The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(85)

Crimson washed away. When Rory withdrew my thumb from his mouth, he pressed a kiss over it. “How was it, saying it aloud after all this time?”

I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. “Years in the making—and over in a moment.”

We walked back to Petula Hall together.

The old man on the cart was parked in the drive, asleep on his perch. Next to the cart, a figure spoke to the horse, wagging a stone finger in the animal’s face.

The gargoyle.

He startled when he saw us. “Where on earth did you come from, Bartholomew?” He cast his gaze over my shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the Chiming Wood. “Not in there, I hope. Such an unpleasant forest.”

Rory approached the wagon. Thumped it with an open palm, jolting the old man—Victor—awake. “Lucky for her, this just arrived.”

I peered into the wagon. In a bed of hay, something lay still. A silver exoskeleton that caught the torchlight.

“My armor?”

“The breastplate at least.” When Rory brushed an errant tear from my cheek, black hair fell over his brow. “First, you heal.” His gaze fell over my bandaged neck, and he frowned. “By the time the knighthood gets here, you should be ready to wear it.”

“The knighthood isn’t here?”

“Some of us left in a rush to get out of the Peaks. They’ll be here soon. Until then”—he nodded back at the looming house—“get some rest. No more late-night sojourns into the Wood.”

“Agreed,” the gargoyle said, yawning. “You look quite a mess.” He took my arm. Led me to the door.

I looked over my shoulder at Rory, standing by the cart. His legs were planted, hands clasped behind his back, like a good soldier.

“Good night.”

“Good night,” he murmured. “Sybil.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


FEEL, BUT CANNOT SEE




I did not leave my bed for days.

I couldn’t move without pain. And my mind was dark. Violent. I imagined Diviners, lying still like they once did on Aisling’s chancel, only now their cheeks were wan with death. Omens loomed over them, fingers curling greedily over gossamer. When I slept, I dreamed of bodies, broken apart. Of wet, horrible sounds. Of blood and flesh and bone. Then I’d wake, hoping, in the brief sliver between sleep and consciousness, that I was back in the Diviner’s cottage, in bed next to One.

But she was gone. They all were.

Awake or asleep, I felt sick.

On the fourth day in bed, I became too overcome to cry, to eat. The gargoyle sat in my room and hummed to himself. “Would you like me to tell you a story? The one with the tragic beginning and the desolate, interminable middle?”

“I have no use for stories.” My eyes grew unfocused behind my shroud. “Tragedy and desolation are right here with me.”

“Yes.” He went back to humming to himself. “But I am here, too, Bartholomew.”

At midday, there was a gentle knock on my door. I heard Maude’s voice on the other side. “What, Benji?”

The king’s tone was fraught. “It’s not our place to intrude upon her grief.”

“She needs to eat.”

“If you treat her like she’s fragile,” Benji said pointedly, “she’ll start to think that of herself. Let her remain as she is, strong and fearsome—”

Rory didn’t say anything. He just opened the door and came in. When he saw me lying motionless on the bed, his entire body went taut.

I rolled onto my other side. “Go away.”

“No.”

“Bartholomew is in the throes of despair.” The gargoyle kept on humming. “A rather undervalued state of being, if you ask me.”

No one issued any questions. They scattered themselves around the room, like it was natural that they be there. The gargoyle asked the king for a sip of wine, then coughed into his cup while Rory paced in front of the window and fidgeted with his coin, turning every minute or so to look at me.

Maude sat on the bed. She rubbed my back, soothing my shoulders, running a hand over my hair, like I imagined a mother would do to a sick child. “Anger is a fine weapon, Diviner,” she said, quiet enough so the others wouldn’t hear. “So long as you don’t point it at yourself. Now have some soup.”

Eventually, I did. Neither grief nor fury let go of me, but being tended by Maude and Rory and the gargoyle—even Benji—not simply because I was useful to them, but because they cared for me, tempered some of my sickness. I ate. Slept.

On the sixth day, I rose from my bed, putting all the transportive stories I’d told the Diviners of things we’d do in the wild world of Traum away. The only story I told myself now was a hard-hearted tale of vengeance. Of destruction.

I’d find the Faithful Forester’s lost chime. Go to the Cliffs of Bellidine, kill the Heartsore Weaver. Then I’d return to where it all began. The tor, the cathedral upon it—

And face the abbess.

Mother, I’d once thought her, back when I’d spent all my strength trying to please her. But she was not a mother. She was an insect, weaving false stories, feeding upon my pain—working Aisling’s machine for her own glory, her own power, her own timelessness. No. She was not a mother. She was the sixth Omen. The moth. And for what she’d done to me, to the other Diviners, to Traum itself—