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

by Rachel Gillig

I’ll tell it to you as best I can and promise to be honest in my talebearing. If I’m not, that’s hardly my fault. To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?

Why didn’t the Omens speak to me like this? In a melody or a spin or the heartbeat of a drum? Not in the spring, in dreams, where I was in pain and afraid, but like this, loose and infinite, when my soul was split open and thrown skyward in delight.

The night’s silence wore holes in my senses, and my mind hurried to fill the chasms.

“I am not afraid of you. Because without me, you would be nothing.”

I looked down at his lips, and he up at mine, the distance between us eclipsing like a celestial movement, staggering and inevitable.

it would have been as arbitrary as everything else that happened at Aisling Cathedral, teaching a girl intended to drown how to swim.

So, please—don’t look to dreams, and don’t look for signs. Just look forward. Tomorrow will go well.”

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

But if the creature was a monster, it was because it was made that way.

Sadness, like birch bark, had all the appearance of frailty. And yet… The tree prevailed.

think I would like to stop promising myself away, or else there will be nothing left of me to give, King Castor.”