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

by Rachel Gillig

To the child in each of us, yearning to be special. Take my hand, you strange little creature, and together we shall walk beyond the wall.

To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?

One statue held a coin, another an inkwell. One bore an oar, another a chime, and the final a loom stone.

Coin. The only portent, the only prosperity—the only god of men—is coin.

Ink. Nothing but ink and the persuasive quill can devise what is true.

“Violence is a craft. So is compassion.

I’m not a pair—I’m one of six and there are five cracks in my heart for it

“You think that because someone embraces innovation they must scorn the ancient and ethereal?”

Two things can be true at the same time—people can believe in more than one thing at once.”

“It sounds awful when I say it out loud.” “True things often do.”

“Which lowly picket of the Seacht struck her?”

“I have disdain in me, yes.” Rory’s brows drew together, lips parted slightly enough for me to hear the shaky sound of his exhale. “But none for you.”

“You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.”

“I was wondering what it would be like. Watching you unravel.”

He waited at the gate of every place he touched until I granted him entry.

“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.”

“It is important for a squire to carry a knight’s weapons,” he said, the words so stoic I wondered if he’d practiced them on the flight back. “I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”

“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.”

“Wake up, sweetheart. Wake. Up.

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.”

“Anger is a fine weapon, Diviner,” she said, quiet enough so the others wouldn’t hear. “So long as you don’t point it at yourself.

“Don’t fucking touch her again.”

“That is unkind and unworthy, Bartholomew.” He’d been quietly crying in the corner of the room, and now appeared the spirit of righteous anger. “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.”

“The whole world is a wood, Bartholomew, and everyone in it is fashioned of birch bark. Frail as paper.”

I knew what she was doing. Offering me a permanent place, now that the Diviners were gone. Telling me that I need not remain adrift—that I had a home with them if I wanted one.

It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”

You have no failures or falsehoods to amend for, no vows to tether you, no strength to prove.”

No litany, no profanity, was better than hearing him this desperate.

I unraveled. I unraveled until I was the barest spool of thread, spinning in the wake of the little death.

“Fuck me, and fuck the rules.”

“It’s hard to see who I am when I am lost in what’s expected of me.”

“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.”

After so long thinking there was sacrality in drowning, I worried nothing was divine unless it arrived on the beckoning hand of pain.

“Losing something is painful. Sometimes, finding what we’ve lost is just as agonizing.”

“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?”