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

by Rachel Gillig

I’ll tell it to you as best I can and promise to be honest in my talebearing. If I’m not, that’s hardly my fault. To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?

Sometimes, Bartholomew, I think her quite the bitch.” “Gargoyle!” “I am simply saying what is on my heart. Who would fault me for that?”

“Is that common in the king’s service?” the gargoyle pondered. “An abysmal lack of knowledge?”

I don’t want to be in the middle of the story anymore.

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

“If you only ever look up at something, can you ever see it clearly?”

“It’s not true, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.”

“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 nodded at the box. “You have a strong body to match a valiant spirit. That was all I meant.”

The gargoyle batted his eyes. “Oh, Bartholomew. He’s dreamy.”

“You say the river cares not for the rain, but it is the rain that feeds the river. In time, it can even wear away stone.”

“Your hair is pretty,” Rory murmured. “Like moonlight. And your skin is so soft. But beneath…” He kneaded my muscle. “If I were to bite down, I’d break my teeth on you.”

He always seemed to open a door to himself the moment I needed somewhere to go.

“My mind is playing tricks on me,” said the gargoyle at my side. “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 think I would like to stop promising myself away, or else there will be nothing left of me to give, King Castor.”

BOO BAD KING CASTOR

Only love, only heartbreak, can weave the thread of all that came, and all that is yet to come.

Not everything had to hurt to be holy. Bad, to be good. But damn me if I wanted it to sometimes.

“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.”

Perhaps it’s because I’m a weaver, and a tapestry is like a memory brought to life.

I think I must have spent centuries trying to tell the world who I was in my own peculiar way.”

tears for Bartholomew

“Am I all that you imagined?” I said, looking down at her. “Or am I so much more?”