisters, but now Ailesse really is my sister. That’s the one truth I can embrace without flinching. It’s the only part of this revelation that feels right.
Odiva takes both of my hands. Her firm hold makes my sliced palm throb harder. “The plain truth is you are, by all rights, my next successor, Sabine—blood of my blood. You must accept your fate.”
I’m shaking from head to toe. How can she ask this of me? Ailesse is alive. Odiva must feel it as well as I do. She’s disowning her firstborn by doing this. That can’t only be because she loved my father more. She’s still hiding something. I need to find out what it is.
“Very well.” I can retract my words once I rescue Ailesse and return her to our famille. Then the game will be up. The proper heir will be home. “I accept it.”
Odiva beams and presses her cold lips to my cheek. “Now come home soon. You have obtained all your grace bones. There is nothing more for you out here.”
I give her a stiff nod, and she rises to her feet and leaves the hollow.
A few moments after she’s gone, a silent flash of wings catches the edge of my vision. The silver owl descends on the ground a few yards away, and my eyes fly wide.
She’s perched on the spot where I buried the golden jackal.
I rush over. “Move away!” I hiss, and glance over my shoulder. Luckily, Odiva hasn’t come back.
The silver owl pecks at the ground and stares up at me.
My stomach turns. “I’m not digging up the jackal.”
She releases the quietest rasp-screech. She’s aware of the matrone’s graced hearing, too.
This is ridiculous. The only reason to dig up the jackal would be . . . “Wait, so now you want me to take a bone for a new flute?”
She bobs her head.
I frown at her angled eyes. Why has the silver owl changed her mind?
Because now you’re the matrone’s heir, Sabine. And heirs can open the Gates of the Beyond.
All my nerves catch fire. “You want me to make a flute for myself?”
The owl hops close and combs her beak through my hair. I’m so startled she’s touching me—that she’s asking this of me—that all my muscles turn to ice. Even my heart seizes up. I’m not sure how many more revelations I can handle today.
The moment bloo
d pumps into my limbs again, I reach for the owl. “How can I—?”
She launches into the air. Her wings flutter against my face.
I gasp. “Wait!”
She soars out of the hollow, and my dazed eyes lower back to the earth over the jackal’s body.
Elara, I hope you know what you’re doing.
I inhale a deep breath.
And I start to dig.
36
Bastien
I DUCK INTO THE PERFUMERY by La Chaste Dame, and my head immediately aches. Too many fragrances fight for space in the air. How does Birdine stand it?
I spy the top of her head behind one of the counters. The afternoon sun slants in through a leaded window and catches the dust motes above her frizzy ginger hair. She hums a familiar love song as she kneels by a shelf and organizes a row of dark bottles.
I creep up and lean my folded arms against the counter. “How’s business?”
Birdine yelps and whirls around. Her hand flies to her chest, and she exhales roughly. “Merde, Bastien. You nearly stopped my heart.” She stands and smooths her apron. “Business is business. And, no, I haven’t seen Marcel.” She narrows her green eyes. “So stop pestering me.”
I’m not done yet. “Is that ink?” I nod at a stain on her left hand.
She hastily tucks it behind her back. “No. I just spilled some musk oil on myself.”
“What about that callus on your middle finger?”
She darts a glance at her other hand. “What about it?”
“It’s new. And curious thing, Marcel has one just like it.”
Birdine’s cheeks mottle red. “I have a right to practice scribe work on my own, thank you very much. It doesn’t mean anything shady.”
I level a hard gaze on her. “Give up the game, Birdie.” I deliberately use Marcel’s nickname for her. “You know where he is. Marcel wouldn’t have gone this long without figuring out a way to see you.”
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.
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