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

by Rachel Gillig

“I wouldn’t worry over it. Knights are shooting stars, Six. They come and go. But you and me, our sisterhood of Diviners—we’re the moon.” She smiled. “We’re eternal.”

The gargoyle called from the chancel. “If you wish to Divine before the bitch—excuse me—before the abbess arrives, best get cracking.”

“Which is more intricate?” he mused. “The designs of men, trying to reach gods, or that of gods, trying to reach men?” My hammer collided with a chunk of granite. “What is either to the intricacies of women, who reach both?”

When I faced the basin again, it was my spine, not my armor, holding me up.

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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

gargoyle swatted birch branches as we passed them by. “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. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”