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“And you call wasting your time dreaming of signs living, Diviner?” I slapped the spoon out of his hand. It clattered to the floor, and I leaned in, lifting the dull end of my chisel to his nose. “What would a highborn prick like you know about it?”
I literally love her.
“Who’s gonna knock him over?” “Just to have to Divine for him later? Pfff.” Three shook her head. “Not worth it.” I disagreed. Heartily. “I say we pummel him.” “Absolutely. He was very mean to Six. Let’s flatten him.”
This is so girlhood
“Did he just try to smite me, Bartholomew?” Rory’s gaze jerked. “Bartholomew? That’s your name?” “Pith, you’re thick—no. He calls everyone Bartholomew.” “What the hell for?” Rory pivoted back to the gargoyle. “What the hell for?”
lol hopefully we find out why it calls everything Bartholomew
“I know.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Perhaps it’s why I worried you might be twenty miles away. That I might not—” He made a face. “That you might not come back.” “I didn’t come back. I was arrested.”
Cackling
I’d never seen a knight so filthy—so physically degraded by his craft. He looked entirely ignoble. I couldn’t look away.
Ahhh!!!!
“Still fixed on Myndacious, I see.” “I like the way it rolls off the tongue.” “I’ll bet.”
“Hold out your arm.” I did, and he gripped my forearm. Large as his hand was, it didn’t fit around my bicep. He made the smallest hum of appreciation, then set to sewing my sleeve until it wore me like a second skin,
Buff mommy!
“You know what I think?” he murmured. “I think you like that I’m a bad knight. It’s why you feel so righteous, flaying me with your tongue—why you enjoy throwing me down and grinding your heel into my pride. It does something to you.” He wet his bottom lip. “I’d bet my oath your whole body is awake right now, aching and eager at the thought of putting me in my place.” I couldn’t think.
“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.”
You want to throw me down. And I, prideful, disdainful, godless, want to drag you into the dirt with me.
He couldn’t have said anything hotter to her
And knowing that nothing would last, I could never—” I stopped short, swallowing embarrassment. “Never what?” “Nothing.” 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’s tucking this info away for later. Like oh babe we can fix that as soon as we get to the rooms!
“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.”
SCREAMING!!!!
“You say the river cares not for the rain, but it is the rain that feeds the river. In time, it can even wear away stone.” My words were like the fall of my hammer. Strong. Exact. “I am not afraid of you. Because without me, you would be nothing.”
“Since it is your Diviner who requires answers upon my defeat—” He was smiling once more, his jagged teeth coated in blood. “She must be the one to face me.”
She’s going to whoop his ass! Breaking stone is her thing.
“First things first.” Rory bit the finger of his glove and peeled it off. “How well can you actually see through that shroud?” “I can see just fine—” He threw his glove. It smacked me on the nose and plopped to the stones at my feet. “A vision issue?” Rory pondered. “Or just slow reflexes?”
lol
Embers stoked his voice. “Lean forward.” 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.”
He’s saying choke me harder mommy!
I thought of bold Four. How, if she were here, she’d already be naked, and the other Diviners would inevitably follow, Two grumbling, Three and Five half-timid, half-excited, and One sighing as she held her arm out to me. “Come on,” she’d say. “Someone has to mind them.” Loneliness touched everything. And the aching beauty of the peaks, the pools, the incomparable night sky, made it so much worse.
I really hope the diviners have just been in stasis so where in Aisling this whole time.
I had not detected an ounce of Maude’s skepticism in him, as if he already knew the outcome of my fight with the Oarsman. Not because of dreams or portents and not because it was a fantastical story he told himself—he simply believed I could win. Errant knight Rodrick Myndacious, prideful, disdainful, godless, believed in me.
“It’s not lost on me how terrible I’ve been. Growing up under the Artful Brigand—” He said it in a gasping rush, like it was he who’d been underwater. “I’m discourteous and utterly poisoned by contempt. I know that.” His throat hitched. “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—” “Myndacious.” I reached up. Put a hand over his mouth. “It was an accident.”
“Where would you bite me, knight?” “Wherever you told me to, Diviner.” My arms. My neck. My mouth, stomach, breasts. And maybe he knew, because his breath quickened, like he, too, was thinking of all the parts of me he might sink his teeth into.
SCREAMING!!!!
There was more pressure—a pounding sensation over my chest so violent the world quaked. “Wake up, sweetheart. Wake. Up.” And the pain, the pain I knew so well from drowning, from dreaming— Was now the pain of awakening.
He said it with a deep familiarity. Like he’d thought to say it a million times, and the thinking of it had worn down all the sharp edges of saying it aloud. “I’d have come for you. I’d have killed or stolen or done any ignoble thing to see you free of that place. You are more special than you realize. I don’t even know your name”—he drew in a breath—“and I would do anything for you.”
He knew. He always seemed to open a door to himself the moment I needed somewhere to go. Rory brought my bloodied thumb to his lips and said what I’d said to him—to thousands of others—from Aisling’s spring. “What name, with blood, would you give me?” I put my thumb to his lips. “My name is Sybil Delling.”
Powerful
Chiming Wood than it had in the Fervent Peaks or the Seacht or Coulson Faire. Here, within the embrace of birch trees—where the houses were all made of pale wood and every man, woman, and child wore charcoal around their eyes and an axe on their belts—the air smelled sharp, hinting of idleweed.
It just dawned on me that they wear the charcoal eyeliner to mimic the black eyes on the birch tree. At least i think so.
It felt like a fever, looking at him. I was dizzy and thoughtless for it. The gargoyle tutted. “You two have been posturing long enough.” He shouted at Rory. “I say, Bartholomew! Won’t you come over here a moment?” “What are you doing?” I seethed. Rory’s dark eyes swung my way. His throat hitched, and then he was coming over,
“A thousand apologies. What was I saying? Ah, yes.” The gargoyle put a stone hand on my shoulder. “For the sake of my sanity, put Bartholomew out of her misery. Tell her you’re in love with her.”
Ahhhhhh!
“Oh dear.” His chest puffed. “Then it’s you who’s in love with him, is that it?” There was no knightly virtue vital enough to keep Maude from hiding her glee. She was quivering with it. Benji, slightly less so. His eyes were shifting between Rory to me in quick turns.
“Why do folk of the Wood wear it? Charcoal, I mean.” “Tradition—an old safety precaution. Because of the birke.” “What’s the birke?” “A name we have here. Birke—birch tree.”
“They’re called birke because they look like the trees—only they aren’t. They’re sprites who prowl the Wood. Once, they fed on idleweed, but folk here keep it stored up for ceremonial or medicinal practices. Now, the birke feed on flesh. And what flesh they like best—” She tapped her brow. “Eyes. That’s why we paint charcoal on our faces. The illusion of hollowed skulls.
Okay Ninth House vibes. Reverend Daughter Harrowhark looking ahh
Maybe knights and boy-kings and Diviners weren’t the only creatures in the Traum who wanted to kill their tyrants, because when the great birke succumbed to the axe, dropping like a felled tree in the forest— It took Maude with it.
Why did Maude have to die?! I feel like this wasn’t necessary
And not just because their fellow knight Maude Bauer was bruised and broken and unconscious. It was to spare them the sight of their king.
Okay she’s not dead. Thank God
It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”
“This too,” I whispered. His muscles tensed, Rory’s entire body suddenly called to attention. “Sybil.” “I’ll wear it publicly, like Benji wants. Prove that I’m influential. Mythical. Fearsome. Only—” He kept still. Waiting for me to finish. “Only I don’t think those things matter to me anymore.” I stepped closer, our faces inches apart. “Please, Rory. Take it off. I want someone to see me.” I whispered against his lips. “I want it to be you.”
He said it intently. Like he was imploring every part of me to take heed. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Sybil Delling.”
When you sparred in the yard, dirty and unbridled.” I wrapped my legs around his waist. Put my mouth over that thrumming pulse in his neck. “You looked so ignoble.” I sucked his skin. Pressed my teeth into it. Said, almost frantic—“I thought I’d die if I couldn’t have you.” Rory made a tormented sound.
Screaming!!!
His throat worked. “I’ve thought such unknightly things.” I was panting, and so was he. “You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don’t know what to call it, but I want it. I want you.”
I think you mean to say “Step on me mommy.”
“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.”
Wise words from the gargoyle
I’d quested through Traum. Battled Omens, sprites—loneliness and longing. I’d made the agonizing pilgrimage from Six to Sybil. That was death in and of itself. But, just on the other side of it, waiting behind gossamer— Was life, too.
Maude gave us one of her reassuring grins, and then she and the king were disappearing down the first tunnel, and Rory, the gargoyle, and I into the third.
Never split up!!
They don’t carry the horrible, beautiful burden of memory, of humanness, the way I must.
Of course the only woman omen is the sensible one
The gargoyle’s voice hardened. He shut his eyes, imitating the abbess. “Lie in the spring, Bartholomew. What signs do you see, Bartholomew? Don’t mix up your words, Bartholomew. Don’t cry or be sick, Bartholomew. Ignore all the pain, Bartholomew. Never complain, Bartholomew. Stop humming, Bartholomew. Swallow the blood, Bartholomew. Would that you were a daughter, Bartholomew. Soon I’ll replace you, Bartholomew. I’ll forget and erase you, Bartholomew. Bartholomew. Bartholomew. Bartholomew—”
Dropping the knife, she struck me with both hands, hitting my breast, my ribs, my arms—kicking at my legs. My skin broke, my armor dented. But I did not diminish.
Get her Sybil!!
Benji caught his wrist. Took his coin. He shoved Rory to the ground and kicked him in his wound, then let the coin fly.
I knew there was something weird going on with Benji. He’s been acting strange since back when Sybil was knighted.
“The Omens are gone. All that power has to go somewhere. I want you to help me carry the burden. I want you to come to Castle Luricht.” He said it simply. Like he was telling me a story. “I want you to be my queen.”
Motherfucker, no! You’re a teenager and a betrayer.
