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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

YOU CAN NEVER GO HOME

I didn’t want the rest of the world to see my stone eyes. Not yet. I wore my shroud, and my armor, when we rode out of the Chiming Wood to the fifth and final hamlet—the Cliffs of Bellidine, where the Heartsore Weaver dwelled with her magic loom stone.

Not all the knights rode with us. Several stayed to assist the folk of the Wood with the reconstruction of their sacred glen after the sprite attack. A memorial for Helena Eichel would be built, the glen cleansed of blood and the remains of the birke.

Benji paid eighty gold coins of his own money to see it done.

“Good of him to do that,” I said to Maude, settling her bandaged body into a cart for travel.

Behind me, someone chuckled.

Hamelin was there, saddling the horse to our wagon.

I walked over. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Only—” He smiled, like he was telling a joke I was not in on. “Benedict’s hamlet is Coulson Faire. He’s taken it to heart, that creed. ‘The only god of men is coin.’”

He handed the reins to the cart driver, then left to find his own horse.

Folk of the Wood came to watch us go, many dropping their hoods—pressing their axes to their chests in salute—to see Maude go by. Mouths turned, faces drawn by adoration and reverence lining the road, tales of her bravery abounding, the awestruck words sprite killer echoing through the trees as we rode out of the Chiming Wood.

She was in pain. That was why she preferred the cart and not her horse. The morning surrendered to day, and while the roll of the cart wheels and the wind in the trees and even the off-tune hum of the gargoyle was a soothing lull, Maude could not get comfortable, twisting and wincing in her seat.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“In truth?” She was looking up at the trees, the fingers of her uninjured hand idling over her axe. “Like a fool.”

“You’ll heal, Maude. You’ll get better, and you’ll be useful again and not feel so helpless—”

She put up a hand, stopping me. “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.”

Her words shamed me. “Then why do you feel like a fool?”

She sighed. “Because my mother killed sprites, and her mother did, too, and they were noble women. We grow up, searching our guardians for what is right and what is true, thinking they have all the answers, like they already understand the signs of life. But they don’t. No one does.”

She looked away. “I see how Benji is, desperate to achieve what his grandfather could not. How you are, fighting to unstitch all the lies the abbess sewed into you. And while I am a hunter, a killer, like all Bauer women, I should have looked harder at myself and less at them.” There were tears in her eyes. “I always hated killing sprites. They are just creatures, trying to live, like the rest of us. Maybe I never knew that until I killed the Faithful Forester and finally felt what a righteous kill could be like. But I kept slaughtering sprites. I might kill one now, if it came onto the road.” Daylight dappled in through the trees, painting her tears gold. “It’s hard to see who I am when I am lost in what’s expected of me.”

I brushed my thumb over my shroud. If it would not pain her, I’d lay my head in Maude’s lap and let her tears fall onto my face, because it would cleanse something in me no spring water ever had. “I hated dreaming,” I said. “I hated it so much I decided I’d be perfect at it so that no one ever knew.”

She faced me. “Why do we do these things to ourselves?”

“The answer is rather simple.” The gargoyle swatted birch branches as we passed them by. “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.”

“That is a very keen thing to say, gargoyle.” Maude put her uninjured hand on his shoulder. “How is it you came to know so much more about life than the rest of us?”

His chest puffed with pride. “I am years beyond my wisdom.”

I smiled and did not correct him.

Of all the beauty Traum held—its tors and cities and peaks and woods—none had prepared me for the splendor of its seaside.

The Cliffs of Bellidine were a marvel.

Green sweeping hills spotted with sheep. The higher the hills reached, the more flowers lay upon them. Thrift flowers—carpets of them. If I rolled down any which one, I would be stained a brilliant shade of pink. The heart of the hamlet rested between hills, populated by dozens of crofts and houses made of stone. And just beyond them—

Sheer white cliffs. The glorious Sighing Sea.

We rode over the last finger of the Tenor River, saw the last birch trees, and then I was gasping—looking over the sea. “Oh, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, standing in the cart. “It’s like looking out over the edge of the world.”

It was. Even the knighthood, who were not new to the splendor like me, slowed their horses to look out over the hills, the cliffs, the water. Hands were put to eyes, lips pulled over teeth in smiles. Benji, who rode at the front of the line, winced against the wind. Next to him rode Rory. Only he wasn’t looking out over the view.

He was watching me take it all in.

I let out a heavy exhale. Held his gaze until I was burning.

Thunder rumbled overhead.

“That sounds like a storm,” Maude said.

“Pishposh.” The gargoyle stuck his nose to the wind. “I can always smell it when it’s going to rain. The thunder was but a collision of clouds.”

It began to pour twenty minutes later.

“Always smell when it’s going to rain, my foot,” I grumbled. Wind whipped and the horses brayed, rain pelting us from every angle, pinging over armor—ricocheting into faces. “Not as wise as we think, are we?”

The gargoyle wrapped his wings around himself and pouted.

By the time we got to the main road—to the circle of crofts—the king and his knights looked positively drowned. We reached an inn and adjoining stables. “I hate it!” the gargoyle wailed against the rain. “How do the flowers bear this incessant abuse?” He covered his eyes, wobbled, then fell out of the wagon into mud and thrashed. It frightened the boy who’d come to take our horses so acutely he fled into the inn and did not come out again until his mother was with him.

We took our armor off in the stables. The knights were each given a key, and a room to share. When the innkeeper gave me mine—wrought iron—I noticed that she was wearing a circle around her neck. A stone, with the center carved out.

Her eyes caught on my shroud—then lowered to my knightly under armor. “Bless me. You’re a contradiction.”

“Rude,” the gargoyle muttered behind me.

The woman smiled. There was a web of fine wrinkles around her eyes. “Sorry. I’ve never been to Aisling. Never seen a Diviner in the flesh.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat and nodded at her necklace. “Is that a loom stone?”

She put a wrinkled hand to her throat. “Got it practically the day I was born. We all wear one.” Again, she smiled. “We’re all weavers here.”

I waited for her to ask me about Aisling. For her to bring a piece of cloth, a thread, maybe, and ask me if I saw any signs or presages or portents or any which word people used when they spoke to me of the Omens.

She didn’t. She just gave me the key to my room and smiled.

“They seem a gentle folk here,” I said to Maude as we passed a reaching loom, a dozen women working it.

“They believe in the Omens as much as the others,” Maude said as we moved up the stairs. “But the Heartsore Weaver is all about presages of love. Heartbreak. Both of those things tend to bring people together. I don’t know. It’s made folk of this hamlet strangely kind.”

I opened our room and led her inside. How world-weary I’d become to be surprised that an Omen could have a benevolent impact over their hamlet. “We’re still going to kill her,” I said. “The Heartsore Weaver. We’ll kill her, and then we’ll go to Aisling.” My voice hardened. “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?”

Hours later, when the storm was over and the night quiet and Maude and the gargoyle snoring, a note slid under my door.

Meet at the beach?

—R

The innkeeper, knighthood—everyone was in bed. I tiptoed down the stairs, past the loom, past the room with the hearth. The fire was still alight.

“Six?”

I turned. There were five chairs pulled near the hearth. In three of them, with large cups in their hands, sat Hamelin, Dedrick Lange, and Tory Bassett.

Benji was there, too. Not seated, but pacing, walking back and forth in front of the others. When he saw me, he stopped mid-stride. “It is you.” He eyes traced my pale nightshirt. “Thought you might be a ghost.”

I smiled.

“I was just thinking about you, Six,” he said. “Debating whether or not to see if you were awake—only I didn’t wish to wake Maude. She needs her rest.”

“You can call me Sybil, you know.” I came to stand next to him. “What did you want me for?”

“We’re having a little meeting about tomorrow’s ceremony, and what comes after.” The king patted the spine of an empty chair. “Please—join us.”

He seemed different to me. There was no wine in his hand, no liquid courage. He stood taller, spoke more clearly, as if with every hamlet we’d gone to, Benedict Castor had been fortified.

Then I looked from his face into Hamelin’s and the other two knights by the fire. They weren’t Benji’s usual company. I wondered what they knew—if they knew anything at all, or if this was just pretense. Him, making merry with his knights to keep them from learning he was doing far more in the hamlets than participating in ceremonies. “You didn’t want to ask Rory to join your meeting?”

Dedrick Lange snorted.

“I did ask him,” Benji said. “Not ten minutes ago, in fact. But he was on his way out the door and said he’d catch up with me later.” Even in the dim light, I could see the king’s smile strain. “He seemed… distracted.”

“Just as well,” Tory Bassett said between sips of wine. “Myndacious has no sway over the hamlets or the noble families.”

I frowned. “What’s your point?”

“The point ,” Hamelin said, his tone pleasant, but not his gaze, “is that Myndacious has nothing to bring to the table. He isn’t highborn. He’s brash, uncharismatic, and entirely without political value. No real use, save brute intimidation. In a word—a bad knight.”

I slapped his wine out of his hand. It hit the floor, splashing upon Benji’s feet, painting them crimson. Hamelin laughed, but the king silenced him; his voice was harsher than I’d ever heard it. “Careful,” Benji warned. “To question a knight’s merit is to question the king. I may not be the scholar my grandfather was, but I’ve studied my knights and applied their value well enough.” His gaze narrowed over Hamelin. “Or should I reevaluate yours?”

Hamelin went silent, and Benji’s cheeks flushed. Whatever power he’d tasted, he clearly relished the flavor. He turned to me, spine straight. “Join us, Six. I’d like to discuss your position, once we are finished in the hamlets and returned to Castle Luricht—”

Then his gaze dropped to my hand and the note therein. Clouds formed in his eyes. “Or perhaps you, too, find yourself distracted.”

Were I still Six, the Diviner upon the tor, I would give him what he wanted at the price of my own pleasure. To let my shoulders sink beneath the burden of my yes es was the only way I understood my own merit.

But Six was gone.

“I’d love to discuss tomorrow’s ceremony with you, Benji,” I said, shooting Hamelin a glower. “But right now, I’m meeting someone else. He’s brash and uncharismatic and entirely without political value. The best knight I know.”

I left, slamming the inn door behind me.

The air outside was tepid, the sky clear, and the path to the beach well marked by woven banners. I followed them, slipping between thrift flowers, basking in the pleasure of treading over dirt, then sand, with my bare feet.

The Sighing Sea was gentle, unassuming—a low, steady rush. I stopped twenty paces onto the beach, arrested by the sight of the water. It seemed the sky, ever patient, had waited the entire day for the sea to be calm enough to touch. And now that the weather had cleared, the night sky pressed itself over the water. I could not tell where the sea ended and the moon, the stars, began.

“Storm’s over,” a voice called from behind me. “It’s always pretty like this afterward.”

I turned. He stood in shadow, leaned up against the rock face.

Rory.

He looked lazy. But the nearer I drew, the more apparent the illusion. I could hear his quick inhales. See the pulse in his neck jump.

We hadn’t told anyone about what had passed between us at Petula Hall. We hadn’t spoken of it ourselves. But it was there between us. Every time we looked at each other, brushed hands, breathed the same air—it was there.

Rory’s fingers flexed. “Come here.”

I was on him. Shoving him against the wall of rocks and kissing him. He grasped the nape of my neck, anchoring our mouths together. “I like that you’re a bad knight,” I said, pressing my teeth into his bottom lip. “It’s what makes you a good one.”

Rory reached for my face—took off my shroud. When it fell away, I couldn’t bear the reverence that flickered through his eyes. It scared me, thrilled me so much that I wrestled him to the ground and we went at one another so roughly they must have heard us in the village; must have known it wasn’t just the sea, crashing and moaning, after the storm.

I wanted to throw him down so hard the earth cracked. I wanted to break something for needing him so badly. I wanted him to break me, too—for him to sink his teeth into my neck or breasts or thighs. After so long thinking there was sacrality in drowning, I worried nothing was divine unless it arrived on the beckoning hand of pain.

But then I thought of that first time at Petula Hall, when we’d gone slow. When we’d been witness, pupil, visitor, then craftsman, of each other’s pleasure. When the little deaths had come again and again and there had been no pain upon their wings.

Not everything had to hurt to be holy. Bad, to be good.

But damn me if I wanted it to sometimes.

In the morning, I woke in my room to a blushing dawn. Turned over in bed.

And saw that the gargoyle was gone.

“Sybil?” Maude sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s missing.” I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like waking up in my Diviner cottage and finding that Four, Two, Three, Five, then One, had vanished. “My gargoyle. He was here when I got back from the beach last night, and now he’s”—I put a hand to my chest—“ lost. ”

Maude braced the frame of her bed to get up, but I was already throwing on a tunic, bursting from our room, out of the inn and into morning light.

And all while I looked for the gargoyle, through crofts, through sheep-speckled fields and hills of thrift flowers, climbing higher and higher, I was thinking on lost things. On death. On how I’d searched the hamlets, like I searched now, and hadn’t found a single one of my darling Diviners to put back into my arms. How fate was cruel, life frail, and how lonely it felt, in the vastness of Traum, that the only person I’d come close to finding was myself.

I sobbed like a child.

Then, at the tallest cliff, in a bed of flowers, I saw him. Looking out over the dawn, the sea—the edge of the world—hands folded delicately in his lap. Utterly content.

“Oh, you stupid, stupid gargoyle!” I ran to him. Threw my arms around his shoulders—bruised myself on his body for holding so tightly. “Why did you leave and not say anything?”

He blinked. “Are you crying, Bartholomew?”

“Of course I am, you dingbat.”

I didn’t know if he fully understood why I was upset, but he seemed pleased to be the one to comfort and not the one to cry, because his shoulders straightened and he began to hum. “I think,” he said when my breath had finally soothed, “that we were never meant to stay so long behind that stone wall, Bartholomew.” He rested his heavy head on mine. “Thank you for bringing me with you. I don’t think I would have been brave enough to leave the tor alone.”

I held his hand, and we looked out over the view. “Why did you come out here?”

“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.”

We watched the sun rise over the sea. I leaned against his shoulder. “Do you still think about Aisling, gargoyle?”

“Endlessly.” He stretched his wings. Yawned. “The tor was the only home I ever knew. But I have stepped down from its height and seen the world with my own eyes. You can’t take something like that back. Even if I returned to the cathedral, nothing can be as it was.” His fangs pressed over his teeth as he smiled. “You can never really go home.”

“Rather a tragic way to see things, don’t you think?”

He patted my leg. “You sound troubled.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Often, but also rarely.”

I keep my eyes upon the vast, liminal sea. Thought of life and death and the Diviners.

We’ll go to the Cliffs of Bellidine and look out over the Sighing Sea, all six of us. We’ll shout so loud and long that our echoes will sound behind us. We’ll lie under the stars on beds of pink thrift flowers and stain our teeth with wine. We’ll sleep, but never dream.

I stood. Walked to the edge of the cliff.

And shouted.

It came from deep in my belly. A forlorn yell that sounded so loud and so long that it put a buzz in my ears, its echo devouring the Sighing Sea, the Cliffs of Bellidine. All of Traum, perhaps.

And I thought, maybe the life of Sybil Delling was paid for with the death of Six’s dreams. That it wasn’t just the Omens that weren’t real, but the stories I’d told myself. That I had to suffer to earn a home at Aisling Cathedral—that I had to hide my face and name to be useful, to be strong, to be special. That the Diviners and I would spend our lives together—that our sisterhood was eternal.

But nothing was eternal, and I could never go back home. Death fluttered over the world like a breeze, stirring our hair, and I knew it well. I’d quested through Traum. Battled Omens, sprites—loneliness and longing. I’d made the agonizing pilgrimage from Six to Sybil.

That was death in and of itself.

But, just on the other side of it, waiting behind gossamer—

Was life, too.

I reached into my hair. Took off my shroud. Held it out over the edge of the cliff. When the wind took it in its teeth, I did not resist. I simply… let go.

I watched as my shroud fluttered away, as if on pale wings. It flew and it flew until I couldn’t see it anymore, because the light over the sea was so bright.

I cried. Just a little. When I turned, the gargoyle was there, smiling at me. So was Maude.

Rory too.

“Oh.” I wiped tears from my cheeks and levied a threatening finger. “Don’t you dare say anything.” But the threat fell flat—I was smiling right back at them.

Rory bridged the distance between us.

Morning light warmed his face. His dark hair caught the wind, and when he looked at me with unmasked adoration, I felt an instant tightness in my chest.

He leaned over in his usual idle way. Took my cheek in his hand. Said, “Just as well. I don’t have the words.”

I kissed him, and he kissed me back harder, and we stood upon the cliff and what felt like the edge of the world, windblown and breathless and new.

Maude hugged the gargoyle, and he clapped.

The ceremony, put on by the noble families of the Cliffs of Bellidine to mark the arrival of a new king, was delayed. For the rest of the day, it stormed.

I waited for Benji to find me and Rory and Maude—to meet with us as he had with Hamelin and the others last night, but he did not. He kept to his quarters while the rest of the knights, restless, shuffled through the inn where we stayed. I thought of staying in my quarters, too, afraid to show my stone eyes. But I had banished my shroud to the wind—let go of Six entirely. There was nothing to hide beneath now.

I sat by the fire with Maude and the gargoyle while Rory read a book of poetry aloud, making faces whenever the author said anything too amorous, then tossed the book aside with a snort. The gargoyle picked it up, held it upside down, and spent the next quarter hour hemming and hawing over it, pretending to read.

The knights stared at me. Travelers who stopped in the inn, too. They searched my stone eyes just as pointedly as they once had my shroud—with grotesque fascination or fear—until a murderous glower from Rory or Maude sent their gazes to the wall. And while I was not so restless as I’d been in the Chiming Wood, waiting for the king’s ceremony or an opportunity to snare an Omen, there was a thrumming disquiet in my body. An internal warning I could not translate.

Hours later, well into the night, I lay in bed in my room—still awake. Maude was snoring in the bed next to me, and the gargoyle muttered in his sleep. Rain sprayed the window, thunder rolled, the darkness perforated every handful of minutes by the flash of lightning. It was far from a quiet night.

Still—I heard it. A strange noise, just outside the door.

Clack, clack.

I went still, listening. There it was again. Footsteps in the dark. Not a thump like a cobbled shoe or boot or even a bare foot might make, but harsh. Like stone upon stone. Clack, clack. Clack, clack—

The door creaked open.

A figure in a hooded gray cloak came into the room. Its steps were heavy, the wood groaning in its wake. I lay frozen beneath my blankets, listening as it drew closer and closer to me.

There was a low rasp. Quick, labored breaths. Then the figure was leaning over my bed, standing directly over the gargoyle. I couldn’t see its face. I couldn’t see anything.

But then lightning flashed—the sky a blinding white. I caught a glimpse of a face hidden beneath the shadow of a hood.

And screamed.

The figure turned. Ran for the door. I jolted out of bed and reached out, grasping at it. My hand closed around an arm so hard my fingernails broke. The figure jerked away, its arm flinging out and striking me along the shoulder with bruising force.

Maude sat up and the gargoyle shrieked, throwing his blanket aside. Lighting flashed once more, illuminating our room and everyone in it. Only now, the hooded figure—

Was gone.