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

by Rachel Gillig

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

“It’s trying to eat them,” I said, hand to my throat. “And look,” the gargoyle said pleasantly. “It’s coming our way.”

“There aren’t ghosts in my words, Six.

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

“If I was fixed on being the most useful version of myself”—she gestured at her bandages—“it would be all too easy to hate my body when it was not. I don’t. 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.”

Magic is like a god in that way. All-knowing, and most effective when not fully understood.”

How, like a god, she said she loved us but hurt us.”

“To the faithless, a god is a monster.