of the limestone cliffs, the silhouetted sea stacks and large rocks guarding the mouth of the inlet. At the dawn of time, this was the place where the first Leurress was born. Elara gave birth to her in a beam of silver moonlight, but when Tyrus tried to catch his daughter’s fall, he couldn’t reach the Night Heavens from his Underworld kingdom. To save her, he formed a bridge between worlds out of the earth that later became South Galle. The child lived and thrived, and the gods taught her how to open the Gates to their realms and ferry the dead.
The dead. A chill skitters up my spine. I’m about to see their souls for the first time. I glance left, right, and behind me, past the Ferriers pinning me in. I’m not skilled enough for this. I don’t even have a staff to herd souls onto the bridge. My bow and arrows will do me little good if I’m attacked.
Odiva has a word with Élodie, and the ash-blond Leurress guides me away from the others to a spot thirty feet from the head of the land bridge. I squirm and wrap my arms around myself. I’m in plain sight on the open beach. “Can’t I watch from the cave?”
“Don’t fret,” Élodie tells me. “No soul will bother you here. The siren song will lure the dead onto the bridge; that much they can’t resist. If they put up a fight, they will do it there.”
“What if they aren’t lured?” The hair on the back of my neck rises. “Do you really think the new flute will work?”
“Have faith, Sabine.” Élodie squeezes my hand, but her trembling fingers reveal she’s not as certain as she’d like me to believe.
She joins the other Ferriers, and they wade out ankle-deep in the water as the tide slowly recedes from the rocks of the land bridge.
My Leurress sisters look beautiful, all clothed in ceremonial white. Most of them wear the dresses from their rites of passage. I’ve mended holes and torn seams after their ferrying nights. I’ve also watched new Ferriers dry their own tears. These are the same dresses they wore when they ferried their own amourés after killing them. I feel sacrilegious and starkly different in my rough-spun hunting dress, and with two grace bones instead of three. I pray the souls of the dead won’t notice.
I look back to the sea, and an amazed breath escapes me. The land bridge has almost fully emerged. Only a few webs of water spin around the rocks. From where I stand, the path looks like a cobblestone road on a rainy day, cutting through the current. Odiva is the first to set foot on it, and the others follow without beckoning.
The Ferriers spread along the length of the bridge in even intervals and hold their staffs ready. The elders choose the more precarious places—areas where the rocks are more uneven or the twelve-foot width of the path narrows to six feet. Odiva assumes her post at the end of the bridge, at least forty yards away, half the expanse of the inlet. Thanks to my nighthawk grace, which not only gives me better vision in the dark, but also far-reaching sight, I can see her in detail.
The matrone sweeps her raven hair behind her shoulder and lifts the new bone flute to her mouth. An eerie but lovely song rises above the sound of the lapping water. I’ve never heard this melody. It’s different from the one Ailesse learned for her rite of passage. No one practices the song for the soul bridge, I suppose, since Odiva is the only one who plays it.
I brace myself against being lured to the bridge myself—each initiated Ferrier has labored for the strength to resist it—but the temptation only feels like a weak itch. The song, however, is enough to bring the dead.
I gasp as the first soul appears at the threshold of the cave I came out of. A little boy. His transparent body is the new color I’ve been told about, neither warm nor cool. The Leurress call it chazoure.
He walks onto the shore, wearing the nightclothes he must have been buried in. His eyes are round, like he’s been startled awake from a deep slumber. He trips forward toward the bridge, though he looks afraid.
Vivienne is the first to greet him. Her chestnut hair fans around her shoulders as she crouches eye level to him. “It’s all right.” She offers him a