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

by Rachel Gillig

“But, really—I tried to be good. To be a perfect Diviner and do everything the abbess told me to. I never complained, never said no. My worth was written by the rules I followed. But then the abbess called me resentful—a martyr. And maybe I am. But didn’t I become that way because her love cost as much?”

Faith requires a display. The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.’”

“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.”

Or maybe he just stopped thinking mistreatment was something he deserved.”

Errant knight Rodrick Myndacious, prideful, disdainful, godless, believed in me.

I’d spent all my strength trying to please her. But she was not a mother. She was an insect, weaving false stories, feeding upon my pain—working Aisling’s machine for her own glory, her own power, her own timelessness. No. She was not a mother. She was the sixth Omen. The moth. And for what she’d done to me, to the other Diviners, to Traum itself— I’d take the tools she’d given me. Then, with hammer, with chisel… I’d annihilate her.

“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.”

“What happens at Aisling Cathedral is not your fault. The Omens and the terrible things they’ve done are not your fault. Lost Diviners, past and present, are not your fault. You have no failures or falsehoods to amend for, no vows to tether you, no strength to prove.” He soothed my hair, as if to comb away the knots of my despair. “Especially to me.”

“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.”

There is something to be said about love. Be it for ardor or sorrow, love is like the Heartsore Weaver—like an Omen. Its signs are everywhere. We may seek it, create it, feel it, ignore it, or lose it, but it is always there. Love is like our loom stone—it keeps us rooted to the world. To one another.”

“Divination is a gift we give ourselves—that we might avoid the pain that comes from living, from loving, if we see it coming. “But I like to think there are times when the thread of our faith in love is so resolute that we forget to search for signs.” She nodded to the crowd. “When a babe learns to walk. When friends gather around a sickbed, or deathbed, and sew a patch onto the family blanket. A couple’s kiss on their wedding day, and the night that follows. We do not look for love, or heartbreak, because they, like the truest god, are ever with us.” She smiled. “And it’s a privilege to know them.”

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