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October 9 - October 16, 2025
To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?
“A happy pastime, as you’ve proven to me on many occasions. But, the king is upon us, with nary a warning. The utter gall of men.”
“I labored to supervise.”
“Hold your tongue or I’ll rip it out. I serve gods. You a serve a boy-king who has just garnered five ill portents. Only one of us is worthy of reproach.”
“And you call wasting your time dreaming of signs living, Diviner?”
“Shall I take his hands, or his throat?”
“I wouldn’t worry over it. Knights are shooting stars, Six. They come and go. But you and me, our sisterhood of Diviners—we’re the moon.” She smiled. “We’re eternal.”
Rory’s shoulders were an atlas, every subtle shift a new course charted—annoyance, humor, pointed resignation.
“Let… me… win.” His lips curled at the corners. “You are nervous. Why’s that, Diviner? Thinking of kissing me, too?” “I’d rather put you on your back.” “Don’t threaten me with a good ti—”
“I will tell you the story I know someday, Bartholomew. Would that we were living one of your tales instead. Would that things were different for you and me.”
“Would that things were different.”
“The abbess promised you’d be the one to stay with me.”
“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.”
As to the accusation—I’m not one of your precious gods, Diviner.” His eyes flickered in the darkness. “I’m the one who’s killing them.”
There is eternal magic in the water upon the tor, and those who drink it are just that: eternal.
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Faith requires a display. The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.’”
“Turns out fucking someone just to spite you leaves a lot to be desired.”
“Her care came with conditions. You bent yourself to fit them, and now… now you see yourself as this terrible burden. Like you’re nothing if you’re not the best, the most useful version of yourself.”
“It’s not true, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.”
“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.”
“You want to throw me down,” Rory said, eyelids dropping as he whispered into my parted lips. “And I, prideful, disdainful, godless, want to drag you into the dirt with me.”
“There aren’t ghosts in my words, Six. No rot hiding behind the scent of flowers. When I insult you, you’ll know it.” She
“Swords and armor are nothing to stone. A Diviner has chosen to walk beside the king, and to question her methods is to question Aisling—and thusly the Omens themselves. Is that what you are doing, or is it the altitude that makes you such a mad apple?”
My sassy little king
“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.”
Im in agreement, Bartholomew
“Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.” “I’m full of wrong ideas.”
“I was wondering what it would be like. Watching you unravel.”
am not afraid of you. Because without me, you would be nothing.”
“You think I want a single scratch upon her?”
“Where would you bite me, knight?” “Wherever you told me to, Diviner.”
He was a thief, stealing my breath, my reason.
“The thing is—I think I’d do anything you asked of me.”
“I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”
“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.”
“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.”
It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”
He gave me thirty seconds. A heady half minute where I was certain I was the master of Rodrick Myndacious.
“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.”
“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.”
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“If I am wonderful and wretched for learning the truth of the Omens, your hands are marked by the blood of my metamorphosis.”
“Losing something is painful. Sometimes, finding what we’ve lost is just as agonizing.”
“So you see, Bartholomew. Firstly by happenstance, then with great intent, you and I created gods.”
“My name was wiped from her stories, and so were the names of all the Diviners that came after me. But I tried to hold on. I think I must have spent centuries trying to tell the world who I was in my own peculiar way.”
