Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
Aisling’s spring water.
The shirtless knight glowered. “Diviner?”
My stomach rolled. Bile I thought had all been spent on the cathedral floor returned, and before I could pay the knight’s impudence back with my own, I put a hand to my stomach. Heaved forward.
And was sick on his boots.
I ran.
Maude, who was halfway through her alarmed cry of “What the fuck!” stumbled back. My shoulder collided with her pauldron, and then I was sprinting into the night. Through darkness and grass and onto a crude stone path, I made my way to the stone cottage where the Diviners lived.
I was nearly there when I heard him behind me.
“Diviner.”
I didn’t look back.
“Diviner.”
A rickety wood gate stood between me and the last twenty paces to my door. I caught myself on it, fumbling for the latch. It groaned, clicked open-
A hand came from behind me, pinning the gate shut. When I looked down, I realized why it had taken him so long to catch me.
He’d removed his boots. The ones I’d unceremoniously spat bile upon.
There was a reason we Diviners were kept out of sight after a dream. It was not worthy of our image, our station, that we should be seen as frail. That dreaming of gods was in any way diminishing. It was not known how sick Aisling’s spring water made us.
My entire body burned that I should be made vulnerable in front of this asshole.
I turned. The knight was right behind me. “Step back,” I snapped.
He was looking at my shroud, at me, like I was a venomous asp. Transfixed-and repulsed. This close, I could see the thing he was smoking was branch-like, thin and gnarled and no longer than my middle finger. He put his lips to it, withdrew his hand from the gate, and took three full steps back.
It was still too close. His bareness-
“You couldn’t have put on a shirt?”
His eyes roamed my body, then immediately withdrew. He threw his head back-shot smoke out of his mouth at the sky. “I could say the same to you.”
I looked down at my wet Divining robe, thin and clinging.
Lecher. “Why does the king have spring water in that flagon?”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“I could smell it.”
“You sure you weren’t just smelling yourself? You reek of Aisling.” The knight was tall-but he did not wield it. Knees bent, he kept his weight pitched forward in a lazy slouch, like it was a labor standing at full height. “Have you been in the cathedral this entire time?”
“Why?”
“Benji would like to know.”
“Who?”
“Benedict Castor.” His eyelids lowered in annoyance. “The king.”
Brazen, this knight. The title of king might not carry the same influence as the abbess’s, or even as a Diviner’s, but he was still majesty or sire. Nothing as dull and flippant as
Benji.
My stomach made an appalling squelching sound. “Yes. I’ve been in the cathedral.”
The knight’s gaze, his face, proved a challenging translation. His eyes were unfathomably dark, catching moonlight and gifting it back as he surveyed me. All I could read of him was that he did not like my shroud. He’d glance at it, frown, then look at a spot above my head, like he’d rather talk to the air than a half-obscured face. “Is it the blood or the spring water that makes you vomit?”
“None of your business.”
He took another drag off the branch he was smoking, then held it out to me. “Here.”
“What is it?”
“Petrified idleweed. It’ll help with the nausea. With the discomfort.”
I smiled, hostility seated on my lips as my gaze flitted to the bruises along his side. “I’m not the one enduring discomfort. Beyond this conversation, at least.”
He smiled back, equally hostile. His teeth were white, straight-except the front bottom three, which were crowded. A pallid row of disorganized soldiers. Were he to bite me, I imagined the indent would be as unique as his fingerprint.
What a horrible thought.
“With the nausea, then.” Smoke plumed from his nostrils. Again, he offered the idleweed. “Or it is a bad portent-smoking under a silver moon?”
“Not everything is a sign.”
“Could have fooled me. I can’t go anywhere in this wretched kingdom without hearing about how a coin fell or ink spilled or water moved or the wind chimed or a fucking thread snapped.” He shook his head. Laughed without warmth. “It’s clever, Aisling’s system. The stone objects the Omens are known for are common, their portents vague. The margin for error and misinterpretation is so wide my horse would die of starvation trying to get from one end to the other. And yet this cathedral, this hallowed ground, is the only place in Traum where people can justify that wasting one’s life looking for signs is a life well spent. They pay hard-earned coin to do so.”
The shock of his irreverence whipped through the air. I felt its sting upon my cheek. This kind of blasphemy was something the knighthood was supposed to root out of the hamlets, not cultivate within their ranks. Not in my ten years at Aisling had someone dared speak to me this way. What a vile man, unworthy of his station. I’d known it from the moment I’d clapped eyes on him that he was crude. Indecent.
The foulest knight in all of Traum.
My entire body bristled. “It’s not a waste. Divination takes away the pain of the unknown. Knowing if you are headed for something good or ill-fated is like peering into the future. It’s magic what the Omens do. What
I do.” I leaned against the gate and ripped the idleweed from his hand. “Show some fucking deference.”
He watched me through eyes so dark I’d lost sight of his pupils. When he spoke, low and deep, it was like two voices sounding at once. That warm, rich tone-and a deep rasp, like knuckles dragged over gravel. “What’s your name?”
I brought the idleweed to my lips and drew in a tentative inhale. The smoke burned down my throat, sharp and hot. “What’s your name?”
“Rodrick Myndacious.” He winced, like he’d strung an out-of-tune fiddle. “Rory.”
My eyes watered. The smoke in my lungs had gone itchy. A cough that refused to be dampened bubbled in my throat. I put a sleeve to my mouth and hacked.