Ailesse falls quiet, searching my eyes. “But you’re the one meant for me. I’ll never love anyone else. Why would the gods—?” She tosses a scathing look over her shoulder at the only visible Gate.
“The gods have nothing to do with us.” All I want is to hold her and kiss her and convince her I’m right. “We don’t have to play their game.” Is she listening? She hasn’t turned back to face me.
“How can you affirm this boy is Ailesse’s amouré?” Odiva asks Sabine. She’s already looking at him with more approval than me.
Sabine doesn’t answer. She stares between me and Ailesse in disbelief.
“Sabine,” Odiva says pointedly.
She blinks twice. Clears her throat. “Cas, he . . . he heard Ailesse’s song during the last full moon. He caught a glimpse of her as she was stolen away, and he’s been searching for her ever since. I found him at Castelpont tonight.”
Cas’s mouth parts like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t, not with Sabine’s knife at his throat. I take a harder look at him. He’s vaguely familiar. It doesn’t matter. I hate him. I don’t care that he’s done nothing wrong.
Odiva studies Sabine. Then, all at once, she releases her hold on the knife. Ailesse and I stumble backward and fall onto the bridge. I groan. My body can’t take another beating tonight. I reach over to help her to her feet, but she bats my hand away. Her eyes are latched on to the Gate. She pulls up by herself.
Merde. Not again.
“Ailesse, wait!” I stand as she drifts toward it. “We’re free now. You can’t listen to—!”
A bright burst of pain strikes me in the back. A strangled cry rips out of me.
Ailesse finally spins around. Her eyes flare in shock. “Bastien!”
My legs give out. My body slams onto the bridge.
Ailesse is at my side the next instant. She falls to her knees and feels my back with shaking hands. “No, no, no . . . Bastien . . .” Hazily, I see her beautiful face. Tears pour down her cheeks. She pulls her hands away. They’re covered in blood. My blood. She sobs harder. “Don’t go, Bastien. Stay with me.”
Nausea grips my stomach. I writhe and choke for air. I can’t think past the burning pain.
Ailesse reaches around me. I cry out as something sharp tears from my back. My vision rocks. Its hilt. Its unwieldy blade.
My father’s knife. Odiva stabbed me with it.
52
Ailesse
I DROP THE KNIFE, AND it clatters on the bridge. I gape as Bastien bleeds out faster. I shouldn’t have pulled out the blade. I lean over him and kiss his brow again and again. I smooth his hair, forgetting my bloody hands. Tears flood my vision. “You’re going to be fine,” I promise. He looks anything but fine. His skin is as pale as the limestone beneath him. Tremors lurch through his body.
He fights to speak. “Ailesse . . .” His eyes start to roll back.
“Bastien!” I hold his face. “Stay with me! Please!”
His muscles go limp. His eyes shut.
“No, no, no.” This can’t be happening. I kiss his lips. He doesn’t kiss me back. My head falls onto his chest, and I clutch him tighter. I can’t breathe. Broken sobs won’t let me. “How could you?” I shout at my mother.
She sweeps closer, glancing at Bastien with false pity. “Because this time I knew you would not die if I killed him.”
I’m so horrified I can’t speak.
“Sabine, bring Ailesse her true amouré.” My mother stands tall. “Ailesse has a rite of passage to complete.”
Sabine’s mouth falls open. She doesn’t move. I balk at my mother. How can she even suggest such a thing right now? Bastien is dead. Soon I’ll see his soul and have to say my final goodbye—because of her.
A wildfire of rage ignites in my veins. I grab the knife and jump to my feet. I race toward her, my pulse pounding in my ears.
My mother holds up her hand. “Ailesse, think—”
“I hate you!” I swing the knife. She leaps over me. “Nothing excuses what you’ve done!”
She ducks my next attack. “One day you will understand. It was better to break your heart.”
Her cruelty is revolting. “Because my heart means nothing to you?” I slash out again. She sidesteps me.
“Don’t be irrational. I told you, I love—”
“Love isn’t love if you never show it.” I lunge at her. She strikes my forearm. My hand whips back from the force, but I keep hold of my knife. I swing for her again.
“Stop!” She kicks my legs out from beneath me. I tumble to the ground and slide to the edge of the bridge. I barely catch myself from falling off.
“I did what I had to.” My mother sweeps a loose hair off her face. “You were never meant to feel my anger.”
I scoff. “Were you so upset I wasn’t good enough for you?”
“No, Ailesse.” Her tone grows impatient. “I was angry with the gods. You were a constant reminder of what they stole from me.”
Furious tears scald my cheeks. This is why she’s been indifferent to me all my life? Because she loved another man instead of my father? I’m on my feet before I know it, faster than my mother for once. When I slash my knife out again, it cuts a deep line across her arm.
She sucks in a harsh breath and reflexively slaps my face. Hard. Stars burst before my eyes. I bend over, reeling.
“Stop it! Both of you!” Sabine shouts. Dazed, I turn my eyes to her. She’s still on the ledge and holding Cas at knifepoint. “Ailesse, she’s our mother.”
I blink at her. What did she say? Dizziness racks my head. My ears are playing tricks on me.
“No!” Sabine cries a warning. Sharp pain lashes across the nape of my neck.
Acute weakness overcomes me. I stagger on my feet. My hand flies to my collarbone.
The pouch with my grace bones is gone.
“I am sorry.” My mother wraps the pouch’s cord around her hand, then steals my knife while I gape in shock—Bastien’s father’s knife. “I know of no other way to calm you. You are not yourself.”
I lunge to grab back my weapons, but my knees buckle. I crash to the ground. My muscles shake from the strain of all my fighting tonight.
My mother drops the knife and kicks it backward. It spins toward Bastien’s lifeless body and the blood pooling beneath him. My throat tightens as I hold back another sob. I need to ferry him to Paradise. His soul will rise at any moment.
“You must understand, Ailesse.” Odiva kneels before me. “I was bound by a pact I made with Tyrus. I have tried my best to protect you, but he demanded terrible sacrifices of me.”
My eyes water. “And am I one of them?”
She presses her lips together.
“Am I?” My heart struggles to beat. “Did Tyrus ask you to kill me?”
Her chin quivers. “Yes.”
“Oh, Ailesse . . .” Sabine’s voice carries my heartbreak.
I squeeze my eyes shut against deep-rooted pain. My darkest fears hiss through my mind:
You’ve never been enough for your mother. She doesn’t need you.
I grind my teeth together. No. I refuse to listen to that voice any longer. I won’t be a vessel for poison. I open my eyes and stare back into my mother’s wretched gaze. Her hypocrisy is astounding. She’s made me suffer because the gods stole her love, but she did the same thing by killing Bastien. I won’t let her take away anything more from me.
With great effort, I rise to my feet. I steady my shaking legs. I have strength of my own. I’ll use it without seeking to impress my mother. Without leaning on the graces I earned to make her believe in me.
A silver owl swoops in through the rift in the ceiling and circles around me. Her outspread wings shine in the light of the full moon.
I hear Sabine gasp. My mother’s pale skin turns ash gray.
Confidence steels bone-deep inside me. I haven’t seen the owl since she showed me a vision of Sabine before the last ferrying night. She’s a sign of hope.
I roll my shoulde
rs back. I’ll avenge you, Bastien.
I’ll avenge myself.
A sudden rush of adrenaline shivers through me. My hands tighten into fists. I slowly stalk toward my mother. “Get up if you dare to fight me.”
She frowns. “Don’t be absurd.” She rises, and we stand face-to-face. “You have no chance to defeat me. Do not harm yourself by trying.”
There she goes again, doubting me, trying to make me feel inferior. She’s unprepared when I shove her with surprising strength.
She stumbles back and glances at the pouch in her hand with my grace bones. Her eyes grow wide. “How are you doing this?”
I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s the silver owl. Maybe it’s Elara’s Light from the full moon pulsing stronger than ever inside me. Maybe it’s years of pent-up rage and heartache. “Was Bastien your sacrifice, too,” I demand, “or just a needless death?” I drive my palm into her collarbone. Her bear claw necklace stabs her skin. She’s thrown back another three feet, still blinded by shock.
“You also wanted to kill Bastien once,” she replies.
“Because you taught me there was no other way.”
This time my mother is ready when I charge at her. Her leg swings out with a vicious kick. I grab her calf before she strikes me, and twist hard. She flips over, and her stomach slaps the bridge.
The silver owl shrieks above me. It sounds like approval. Even Sabine doesn’t cry for me to stop.
I stand over my mother. She scoots away, gripping her leg. “Killing me will not bring Bastien back to you,” she says. “You will never know what tenacity that requires.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I tell her, my voice sure and strong. “I’m going to take every grace bone you wear and cast them into the abyss. You’ll never have power to hurt anyone again.”
She swallows as I reach for her skull-and-vertebrae crown. “Wait! This is not necessary, Ailesse.” She rises swiftly, keeping her weight off her injured leg. She glances behind her. The black dust is thinning. Her eyes fill with panic. “He hasn’t come,” she murmurs. “Tyrus still needs a sacrifice.”
I harden my stare, daring her to try to send me through his Gate.
She gasps, suddenly looking past me. “Release Sabine at once!”
My heart pounds. I spin back. But Cas isn’t threatening Sabine. She still has him in a firm grip and looks as confused as I am.
A sharp tug on my dress pocket jerks me off balance. I turn back around, and my mother grabs my shoulders.
“No!”
She hurls me backward several feet—but farther away from the Gate, not closer to it. My back strikes the bridge. My shoulder blade throbs as I lift my head and tense for another attack. But my mother doesn’t move.
The bone flute is in her hands.
“I am sorry, Ailesse.” Her black eyes shine with remorse, but her face is as hard as ice. She drops the pouch with my grace bones and races away, despite her injured ankle. She darts past Bastien and rushes toward the last swirling particles of Tyrus’s Gate.
My breath catches. “Mother, no!” I spring up and bolt after her, my blood on fire.
The Gate is closing, but the siren song swells. I stiffen every muscle and cast up a wall against the lure of the Underworld. My heart twinges when I jump over Bastien’s prostrate body, but I barrel onward, my speed blazing faster than ever. My mother is quickly within reach.
My arm stretches out for her. “Please, don’t do this!” I shouldn’t care if she leaves me—if she sacrifices herself for someone she loves stronger. But I do. Elara help me, I do.
I can’t grab her in time. She pushes off the ground in a tremendous leap. Her hair is a river of darkness as she flies. Through the air. Through the dust. Through the Gate.
Dust blasts apart like she’s broken through glass. It doesn’t re-form into an arched door. It falls into the abyss in a rush of glittering black.
I crumple to my knees. “Mother!”
53
Sabine
I STARE AT THE WALL where the black dust swirled a moment ago. The shimmer of Elara’s Gate has also vanished. My knife trembles against Casimir’s neck. I can’t release him, not even to wipe my tears. Mother. How can I feel such terrible heaviness? All my life, Odiva held a strong attachment to me. I never understood why—not until three days ago. There wasn’t enough time to grow to hate her . . . or find a deeper place in my heart for her. And now she’s gone, her last sacrifice in vain.
Ailesse slowly turns from the wall. One of her hands grips a fistful of hair at her scalp; the other hangs lifelessly at her side. Our eyes meet. I see her chin wobble. I ache to run across the bridge and let her cry on my shoulder.
“Let me go to her,” Cas pleads, despite all the inexplicable things he’s seen tonight. “Let me comfort her.”
Before I can threaten him to keep quiet, Ailesse sighs and her eyes flutter closed. “Oh, Sabine . . . why did you bring him here?” No anger rakes across her quiet voice, just overwhelming fatigue. “Please, just take him away.”
I frown. She wants me to leave? “But—”
She looks at Bastien and crumples to the ground, sobbing with fresh pain. “My mother killed him when she found out he wasn’t my . . .” She buries her head in her hands, refusing to say “amouré.”
Does she think Bastien’s death is my fault? My chest burns with a sting of betrayal. “You have no idea how hard I’ve fought to . . .” I clamp my mouth shut and take a moment to rein in my frustration. “All I wanted to do was save you, Ailesse. I’ve been trying to save you since the night you were captured. I didn’t know you’d had a change of heart.”
She lifts her gaze to me. Her eyes are red. “Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault, Sabine.” But it is, even though I never meant to hurt her. “I know you were trying to save me. Somehow I . . . I saw you.” Her brow wrinkles. “It was like a dream. You gave me hope when I needed it.” Her mouth trembles into a smile. It’s small and fleeting, but genuinely grateful. It eases the tightness in my chest.
Cas draws breath like he’s going to say something, but I press my blade closer against his neck.
I don’t know what to do about him anymore. If I let him go, Ailesse will still have to track him down later. “I realize this is a difficult time for you,” I say tentatively, “but we need to take care of Cas—Casimir,” I correct myself. I don’t want her thinking I’m on casual terms with him. “This is your ritual knife,” I add.
The pulse at Cas’s throat jumps, vibrating along the bone blade. He grapples with the hilt to yank it away, but he can’t outmatch my strength.
Ailesse isn’t listening anymore. She stares at my shoulder necklace—her necklace. The golden jackal pendant suddenly weighs heavy. “You completed your rite of passage?” she asks. Disappointment etches across her face. Is she jealous? She’s never been jealous of me. “You really killed your amouré?”
“No!” The thought is revolting, although I came close to killing hers. Now I wish I had.
She bites her quivering lip. “Then you’ve never met the person you’re meant to love. Even if he wasn’t chosen for you.” She swipes away more tears. “I wish . . .” Her voice cracks. “I wish you could understand my loss. I need you, Sabine. I don’t know how I can bear this alone.”
My eyes blur as her tears stream faster. “You’re not alone,” I say gently, and wrench Cas’s arm behind his back. “I do understand. It took everything in me to believe you weren’t dead when Odiva told me you were.”
Lines pinch between Ailesse’s brows. “What?”
All the emotions that churned inside me over the past month return in full force. I fight to hold them back, even though Ailesse has always been the one to console me.
She shakes her head. “Oh, Sabine . . . I’m so sorry she hurt you like that.” She doesn’t mention how badly my words must be hurting her, too.
“My love for you may not be the love you’re talking about,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean i
t’s any less powerful.” I take a steadying breath. “We’re sisters, Ailesse.”
She draws back. Studies me gravely. “What are you talking about?”
I lift a shoulder and try to smile. “Well, we do have different fathers.”
A small laugh escapes her. “That isn’t possible,” she says, but I see her pain cut deeper as the truth settles. I silently curse myself. Why did I think this news might be comforting?
A quiet sound comes from the center of the bridge. A noise of pain.
Ailesse tenses in disbelief. Then her gaze floods with hope. “Bastien!”
She darts up and runs for him without watching her footing. Tiny fissures crack beneath her.
His eyes peel open. He rolls his head to see her.
The limestone groans. The fissures lengthen. Widen.
My heart rises up my throat. “Ailesse, move!”
She looks down. A deep clap of thunder rumbles. But there’s no lightning.
The side of the bridge breaks away—a foot-wide sliver down the length of it.
Ailesse falls.
“No!” I cry.
I release Casimir and sprint as fast as I can. Bastien crawls for Ailesse, rasping her name.
She catches herself on a rough handhold off the side of the bridge. I drop the ritual knife and snatch up the pouch with her grace bones. I don’t stop running. The strange energy Ailesse had when she fought our mother is gone.
She drags her upper body over the edge of the bridge and braces herself on her elbows. She shakes, hanging by her folded arms. Her jaw is set. Her eyes are riveted on Bastien’s.
Crack!
A two-foot chunk of limestone splits away from the bridge. It crashes against Ailesse’s leg, and she screams. Her arms scrape and slide off the edge. By some miracle, her hands find purchase. She clings on by her fingers.
Blood rushes through my head. “Don’t let go!”
Someone yanks Ailesse’s pouch from my grip. I spin around and face Cas. His sword is drawn and dangerously close to my chest. “Are you going to steal this like her mother did?”
“Give those back! The bones strengthen her.”
Bone Crier's Moon Page 33
