The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(63)

The king shook, and so did the rocks around us, the mountain sprite drawing closer. Vast as its body was—its snout wide and its brome-covered skin thick—I could see the sprite was smaller than it could be. I could count its ribs. See the jagged points of its shoulder and hip bones. It was hungry. Starving.

Benji looked back at me, tugging his leg to no avail. “Run, Six,” he said, pale as death. “Run.”

I dropped to a crouch, fixed directly between the king and the sprite. Whips cracked in the distance, but the creature kept coming toward us, its hot breath blowing the hair from my face.

My hand fell to my belt. I withdrew my hammer and chisel.

The sprite’s nostrils flared. It must have known, being a creature of Traum, that tools could be weapons, and that weapons were instruments of pain. Still, it kept coming.

“Go,” Benji cried, yanking heedlessly against rocks.

I didn’t.

The sprite drew closer. Closer. It shrieked, and the wind carried the horrible knell, and I held my ground. Raised my hammer. Harnessed all the strength I possessed.

And swung.

A great fissure, like a burst vein, exploded beneath the tip of my chisel, and a thunderous crack split the air—louder than a hundred whips. The granite rock holding Benji hostage split in half, freeing the king’s leg. I took him beneath both arms. Wrenched him free.

Benji let out a gasp, and the sprite kept coming—

Stone arms wrapped around me. “Hold tight to the boy, Bartholomew,” came the gargoyle’s craggy voice. He spread his great stone wings. Sprang from his feet.

And then we were in the air.

Wind slapped my face, my arms locked and straining around Benji. He held me, too, and the gargoyle held both of us, chuckling to himself as he soared. “What fun! What a wonderful display of valor on my part.”

He flew us directly over the knights as they cantered toward the mountain sprite. The beast screamed—tried to run. Was no match against their swords. They cut it down, and when it fell, the earth shook a final time.

Everything went still.

The gargoyle coasted over grass, then dropped down upon it. Benji and I fell in a heap, groaning. I coughed. “You all right?”

“I think so.” The king’s golden hair was dark with sweat, his ruddy cheeks wan. But his blue eyes were resolute. He took my hand. “Thank you for staying. You’re very brave, Six.”

I realized then that Benedict Castor, for just a moment, had thought he was going to die. A boy of seventeen, with everything in the world still to prove. “Not half as brave as you, Benji.”

Wind sang through the grass, the hills and road quiet, like it had all been but a terrible dream. I looked back at the knights, who were now riding toward us. Behind them, like a hill once more, lay the body of the slain mountain sprite.

Something sharp prickled behind my eyes. “What do they eat? Mountain sprites?”

“Shale from the Peaks.”

I turned my gaze on the king. “Then surely the right thing to do would be to feed it shale, not kill it.”

Benji tinkered with his broken greaves. “Likely. But the land we’re about to venture into belongs to the noble families of the Fervent Peaks. And they are adamantly against sharing it with sprites.” His straps finally unclasped, and he let out a sigh of relief. “After all, sprites have plagued Traum for centuries. Everyone knows that.”

“Perhaps,” I murmured. “Then again, someone rather wise once said, ‘Traum’s histories are forged by those who benefit from them, and seldom those who live them.’”

Benji’s hands stilled. He looked up at me. But before he could tender a response, the knights closed in around us, dismounting as they came to check on their king. Highfalutin apologies were spouted, the knights sorry not to have noticed their king fall. There were a few chuckles as well, a few heavy exhales, and a healthy amount of profanity, the company glad on all accounts they’d killed the sprite—

“Move.”

Someone was shoving their way through the group, pushing forward with urgent steps.

Rory.

His face was drawn and without warmth. When he saw Benji and me and the gargoyle seated in the grass next to one another, whole and unharmed, he put a hand to his mouth, smothering a low sound—then walked away as brusquely as he’d come.

Maude picked Benji up out of the grass. Looked him over. “All in one piece?” she asked.

Benji gave a shaky laugh. “All in one piece.”

Maude clasped his shoulder, then turned her gaze to me and smiled. Like I’d done something more than save her king. Like she wasn’t just pleased, but proud. “You did good.” She nodded at the gargoyle. “You too.”

We walked back to the road, which was littered with pieces of our lost cart.

“Look, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, lifting my boots from a bush. “Your foot-gloves are perfectly unscathed.”

“Well, what do you know.” Maude hauled a large wicker box from a gorse bush. “This too.”

“What’s that?”

“Your pretty waxen hide,” she said, unlatching it and showing me my Diviner dress, covered in wax. The one she’d cut off me—my precise measurements for armor.

Maude gestured at the mold. “I’ll sleep better knowing the next time you face down a mountain sprite, you’ll be dressed for it. I’ll send this to Petula Hall at the outpost ahead. The more time my blacksmith has with it, the better. You have impressive measurements.”