The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(25)

Rory didn’t. He was waiting. When it dawned on me why, the spring was not so cold.

Permission. He was waiting for me to grant it.

I nodded at his bloodied thumb. “Go on.”

A line drew between Rory’s brows. He held out his hand and I took it—his skin rough and warm—bringing it to my mouth. “What name, with blood, would you give the Omens?” I whispered.

“My name is Rodrick Myndacious.” With shocking gentleness, Rory pressed his bloodied thumb to my lips. The sound of his exhale thrummed through the cathedral. “What’s yours?”

The grooves of his thumb scraped over my bottom teeth. I tasted salt and copper, but there was so little blood that I did not suffer to swallow it. Rory’s skin grazed the tip of my tongue, stirring the answer that waited there. Sybil, I almost said, the word an ancient stone at the bottom of a deep, dark well. Once, my name was Sybil Delling.

But I didn’t say it. I lowered myself into the water instead. Looked up at the stained-glass windows above. “I’m ready, gargoyle.”

He smiled. Waited. “Ready for what, my dear?”

“For you to drown me.”

His smile disappeared. “That is only for the abbess to do.”

“And why I’ve asked you here in her stead.”

“No. I cannot. Perhaps the knave would—”

Rory’s voice was a whip, cracking through the cathedral. “No.”

“Gargoyle,” I snapped. “You’ve watched it done a thousand times over. For once in your life, be obedient.”

He began to quiver, but he did as he was told. Slowly, the gargoyle put his stone hand on my clavicle. If he were the abbess, he might have said the right words. May you be a witness to the wonders of the Omens. A pupil of their portents. Ever but a visitor to their greatness.

But all he said, mournful, was, “Would that things were different.”

He pressed me into the spring. When I looked up through murky water, Rory’s visage was an undulating blur. His mouth was a taut line, his dark eyes filled with something that looked strangely like concern.

I choked on water. Thrashed in the spring. Agony swallowed me, and then I swallowed it, until there was nothing, nothing—

But a dream.

I was naked, waiting in that pale, liminal space that looked like Aisling but wasn’t. I looked down at my hands and feet and breasts and stomach and wondered as I often did how all that pain fit inside me.

I waited.

Waited.

“I’m here,” I called.

The only answer was my echo, small and childlike in the din.

I tried again. “I’ve come to Divine for Rodrick Myndacious.”

Nothing.

I took a tentative step. The air—the stones beneath my feet—were the same temperature as my skin, as if I were exploring a vast, pallid womb.

I moved on tender feet. Toward what, I did not know. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should be concerned that I was not falling. Not seeing the stone objects the Omens showed themselves through. But a strange sort of calmness had taken over me, and I kept walking, undisturbed, though hazy white light.

Voices sounded from somewhere high above. The gargoyle, Rory—but they were too garbled to make out. “I cannot hear you,” I said, my echo coming back at me, discordant. I cannot hear you, it taunted. I cannot hear you.

A shadow fluttered in the corner of my vision. I turned—

There was nothing there.

I walked on, and the floor beneath my feet grew cooler. Grayer. Ahead, the light did not shine so brightly. The farther I trod, the darker the space around me became, light leaching away until I no longer stood in a bright space, but a blackened one.

The air was cold now. Cold enough that when I exhaled, breath steamed out of me. I was about to call out once more when something flickered in the corner of my vision. I turned.

And froze.

It came from the darkness, fluttering on delicate wings. It made no sound—not even the faintest whisper of a sound—parceling the dark in swooping circles, drawing closer to me.

A moth, pale and delicate.

It flew closer, hovering over me. Then, without sound, it landed on the bridge of my nose, climbing until it stood over my shroud.

I shut my eyes. Trembled.

The moth’s legs stuck to fabric as it roved over my shroud. It was so small, so without muscle, but it was patient. The moth worked back and forth over my eyes, picking, tugging, until—

I felt my shroud fall away. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer looking through gossamer, but the thin, veined wings of the moth.

The darkness around me shifted. The world behind the moth’s wings was so full of color it stole my breath. I saw parts of Traum I had never seen before, like I was a bird soaring above its five distinct hamlets. There were the mountainous Fervent Peaks, the bustling streets of the Seacht, the yellow birch trees of the Chiming Wood, the floral pink Cliffs of Bellidine. How bright Traum seemed, without blemish, like its beauty was infinite. Like it could never die. Then—

Aisling.

Lone and gray, looming behind its wall on the tor, the cathedral watched me with eyes of stained glass. Only now, the five statues in the courtyard were not made of stone.

They were human, each holding a distinct stone object.

A coin.

An inkwell.

An oar.

A chime.