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

by Rachel Gillig

“You’re a fucking scourge.” He groaned, dropping his gaze to my mouth. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to kiss me?” “And deny myself any pleasure?” He smiled, startling us both.

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.”

surefire way to keep things formal between us.” I glared back at him. “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.”

“I’ll likely regret saying this—but keep your hands out of my pants.”

“I confess horses are not the intelligent beasts I imagined them to be. Though I don’t think that merits the abuse they suffer postmortem.” That one took me a moment. “No one actually beats dead horses, gargoyle. It’s an expression.” “Really? How morbid.”

I hurried to the table. Pulled my chair close to the gargoyle’s and hissed in his ear. “I need you to comport yourself.” “I have no idea what that means.” He sniffed the quilted blanket around his shoulders. “Sounds like something one does in a chamber pot.”

Rory came toward me until our noses were flush, speaking within an inch of my mouth. “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.”

“She’s a guest of the king’s. Affront her in any way, the knighthood will answer. Attempt to look beneath her shroud, she and the gargoyle will respond as they see fit. With full immunity to any carnage tended.” The gargoyle batted his eyes. “Oh, Bartholomew. He’s dreamy.”

I pulled myself upright. 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.” Rory nipped the pad of my thumb. “Now run it again.”

“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.”

“Once, there was a foundling boy who didn’t believe in anything. He grew up, became a worldly knight, and still he struggled to believe. He bore hardly any hope, and a mountain of disdain. And that should have been the end.” He took my hand, squeezed it, tightening my hold on my hammer. “But then he came to a cathedral upon a tor, and met a woman there. And all the tales he’d troubled himself with about cruelty, about unfairness and godlessness… he started to forget. He was afforded another chance, as if by magic, to believe in something. He’d never be a very good knight, but every time he looked at the woman, he had the distinct faith”—his eyes roved my face—“that things could be better than they’d been.”

“Does it end?” He nodded. “It ends a handful of minutes from now. After you’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world.” He grinned. “It ends when you kiss me.” “You mean it ends after I’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world—and I hit you as hard as I can.” “With your mouth.”

“Was it nothing, that knock in the Fervent Peaks, Bartholomew?” He nodded at Rory. “He came to our door, and you disappeared for many hours. When you returned you were wet and took off your tunic and threw blankets over yourself. I tried to sleep, but you were terribly annoying, breathing loudly, sighing and making little sounds and stirring in your bed—”

I followed Maude and Benji on their way to greet them, knocking into Rory’s shoulder. “An entire branch of idleweed?” I quipped. “Little sounds?” came his slow, mirthful reply.

“I’m about to pass my own wind if they don’t wrap this up,” the gargoyle muttered.

“It means something that you care enough to argue.”

“You don’t need the signs anymore. You’ve seen this world for what it is. A tale of lurid contradictions—a true story, and also a lie. You’ve known coin, knowledge, strength, intuition, love, life and death—and beaten them at their craft. You’ve known everything, Diviner. And to be all-knowing…” The king of Traum smiled at me, his future queen. “What is a god, if not that?”