The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(121)

Benji brushed away his tears. Turned to me. “You’re awful quiet, Diviner.”

“Her name is Sybil,” Rory snarled, holding his side, his skin ghostly white.

Benji ignored him. “I thought maybe, since you had a hand in destroying Traum’s faith, that you might consider helping me rebuild it. That the blood of all those dead Diviners might still mean something to you.” He nodded at Rory and the gargoyle and Maude. “I will let them go. But only if you come with me.”

Rory surged forward. “Ah, ah, ah,” Benji said, leveling the tip of his sword with his throat. “Don’t be unknightly. Let the lady have her choice.”

It was a beggar’s bargain. A losing sport. A failed craft. Either way, I was defeated. And Rory…

Was bleeding out.

I put a gentle hand on his chest. Pressed him back until it was my throat, not his, at the tip of Benji’s sword. “Let them go first.”

Rory’s fingers dug into my arm. “Sybil—”

“Take care of the gargoyle, like you said.” I turned. Brought his bloodied knuckles to my mouth and kissed them. “Take care of yourself, too.”

“Sybil.”

The knighthood was coming. I could hear the sounds of their horses over the gravel in the courtyard. Hear their gasps as they took in the desecrated remains of Aisling.

Benji tossed the Artful Brigand’s coin. There was a rumbling explosion—rock and dust in the air. When it cleared, there was a hole in Aisling’s wall.

“Your exit.” Benji retrieved the coin from the grass. “Over here!” he called to the knighthood, turning once more to Rory and Maude. When he looked upon them, his gaze was so forlorn I was sure he would change his mind. That the easy, boyish Benji would appear and apologize and make everything right.

I was wrong. The king’s blue eyes grew clouded. Cold. “This is the only gift you get. If you try to retrieve her, if I see you again in any capacity”—his gaze fell to the wound in Rory’s bloodied side, then the gargoyle’s shattered wing and its answering fissures—“and that certainly is an if, I will proffer no pity. You’ll be executed.” He nodded to the hole in the wall. “Now go.”

Rory was still saying my name, leaving a trail of blood in the grass, when Maude began to drag him.

“Where are we going?” the gargoyle asked sweetly, dropping pieces of stone from his wing as he followed Maude.

Rory caught himself on the wall. I felt his gaze on my face, in the air, in the broken pieces of stone around us. He didn’t say it, but I knew. He’d do anything I asked of him.

So I looked at him in his fathomless eyes. Watched as they lost their light. Told him, in a voice cold as stone, “Go.”

“Where are we going?” the gargoyle asked again. He looked back at me. “We can’t go without Bartholomew.”

I turned away, tears falling down my face.

“Wait—wait.” The gargoyle began to sob, more pieces of stone falling from his body. “I’m her squire. We cannot be apart.”

He had to be hauled away by Maude, who was already doing the same to Rory. I heard his wailing sobs on the other side of the wall. “Bartholomew!”

And then they were like all the other things I’d dared to love.

Gone.

The knighthood came into the courtyard, and I was just as I’d been all those weeks ago. Barefoot in the apple orchard, martyring myself.

“Have a little faith, Six,” Benji said, his voice stilted. “Can’t you see I’ve set you free?”

I looked over my shoulder, the ghost of Aisling still on me. Cold, beautiful, and disapproving. “Free, boy-king?”

“You don’t need the signs anymore. You’ve seen this world for what it is. A tale of lurid contradictions—a true story, and also a lie. You’ve known coin, knowledge, strength, intuition, love, life and death—and beaten them at their craft. You’ve known everything, Diviner. And to be all-knowing…”

The king of Traum smiled at me, his future queen. “What is a god, if not that?”





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Bear with me. There’s a story yet to tell.

Once, there was an author who caught Covid. It took her a long time to recover. And even when she thought she had, fatigue and brain fog remained like a bad houseguest, long overstaying their welcome. The author grew tired, then sad, then hopeless.

And she worried.

To be fair, worry warranted no immediate alarm. It happened to this author often and spiritedly. But she was writing a fresh book, and the two that had come before it were doing well (something to celebrate and decidedly not worry over), and yet she was struck down by the fear that her brain fog would not relent. That writing a third book would prove impossible. That it would be bereft of creativity—of magic. She cried many tears, convinced beyond reasoning that she had lost something precious. That her new story simply… wouldn’t be enough.

This isn’t a particularly unique tale of woe. Perhaps you, too, have experienced something good and, in its aftermath, in a moment of sickness or tiredness or humanness, thought, Well, that’s it—my skill is spent. All that’s left to do now is fail. I am but a frayed piece of thread. Spilled ink. A sad little butterfly crushed upon a wheel.

The truth is, creativity ventures hither and yon, like a mercurial cat. She will not thank you for forcing her into your arms, yet on a day of seemingly no importance, even when you are sick, even when you are hopeless, she paws at your door. Slowly, the author (you know this is about me by now, yes?) began to feel like herself again. Gradually, the creativity, the magic, returned. She wrote her third book. It’s about a woman who tries her best, an errant knight who falls in love with her, and a precious limestone gargoyle. It’s about what we lose and what we gain, the arduous journey of self-discovery—the painful, beautiful burden of living. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. To me, it’s enough.