her people can’t find us.”
Sabine, who is ten feet from the border of the forest, freezes. Her pained eyes flash to Ailesse. Jules turns and considers me. I nod to show I’m serious. I’ll kill Ailesse, then hunt down her friend. But if Sabine manages to outrun me, we don’t have to worry.
Ailesse’s glare holds steady. “They’ll still find you.”
I snort. “Your people won’t stand a chance. I’ve lived on the streets of Dovré since I was a child. The best hideouts in the city and the places beneath it—they’re my territory.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she spits. “My famille doesn’t need my grace bones to track you. You and I are soul-bound. That’s enough.” She draws herself taller. Blood trickles down her neck from my blade. “You’re right that our magic lies in bones. I used them to summon you here. You came when you heard my song, and the gods let you because they chose you for me. Now your soul is mine in life and in death.” The mist rises behind her, clinging to her body. “If you kill me, you’ll die with me.”
My palms sweat. I tighten my grip on the knife. “Nice try, but you’re a terrible liar.”
I start to drive in my blade, but Jules shouts, “Bastien, wait! What if she’s right?”
“About what—that I can’t live without her?” I scoff. “You really believe that?”
“Think about it. What if that’s why my father died, because he was soul-bound to Ashena? She died soon after she left him—the witness told me so tonight. Her death might have set off his.”
I breathe harder, faster. Could I really be soul-bound to a Bone Crier? Waves of hot and cold crash through me. If Ailesse is telling the truth, she wouldn’t have been so scared of dying a moment ago. Then again, was she really so afraid? I caught that spark of confidence behind her terror.
Marcel doesn’t know everything.
Maybe I haven’t thought through every outcome tonight.
Now I’m the one who’s shaking. I need Ailesse’s death. The words sear inside me, and I press even closer to her. Her foot slips off the edge of the parapet. I catch her back. My blade wavers at her throat.
“Bastien, stop!” Jules cries.
“Shut up!”
I’ve planned for this moment for eight long years. It can’t end with letting her go.
“Are you about finished?” Marcel calls. Hazily through the mist, I see him lumber toward the bridge. At the same time, Sabine reaches the forest border behind him. Marcel doesn’t see her. He’s found his own path here through the trees. “I haven’t seen any soulmate,” he confesses, taking no pains to be quiet. “The man must live on an island. Either that or he’s as slow as molasses—or crystallized honey. That’s thicker.” He shuffles to a stop and takes in the three of us. Ailesse. Jules. Me. “Oh. Not finished, then.”
“The witness, Marcel!” Jules points wildly, unable to get to Sabine fast enough on her wounded leg. “Hurry! She’ll bring more of them. They’ll kill Bastien!”
Marcel wheels around and stares dumbly at Sabine, a few yards away from him. She’s bent over from another dizzy spell.
“Did you hear your friend?” Ailesse hisses in my ear. “He hasn’t seen another soulmate.” I turn to her, drawn to the gaping black of her pupils. “You are mine,” she says.
Faster than seems possible, Marcel drops his pack and pulls an arrow from his quiver.
Ailesse gasps. “No. Sabine, run!”
Sabine painstakingly lifts her head. She looks feral with a stripe of blood smeared down her face and over one eye.
Marcel strings his bow. His shoulders bunch up like he’s about to be sick.
“Run!” Ailesse shouts again.
Marcel startles and lets his arrow fly. It whizzes past Sabine, just shy of her head. She snatches something from a tree branch and rushes away. The forest swallows her from sight.
“Merde!” Jules buckles to the ground.
Ailesse’s spine relaxes under my fingers. Her gloating eyes flick back to me, and my jaw muscle clenches. Her friend is free, and now Ailesse thinks I won’t dare to slit her throat because we’re soul-bound. Or so she says. I’ll find out soon enough. Then I’ll make her suffer. She’ll beg me to end her life.
“You will die, Bone Crier.” My scathing tone cools to a deadly simmer. “Because you are mine.”
10
Sabine
I RACE INTO THE RUINS of Château Creux and past King Godart’s carved crest of the crow and the rose. Fire and ice chase through my veins with each thunderclap of my heart.
Ailesse is gone. Her amouré killed