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

by Rachel Gillig

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.

“Look, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, lifting my boots from a bush. “Your foot-gloves are perfectly unscathed.”

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.”

I looked down at him through a rain-soaked shroud and he up at me through impossibly dark eyes, and for that moment we were his coin—two sides, perfectly balanced. His speed, my strength, like it was chance, only chance, that had determined which of us had come out on top.

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

“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.”