Ailesse looks at me for a long moment. I hate myself for turning away the most generous gift she’s ever offered to me. “Don’t be sorry.” She manages a small smile as her teeth chatter. “We’ll find you another grace bone when you’re ready.”
With a sure grip on her knife, Ailesse descends below.
2
Ailesse
THE CHILL OF CHÂTEAU CREUX brushes my skin as Sabine and I walk down its crumbling stone staircase and through the entrance of the ancient castle’s ruins. Long ago, the first king of South Galle built this fortress, and his descendants ruled here until the last of his line, King Godart, died an unnatural death. The locals believe he still haunts these grounds. Sabine and I hear them speak of the old days as they travel the rutted roads outside the city walls. They don’t see us perch in the trees or hide in the tall grass. But we don’t have to hide near Château Creux. The locals never venture here. They believe this place is cursed. The first king worshipped the old gods—our gods—and the people do their best to pretend Tyrus and Elara never existed.
My bandaged hand burns and throbs. I accidentally sliced my palm with my ritual knife when I sawed off the shark’s fin. I’m still upset with myself for its drawn-out death. I feared the gods wouldn’t find the kill honorable, but they must have; I received the shark’s graces when I chose a bone and pressed it into the blood of my wounded hand.
At my side, Sabine totes a sack of shark meat over her shoulder. She grips the cinched rope with ease. Her injuries from the coral reef have almost healed. She dismisses her salamander skull as a pitiful grace bone, but it was a clever choice. What she really regrets is killing the creature. One day she will see she is meant for this life. I know Sabine better than she knows herself.
We duck under fallen beams and a collapsed archway. The Leurress could fortify the castle if my mother so desired, but she prefers it to look desolate and disturbing. If our home were beautiful, it would attract people. And a Leurress should only attract someone once in her life.
I adjust my shoulder necklace and trace the largest shark tooth, my newest grace bone. The other teeth are only ornamental, but they’ll make me look formidable when I ferry the dead. After my rite of passage, I can finally join the Ferriers in their dangerous work.
“Are you nervous?” Sabine asks me.
“Why should I be?” I flash her a smile, though my heart drums. My mother will approve of my kill. I’m just as clever as Sabine.
My friend’s presence behind me tickles my spine. Now she’s ten feet away. Eight feet. Seven. As the vibrations grow stronger, the sixth sense I wanted so badly begins to annoy me. I prance farther ahead so Sabine can’t see the frustration on my face. If she thinks I’m nervous, she’ll be nervous, too.
We descend to a lower level of the château, then plunge deeper. The manmade stone corridors, carved with King Godart’s crest of the crow and the rose, give way to tunnels shaped by tides of the sea. No water remains here, but pearlescent shells shimmer, embedded in the walls like ghosts clinging to the past.
Soon the tunnel opens to an enormous cavern. I blink against the sunlight bouncing off the limestone ground. A magnificent tower used to rise above this place, but it couldn’t withstand the gales of the sea. After Godart died, the tower fell. It crushed and demolished the cavern ceiling. The Leurress chose this château as our home for that very reason. A clear view of the skies is necessary. Half our power comes from the bones of the dead, but the other half flows from Elara’s Night Heavens. Our strength diminishes if we spend too long sheltered away from the goddess’s moon and starlight.
Twenty or so women and girls mill about the cavern, the vast space we call the courtyard. Vivienne carries a freshly tanned deer hide. Élodie hangs rows of dipped candles on a rack to harden. Isla weaves white ceremonial cloth on her loom. Little Felise and Lisette carry baskets of garments to be washed. Two of the elders, Roxane and Pernelle, are off in a corner, training with their quarterstaves. The rest of the Leurress must be hunting for meat, gathering berries and herbs, or tending to chores within the depths of the château.
Isla moves away from her weaving loom and steps in my path. Her ginger brows lower as she scrutinizes my shoulder necklace. I purse my lips to keep from smiling. She can’t identify the beast I killed from its teeth. “I see you’ve had a successful hunt,” she says. “It certainly took you long enough. You girls have been gone almost a fortnight.”
Girls, she calls us with her nose in the air. She’s only three years older than me and four years older than Sabine. Isla completed her rite of passage when she was eighteen, but I’ll do so in my seventeenth year—and with better graces.
I thrust my shoulders back. Until now, no Leurress has ever killed a shark. Probably because they never had help from a friend like Sabine. “The hunt was exceptional,” I reply. “And more so because we took our time.”
Sabine sneaks a wry glance at me. We were really gone so long because I kept changing my mind. I needed an awe-inspiring grace bone to complete my set of three and rival my mother’s five—which only a matrone is allowed.
Isla wrinkles her nose at Sabine’s sack of raw meat. The stink is terrible. After I greet my mother, I’ll wash the scent out of Sabine’s dress. That’s the least I can do. She insisted on carrying the meat because of my wounded hand, but I know she won’t eat it with the rest of us.
“Another long trek with Ailesse and no new grace bones?” Isla’s eyes drop to Sabine’s salamander skull.
My teeth grind together. “Do you wish you could have come in her place, Isla?” I turn to Sabine. “Tell her how much you enjoyed wrestling a tiger shark.” My raised voice echoes through the courtyard and turns heads.
Sabine lifts her chin. “I’ve never had a more pleasurable swim in the sea.”
I hold back a snort and link arms with her. We leave behind a speechless Isla as the women of our famille flock to us in a flurry of gasps, congratulations, and embraces.
Hyacinthe, the oldest Leurress, takes my face in her aged hands. Her milky eyes twinkle. “You have your mother’s fierceness.”
“I will be the judge of that.” Odiva’s silky voice ripples with authority, and I temper my smile. The women clear a path for the matrone, but when Sabine moves to do so, I touch her arm and she stays with me. She knows I’m stronger with her by my side. “Mother,” I say, and bow my head.
Odiva glides forward, her huntress feet silent on the stone floor. Dust motes sparkle about her sapphire dress like stars in the sky. What’s more breathtaking are her grace bones. The bone pendant of an albino bear, carved in the shape of a claw, dangles among the bear’s real claws on her three-tier necklace, along with the tooth band of a whiptail stingray. Talons and feathers from an eagle owl form epaulettes on her shoulders. One of the talons is also carved from bone, like the bear claw pendant. And then there’s my mother’s crown, crafted from the vertebrae of an asp viper and the skull of a giant noctule bat. The bones are offset by her raven hair and chalk-white skin.
I hold my posture to perfection while her black eyes drop to my necklace. She slips a finger under the largest tooth. “What graces did you gain from a tiger shark that were worth endangering yourself to such a degree?” She speaks in a casual manner, but her red lips tighten with disapproval. Her famille—the only famille in this region of Galle—has dwindled over the years to forty-seven women and girls. While we seek the best graces, the hunt to obtain them shouldn’t compromise our lives.