The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(3)

I opened my hand and let the broken pieces of the short straw dance away, caught by a fickle northern wind. The cathedral bells kept ringing, insistent in their peals. I pushed to my feet to heed them, preparing myself for what came next—

A horse whickered from below.

Stalled on the road, a final knight remained. His horse had come to a full stop and was chewing noisily on something it had found in the greenery beside the road.

My apple.

The knight tried to spur the animal on, but the horse, grunting its contentedness, was having a love affair with the apple. It did not budge.

A muffled string of profanity sounded beneath an armored helmet. The knight shifted in his saddle at the din of the cathedral bells, tilting his head upward—affording me a view of the dark slit in his visor from which he surveyed the world.

There was no seeing his eyes. No way for him to glimpse mine through my shroud. Still, I felt it, somewhere between my stomach and throat, the instant he spotted me on the wall.

His shoulders went rigid. Slowly, he reached for his helmet. Removed it. There was a mess of black hair. He shoved it from his face, and I drew in a breath.

Sharp features. Dark brows. A prominent nose. His skin was olive, golden from sun, yet there was no warmth in his face. Light caught along three gold bands pierced into his right ear. Severe, rimmed in charcoal, his eyes were so brown they might easily be mistaken for black.

There was no warmth in them, either.

He watched me, his gaze wide—then immediately narrow. Slowly, his mouth twisted into a sneer, its meaning unmistakable.

What the hell are you looking at?

The other knights had all smiled at me, unchallenging and awestruck and reverent. This one, it seemed, had no such compulsion. “Knight,” I called. “You lot make quite the spectacle. Is the king so fretful that he requires the company of his entire knighthood for a Divination?”

The knight’s gaze remained tight. He said nothing.

“I asked if your king—”

“Between our two lots, mine is hardly the spectacle.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

He issued no clarification, his armor creaking as he continued to measure me with unfriendly eyes.

I straightened, looming over him like one of the cathedral’s spires. “A respectable knight would just as soon bite off his own tongue than speak to a daughter of Aisling like that.”

He pressed his lips together, like I’d told him a joke at my own expense.

A craggy voice called behind me. “Bartholomew!”

I whirled. In the orchard, touched by the looming shadow of the cathedral, was the same peculiar gargoyle I’d left in the ambulatory. He called to me again. “Get down at once, Bartholomew. We are needed inside.”

I glanced back at the road. The knight had managed to spur his horse and was riding fast to catch up to the others.

I frowned at his receding figure.

“I say, Bartholomew, can you hear me?” The gargoyle brandished a chastising finger. “Climb down this instant—”

“I heard you, I heard you.” I grasped the edge of the wall and lowered myself until my bare feet touched grass.

There were twenty-three gargoyles at Aisling Cathedral, and no two alike. Composed of limestone, they bore an unsettling combination of human and animal qualities, most fitted with wings and the gift of flight. This one had a protruding brow, fangs, claws, and wings like a bat carved behind his back, though I’d never seen him fly because, apparently, the skies are feckless, and it would be an insult beyond recovery to be mistaken for a bird.

But as much as they were distinct, the gargoyles were also all alike. They all bore a strange allegiance to Aisling Cathedral, dedicated to the tor and always minding the abbess, as if of the cathedral. They grunted, but rarely spoke.

Save this one.

I approached, my hands out in supplication. When it came to this particular gargoyle, who called everyone and everything Bartholomew for no discernable reason, it was better to be contrite. When he took to sulking, it lasted for days. “Apologies,” I said. When I stood next to him, his brow was at my shoulder. “I was chastising an idiot.”

“A happy pastime, as you’ve proven to me on many occasions. But, the king is upon us, with nary a warning. The utter gall of men.” He rolled his stone eyes. “Have you chosen among yourselves who will dream in the spring?”

“I will.”

“Very good.” He held out his claw-tipped hand. “Hurry.”

He led me back through the gnarled apple orchard. We hastened through the courtyard, past the statues, returning, as if reeled back by a lure, to the cathedral.

Day was succumbing to night when we reached the tall oaken doors. The abbess was there, waiting. I could not see her face, nor any of her skin. Her shroud, a pale curtain that stretched to her chin, covered her face entirely, and her hands were protected in white silken gloves. It was only the tightness of her fists at her side, the note of ice in her voice, that gave her dissatisfaction away.

“It seems the king has come for an unexpected Divination. Benedict Castor the Third.”

She said his name quickly, like something bitter she wished to spit out. Apparently the abbess did not think much of the new boy-king. Wind rippled over her shroud. “You will be dreaming, Six?”

“Yes.”

A low hmm of approval sounded in her throat, and I felt my chest swell. The abbess touched my cheek, stepped aside so that the gargoyle and I could pass into the narthex, then closed the cathedral doors behind us.