The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(103)

“He’s missing.” I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like waking up in my Diviner cottage and finding that Four, Two, Three, Five, then One, had vanished. “My gargoyle. He was here when I got back from the beach last night, and now he’s”—I put a hand to my chest—“lost.”

Maude braced the frame of her bed to get up, but I was already throwing on a tunic, bursting from our room, out of the inn and into morning light.

And all while I looked for the gargoyle, through crofts, through sheep-speckled fields and hills of thrift flowers, climbing higher and higher, I was thinking on lost things. On death. On how I’d searched the hamlets, like I searched now, and hadn’t found a single one of my darling Diviners to put back into my arms. How fate was cruel, life frail, and how lonely it felt, in the vastness of Traum, that the only person I’d come close to finding was myself.

I sobbed like a child.

Then, at the tallest cliff, in a bed of flowers, I saw him. Looking out over the dawn, the sea—the edge of the world—hands folded delicately in his lap. Utterly content.

“Oh, you stupid, stupid gargoyle!” I ran to him. Threw my arms around his shoulders—bruised myself on his body for holding so tightly. “Why did you leave and not say anything?”

He blinked. “Are you crying, Bartholomew?”

“Of course I am, you dingbat.”

I didn’t know if he fully understood why I was upset, but he seemed pleased to be the one to comfort and not the one to cry, because his shoulders straightened and he began to hum. “I think,” he said when my breath had finally soothed, “that we were never meant to stay so long behind that stone wall, Bartholomew.” He rested his heavy head on mine. “Thank you for bringing me with you. I don’t think I would have been brave enough to leave the tor alone.”

I held his hand, and we looked out over the view. “Why did you come out here?”

“I am a battlefield of admiration.” He nodded at the horizon. “I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”

We watched the sun rise over the sea. I leaned against his shoulder. “Do you still think about Aisling, gargoyle?”

“Endlessly.” He stretched his wings. Yawned. “The tor was the only home I ever knew. But I have stepped down from its height and seen the world with my own eyes. You can’t take something like that back. Even if I returned to the cathedral, nothing can be as it was.” His fangs pressed over his teeth as he smiled. “You can never really go home.”

“Rather a tragic way to see things, don’t you think?”

He patted my leg. “You sound troubled.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Often, but also rarely.”

I keep my eyes upon the vast, liminal sea. Thought of life and death and the Diviners.

We’ll go to the Cliffs of Bellidine and look out over the Sighing Sea, all six of us. We’ll shout so loud and long that our echoes will sound behind us. We’ll lie under the stars on beds of pink thrift flowers and stain our teeth with wine. We’ll sleep, but never dream.

I stood. Walked to the edge of the cliff.

And shouted.

It came from deep in my belly. A forlorn yell that sounded so loud and so long that it put a buzz in my ears, its echo devouring the Sighing Sea, the Cliffs of Bellidine. All of Traum, perhaps.

And I thought, maybe the life of Sybil Delling was paid for with the death of Six’s dreams. That it wasn’t just the Omens that weren’t real, but the stories I’d told myself. That I had to suffer to earn a home at Aisling Cathedral—that I had to hide my face and name to be useful, to be strong, to be special. That the Diviners and I would spend our lives together—that our sisterhood was eternal.

But nothing was eternal, and I could never go back home. Death fluttered over the world like a breeze, stirring our hair, and I knew it well. I’d quested through Traum. Battled Omens, sprites—loneliness and longing. I’d made the agonizing pilgrimage from Six to Sybil.

That was death in and of itself.

But, just on the other side of it, waiting behind gossamer—

Was life, too.

I reached into my hair. Took off my shroud. Held it out over the edge of the cliff. When the wind took it in its teeth, I did not resist. I simply… let go.

I watched as my shroud fluttered away, as if on pale wings. It flew and it flew until I couldn’t see it anymore, because the light over the sea was so bright.

I cried. Just a little. When I turned, the gargoyle was there, smiling at me. So was Maude.

Rory too.

“Oh.” I wiped tears from my cheeks and levied a threatening finger. “Don’t you dare say anything.” But the threat fell flat—I was smiling right back at them.

Rory bridged the distance between us.

Morning light warmed his face. His dark hair caught the wind, and when he looked at me with unmasked adoration, I felt an instant tightness in my chest.

He leaned over in his usual idle way. Took my cheek in his hand. Said, “Just as well. I don’t have the words.”

I kissed him, and he kissed me back harder, and we stood upon the cliff and what felt like the edge of the world, windblown and breathless and new.

Maude hugged the gargoyle, and he clapped.