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

by Rachel Gillig

“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to kiss me?” “And deny myself any pleasure?” He smiled, startling us both.

“Which one, Diviner?” Rory’s voice was deathly calm. He looked over his shoulder at me. “Which one marked up your face?”

Rory looked back at me, lip curling. “A knight and his lady.” “That,” I snapped, slipping from the saddle, “may be the worst thing you’ve said of me.” “That you know of.”

“You’re remarkably difficult to like.” “You’d like me better if you called me Rory.” “I’d like you better if you were on your back again.” He smiled.

“Brawling on the east side.” Rory’s smile vanished, his dark eyes skittering to a halt over on my face. My freshly bleeding bottom lip. He stared a moment, then another. Ever so slowly, his gaze rose to the guard at my side. “Which lowly picket of the Seacht struck her?”

“I have disdain in me, yes.” Rory’s brows drew together, lips parted slightly enough for me to hear the shaky sound of his exhale. “But none for you.”

never seen a knight so filthy—so physically degraded by his craft. He looked entirely ignoble. I couldn’t look away.

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

“I was wondering what it would be like. Watching you unravel.”

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.”

I was losing my faith in everything. But the two of us meeting… it felt almost divine.

“And I don’t know how to behave around you. You make me so fucking nervous.

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

“For the sake of my sanity, put Bartholomew out of her misery. Tell her you’re in love with her.”