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

by Rachel Gillig

“Which is more intricate?” he mused. “The designs of men, trying to reach gods, or that of gods, trying to reach men?” My hammer collided with a chunk of granite. “What is either to the intricacies of women, who reach both?”

“I say, what on earth is the racket?” The knife I didn’t know Rory carried was soaring. It hit the batlike gargoyle between his stone eyes, then dropped brusquely onto grass. The gargoyle remained cross-eyed a second, then slowly turned his gaze to me. “Did he just try to smite me, Bartholomew?” Rory’s gaze jerked. “Bartholomew? That’s your name?”

“Take me with you, Bartholomew! I don’t want to start over again and again and watch children dream and never see beyond this place. I don’t want to be in the middle of the story anymore. Please.” He wrenched open the shed door. “Take me with you.”

he thought me an Omen witch and a whore— Rory leaned down. Cracked him over the jaw with an open palm. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

“The thing is—I think I’d do anything you asked of me.”

Rory had his fellow knight by the face. He gripped Hamelin’s cheeks—pressed brutally. Hamelin coughed out smoke—and Rory sneered at him, slapping the idleweed branch from his hand. “Don’t fucking touch her again.”

Benji pulled away. “Fucking hell, Rory, leave me alone. No one believes this white knight charade.” Rory flinched. I flew to my feet, but it was the gargoyle who spoke. “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.”

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

Rory’s smeared his thumb across my lips. “I’ll do anything you ask of me.” And then his mouth was on mine.

“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.”

“I want to look the abbess in the eye before we rid Traum of its final Omen.” “That’s all well and good,” the gargoyle said from the corner of the room. He shook a blanket at me. “But who’s going to tuck me in?”

“You needn’t all be here. I told you last night, I’m f—” “Say fine, and I’ll combust.” Rory reached down, gingerly moving the blanket and examining my bruise.