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

by Rachel Gillig

If I am as indistinct as Rodrick Myndacious says, I thought as I looked at the other Diviners, their cloaks and shoeless feet just like mine, what a happy thing to be indistinct from them.

“I pay attention to many things, Bartholomew. I am the most observant creature I know.”

The river held the sky and rendered it something new, its swirls and ripples metamorphosing into the most imperfect, astounding painting.

“It’s not true, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.”

“You want to throw me down,” Rory said, eyelids dropping as he whispered into my parted lips. “And I, prideful, disdainful, godless, want to drag you into the dirt with me.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What is magic, what is memory, and why are both so haunting?”

“If you value your friend when he fights your battles for you—when he is rogue and ruthless—you must value him when he is gentle, too. Otherwise you do not value him at all.”

My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish.

It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”

“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in.

To let my shoulders sink beneath the burden of my yeses was the only way I understood my own merit.

After so long thinking there was sacrality in drowning, I worried nothing was divine unless it arrived on the beckoning hand of pain.

Not everything had to hurt to be holy. Bad, to be good. But damn me if I wanted it to sometimes.

“I am a battlefield of admiration.” He nodded at the horizon. “I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”

My skin broke, my armor dented. But I did not diminish.