nostrils flare. She takes a step toward me. I take a step toward her.
She’s facing the chasm. My back is to it. One sharp kick, and she could send me to my death. I quickly step aside. Ailesse’s breath catches as she stares across the pit. I jerk around to follow her gaze. In the distance, just past the last of the six torches, a dim figure appears.
The queen.
I react on instinct. Withdraw my knife. Grab Ailesse. Hold her against me on the ledge, her back to my chest, my blade to her throat.
The queen sweeps into the amber glow of the torchlight and stalks forward. Four attendants flank her. I only spare them a brief glance. I can’t tear my focus from Ailesse’s mother, the most formidable woman I’ve ever seen.
More torchlight shines on her as she draws closer. Her dress is waterlogged with the catacombs’ silt, but it only makes her look more threateningly beautiful. Light-headedness rushes through me. She’s almost lovelier than her daughter—except in a severe and opposing way. Stark-white skin and raven hair. Black eyes and bloodred lips. Smooth cheeks and a sharp jawline. I make a quick study of her bones of power: a jagged crown, a necklace of claws, and talons on each shoulder. One claw and one talon are bigger, whiter. They’re the carved bones.
She takes another step, five feet from the drop-off of the pit, and another fifteen feet from where we’re standing on the opposite ledge. “That’s far enough.” I nod, pointing out the fragile ground at her feet. “Unless you want the princess to die where she stands.”
She stops without tensing and lifts a hand. The other Bone Criers halt. I look at each woman closer. A wave of hot then cold rolls through me. They’re all stunning and unique, with different shades of skin and impressive bones, especially the wreath of antlers on one woman and the rib cage necklace on another—though none are as striking as the queen’s. “You won’t kill Ailesse,” she says calmly, but her rich voice cuts the dense air and booms across the divide. “She must have told you that you would die, too.”
I give her a stony glare, though my stomach drops. She just confirmed my life really is tied to her daughter’s. “You’d be surprised how far I’m willing to go for revenge.” I bear down on my blade, and Ailesse sucks in a pinched breath.
The queen’s eyes linger on her. If there’s any love in her expression, I can’t read it. Maybe she won’t make this exchange. “What is it you want, Bastien?” she asks me.
I flinch at my name, startled she knows it. “The bones,” I reply. “All of them.”
“We are in the catacombs. You will have to be more specific.”
She knows very well which bones I mean. “The bones that give you magic.”
“Ah, our grace bones.” She folds her hands together. “The power you call ‘magic’ is a gift from the gods. It is not to be trifled with, lest the gods smite you. But if you insist—”
“I do. A small price for your daughter’s life.”
“My daughter and the bone flute,” the queen stipulates.
Ailesse opens her mouth to speak, but I hold the knife tighter against her throat, a silent warning not to reveal that Jules broke the flute. “Agreed,” I say, though I have no intention of keeping my promise.
The queen gestures to her attendants. They share troubled glances.
“One person at a time,” I order. “I want to see three bones from each of you.”
The queen lifts her chin, a challenge in her gaze, and nods at each Bone Crier. A basket lowers from a gap in the tunnel ceiling. The hidden pulley wheel screeches. Jules is up there doing her part.
The Bone Criers place their bones in the basket, and I count them. Some are set in bracelets, anklets, necklaces, earrings, and even hair combs. One woman blinks back tears, as if she’s passing over a child. Good. I want this to be painful for them.
I’ve lost track of the queen. She’s somewhere at the back of the group. She murmurs something to her attendants, and they part to let her pass. She glides forward to the basket, locks eyes with Ailesse, and removes her talon epaulettes, her claw necklace, and, last of all, her crown. It’s made from a twisting vertebra. Probably a deadly snake.
As soon as the queen sets her last bone in the basket, she grips the rope so it can’t be hoisted