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

by Rachel Gillig

A brown horse came up next to the cart. Fig. Rory wasn’t wearing his helmet—his black hair a mess. He pushed it out of his eyes. “Anything of note?”

Hot

“If you wanted to get me alone, Diviner, all you had to do is ask.”

meee i want to!!

“Fallen and caught between rocks like a pathetic turtle?” The king gave me a queasy grin. “Sadly, yes.” The gargoyle tutted. “How embarrassing. I would never fall in such an ungainly way.”

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.

Literally what is your problem

“I don’t like your tone.” It was the gargoyle who’d spoken. All eyes turned to him. And while his batlike face remained cold, his fingers trilled excitedly behind his back. He was enjoying this. “Swords and armor are nothing to stone. A Diviner has chosen to walk beside the king, and to question her methods is to question Aisling—and thusly the Omens themselves. Is that what you are doing, or is it the altitude that makes you such a mad apple?” Bad apple, I mouthed.

I love himmm

Rory’s gaze flickered to my face. “She’s a guest of the king’s. Affront her in any way, the knighthood will answer. Attempt to look beneath her shroud, she and the gargoyle will respond as they see fit. With full immunity to any carnage tended.” The gargoyle batted his eyes. “Oh, Bartholomew. He’s dreamy.”

Horny

“You’re really not going to talk to me?” “Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.” “I’m full of wrong ideas.” Rory paused. “Is this about what happened in the forge?” “Nothing happened in the forge.”

I heard the slow sound of his exhale. “And if I was married? That would, what? Bother you?”

He didn’t let it go. “Never . . . ?” “I could never get comfortable. Never feel what you’re meant to feel. You know—losing oneself with someone else. The unraveling.” My face was so warm it hurt. “The little death.” He was silent for a beat of my heart. Then two. Three. “You’ve never finished.” “Not with another person.”

“Pith, you think there’s something wrong with me—” “I don’t.” Rory’s voice was gravel. “I was wondering what it would be like. Watching you unravel.”

Rory’s front slammed against mine, and when he looked down at me, dark lashes fanned his cheeks. He held out his arms. Asked, a little breathless, “May I?” I nodded, and he wrapped his arms around my waist.

“Tighter,” I told Rory, slipping my arms up and around his armored shoulders. His eyes flared, and his grip around my waist grew firmer. “I’m not going to drop you, Diviner.”

Rory’s didn’t—he was taking in our surroundings, his cheeks full of color, his eyes alight, his hair windblown. He looked so—so— His gaze collided with mine. He let go of my waist, and I his shoulders. I heard the shaky sound of his exhale, and then we both looked away. Fast.

Guyyyyys

Rory was looking at me. Raw and desperate and intent, like he was trying to tell me something.

There was a world behind Rory’s dark eyes. It was as if he could see everything all at once when he looked at me, and it was far too much, but he wanted all of it.

“I don’t want him touching you like he did last night. I don’t want him within a fucking mile of you. Keep your steps light.”

Reached for his cheek—dragged the corner of his mouth up with my thumb until he wore an absurd half smile. “That’s better. Still foul and unknightly, though.” “Just the way you like me.” Rory nipped the pad of my thumb. “Now run it again.”

But I couldn’t catch him. And the rage of that made me even clumsier. “Are you embarrassed to be bad at something?” Rory asked. “Or just embarrassed to be bad at it in front of me?” “Fuck you.” “Don’t take it so personally.” He flickered away.

And pressed it over his throat. “Can’t you understand it’s all been personal?” Neither of us did anything but pant, our breaths muting—or transmuting—the ire between us.

I looked down at him through a rain-soaked shroud and he up at me through impossibly dark eyes, and for that moment we were his coin—two sides, perfectly balanced.

Rory’s throat hitched under my palm. His wild pulse was everywhere. In his neck, his chest—in my own body. “All right,” he said, his voice grating out of him. “It’s personal. If I was any good at talking to you, maybe I’d have already said that, because it’s personal for me, too.” His eyes dropped to my mouth. “It wasn’t for nothing, Diviner. You are important. You’re . . .”

Nooo keep going

My thighs flexed around his ribs. “I’ll choke you.” “As if you haven’t imagined a thousand ways to strangle me.” He bucked his hips and my weight shifted forward, my chest falling flat over his, my forearm pressing into his throat. “Good.” Rory’s breath caught. “Just like that.”

Theres actually no way

Rain sluiced from my hair, falling down my nose, over the curve of my mouth, then dropping onto his. I looked down at his lips, and he up at mine, the distance between us eclipsing like a celestial movement, staggering and inevitable. I could feel the plane of his body—and the moment it hardened. Rory flushed. Slowly, his left hand rose to my face. He hooked my chin with his thumb and pressed, parting my lips directly over his. Then he was pushing up, his mouth ghosting over mine—

AAAAAahhhh

Rory was still lying on the ground, breathing hard, eyes unfocused. I watched his chest rise and fall, and then he was scraping a hand over his face, rising to his feet, and coming to stand next to Maude and the king.

“You think I don’t know that?” Rory’s voice became perilously soft. “You think I want a single scratch upon her?”

She will die without ever having lived. And then it was nightfall of the third day, and there was no more time to train, no more time to prepare— And hardly any to live.

“If you’re looking for Maude, she’s long abed.” “I’m looking for you.” He was getting better at finding my gaze through my shroud.

“I didn’t—if you were sleeping, I didn’t—” He rolled his eyes. For once, the gesture seemed directed at himself. “I wasn’t trying to wake you.”

He is so cute

Perhaps he already understood that, and the silence was for both of us to put that ugly truth somewhere private. All Rory did, in his usual half-hearted way, was shrug. “That’s no trouble.”

he reached down, gripped the hem of his tunic. Yanked it over his head. My gaze followed where muscles cusped his spine, then moved to the two small dimples just above the rim of his pants. I hadn’t seen him bare like that since his first night at Aisling.

“What the hell are you doing?” He peered over his shoulder. Whatever he saw on my face, the panic, the heat, made him smile. “Feel free to avert your virtuous eyes.” His pants hit the ground.

He stretched his arms over his head and let out a moan that made me bite down. “Good for what ails you.”

His eyes flittered over my nightshirt. “If it’s about protecting my innocence, you’re too late. You were practically naked in that wet Divining robe the night we met.” “How mortifying for you.” He slapped a hand over his eyes and turned around, proffering me privacy and another view of his sculpted back. “Never said that.”

HOT

and that I had purposely chosen the short straw that day. Lingered along the Aisling wall. Looked down, seen him. I was losing my faith in everything. But the two of us meeting . . . it felt almost divine.

Errant knight Rodrick Myndacious, prideful, disdainful, godless, believed in me.

And suddenly it was not a hot spring I was falling into, but the spring at Aisling Cathedral. Pressed down by the abbess. Opening my mouth, taking putrid water into my lungs, waiting for pain, for dreams, for stone objects and the terrifying presence of the Omens—

Poor girl

“And I don’t know how to behave around you. You make me so fucking nervous. But letting you fall underwater when all you ever did at Aisling was drown, I—”

I relaxed into his touch and let my head fall back. I looked up at the sky, the thousands of stars stitched upon a vast purple tapestry, reveling in the sensation of being held up in water and not pressed down.

“Where would you bite me, knight?” “Wherever you told me to, Diviner.”

“The thing is—I think I’d do anything you asked of me.”

And it startled me, that the loneliness I’d felt earlier was no longer so oppressive, as if put to sleep. The night was half-gone, and though I needed rest, I could not bring myself to mind that I was awake and out of bed. Everything was just so . . . Beautiful.

I dreamed of a knight with gold in his ears and charcoal around his eyes, who did all the ignoble things I asked of him.

“It is not like me to be the bearer of bad tidings,” the gargoyle said. “Bartholomew does not know how to swim. But worry not—” He looked up at me. Smiled proudly. “She has always excelled at drowning.”

“It’s a good story, Myndacious. I liked it.” He held me in his gaze like he needed to. “Do you want to know how it ends?” “Does it end?” He nodded. “It ends a handful of minutes from now. After you’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world.” He grinned. “It ends when you kiss me.”

“You mean it ends after I’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world—and I hit you as hard as I can.” “With your mouth.”

withdrew, tucking away my grin. When I faced the basin again, it was my spine, not...

Out on the shore, four figures were a dark blur, a mess of limbs, tangling, struggling. Not against the storm, but one another. Benji, holding back the gargoyle. Maude, holding back Rory.

With it came a desperate ripping sound. A sensation of wetness, like skin, sloughing off. I raised a hand to my eyes—but not fast enough. My shroud tore away. Caught the vicious wind. Disappeared into the storm.

Uhhhhhh

When he looked at me one last time, his stone eyes held nothing. “Dead. Your Diviners are all dead.” A terrible gasp fled his mouth. “And so are you.”

Gotta be a joe right

“Rory.” “No.” There was more pressure—a pounding sensation over my chest so violent the world quaked. “Wake up, sweetheart. Wake. Up.”

SWEETHEART????