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.
We had numbers to spare until fifteen years ago, when the great plague struck the land. The fight to ferry its countless victims killed half of those who died among us; the rest perished from the disease. Ever since then, we’ve struggled to manage the population of South Galle. But despite our size, we’re still the founding famille, chosen of the gods. The other Leurress throughout the world can’t ferry their dead