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October 8 - October 9, 2025
“Every ten years, they come.” He took another step. “It’s the only spring water I’m given—their blood.” Another step. “I have my strength to keep up. My hunger to sate. And so”—he was upon me now—“I take my fill.”
he gazed at my unshrouded eyes so intently it seemed to cast him into a dream. A fleeting, utter stillness.
Chime. Harken to the chime in the Wood. There, the wind tells us how to feel what we cannot see. Only the wind can say what is to come.
“Wake up, sweetheart. Wake. Up.”
The gargoyle sprite has no discernable home, save the tor, for their bodies are composed of the same limestone as the spring in which the Diviners dream.
They are saints and martyrs, as venerated, as significant—as unknown—as the Omens themselves.
I lay there and lay there, and my prayers weren’t answered. Nothing answered, save the wind.
“I can’t keep going.” “Yes, you can.”
My vision blurred. Sorrow, I realized. That was the agony behind my eyes.
“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.”
And maybe, in all the forgetting… I wanted to remember who had come before.
He knew. He always seemed to open a door to himself the moment I needed somewhere to go.
“Years in the making—and over in a moment.”
“For the sake of my sanity, put Bartholomew out of her misery. Tell her you’re in love with her.”
“Have I gotten it wrong?” “Decidedly.” “Oh dear.” His chest puffed. “Then it’s you who’s in love with him, is that it?”
To sleep is to finally awaken. After all—swords and armor are nothing to stone.”
“What is magic, what is memory, and why are both so haunting?”
“If you value your friend when he fights your battles for you—when he is rogue and ruthless—you must value him when he is gentle, too. Otherwise you do not value him at all.”
I learned that, for all my heartbreak over death—over false stories and lying gods and lifeless Diviners—my heart could break for happiness, too.
My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish.
Your loyalty is a treasure I would never deny.”
“I don’t know why I say the things I do.”
It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”
I’ve sworn to Aisling, and I’ve sworn to the Omens, and I’ve sworn to my friends, who are now forever gone.” I drew in a long breath. “I think I would like to stop promising myself away, or else there will be nothing left of me to give,
“Please, Rory. Take it off. I want someone to see me.” I whispered against his lips. “I want it to be you.”
His breaths came faster. “I don’t think I have the words.”
My shroud had never hidden any of his beauty, nor was I surprised to see it so close. Rodrick Myndacious was exquisite—
It was the newness of his expression. There was wonder in his gaze I’d never glimpsed before, as if seeing my eyes for the first time had profoundly altered his.
“First, you unravel,”
I must be the stupidest woman alive, that I’d spent so much time fighting with him when I could have been fighting with his lips instead.
Rory kissed me in a way no story can properly express.
“I’ve thought about your voice. I’ve stayed up, thinking about it. Wondering if it would be sharp or soft when I made you come.”
“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 was a chime, and he was sounding me.
“It’s just you and me, Sybil.” He didn’t like being away from my mouth. Every word was punctuated with a kiss. “I just want you to feel good.”
They were pallid. White. Completely bereft of iris or pupil, like those of an unpainted statue. Hewn entirely of stone. Just like an Omen.
“You are beautiful, Sybil Delling. So fucking beautiful. You’re strong and smart and noble.” He grasped the nape of my neck, and I wondered if he liked to touch me there because he could aim my gaze. “But I think I like it best when you’re wrong.”
“I’m so far the opposite of repulsed or regretful about you that I’m lost.”
“Fuck me, and fuck the rules.” We unraveled all night long. We lost our gods, our armor, our own names. We spent ourselves on each other, completely and utterly vanishing into the craft of desire. Completely, utterly— Gone.
Loom stone. Only love, only heartbreak, can weave the thread of all that came, and all that is yet to come.
People who love you for your usefulness don’t love you at all.”
“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.”
He’s brash and uncharismatic and entirely without political value. The best knight I know.”
We hadn’t told anyone about what had passed between us at Petula Hall. We hadn’t spoken of it ourselves. But it was there between us. Every time we looked at each other, brushed hands, breathed the same air—it was there.
Rory’s fingers flexed. “Come here.”
“I like that you’re a bad knight,” I said, pressing my teeth into his bottom lip. “It’s what makes you a good one.”
I wanted to break something for needing him so badly.
Not everything had to hurt to be holy. Bad, to be good. But damn me if I wanted it to sometimes.
“Thank you for bringing me with you. I don’t think I would have been brave enough to leave the tor alone.”
“I am a battlefield of admiration.” He nodded at the horizon. “I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”
