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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE LAST DIVINER

T he cathedral was a tomb—utterly silent.

We stood in a crooked line upon the chancel. From the rubble that had once been the abbess’s body, Benji extracted the loom stone.

“The final magical object,” Maude murmured.

Rory didn’t look at the loom stone or the abbess. He was only looking at me. Wrenching my chin up, searching my eyes. “Are you hurt?”

I didn’t know. I couldn’t feel my body. “The last object isn’t the loom stone,” I whispered. “It’s the spring.”

My gargoyle, my Bartholomew, came up beside me. Nodded at my hammer, my chisel. When I spoke to the king, I hardly recognized my voice. “When will the knights come?”

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“Do you still want Aisling to shutter?”

He studied my face. “I do.”

I tightened my grip on my hammer. Looked to Rory and his coin. “Then help me.”

Aisling Cathedral was harder to slay than any Omen—it did not yield easily to our violence. But Rory had his coin, and I my hammer. Maude had her axe, and the gargoyle his stone claws, and Benji a zeal I had never seen in him before. He was throwing stones, ripping pews from the floor, tossing fallen rubble into the spring, and hitting anything he could with his sword and the inkwell’s corrosive ink.

When Rory’s coin took out the south wall, and I its commanding pillar, we all ran to the other side of the transept as the stones fell. Benji picked up a broken piece of rubble. Threw it with impressive strength.

And shattered the rose window.

Colored glass rained down, catching moonlight. We all stopped to watch. “Huzzah,” the gargoyle cheered.

“It’s not enough.” I could still smell rotting flowers. Still taste them on the back of my tongue. “We need to bury the spring.”

The tendons of my arm ached every time I struck a pillar, a wall. I was going for the cloister—the system of pillars along the ambulatory, imagining them veins to a heart that needed severing. I slammed my hammer over and over. Cried out in pain.

“Sybil.”

I kept hitting.

Rory was next to me. “Let me help you.”

I didn’t. I bore and bodied all my anguish, beating the pillar again and again—

My hammer shattered, breaking down the heart of the head, then the handle.

A terrible crack began, spreading up the wall, into the vaulted ceiling. Dust began to rain, and a noise, like thunder, filled the cathedral. I dropped the chisel.

“Time to go,” Rory said, catching my arm.

We ran.

The tor trembled, and the stones beneath my feet fissured. I caught the gargoyle by his hand, like we were finally escaping that wretched place, and brought us out of the narthex at the heels of Benji and Maude just before the cathedral fell.

The world shook.

We fled into the courtyard, all the way to the gnarled apple orchard, shards of debris shooting after us. Maude tripped and Benji caught her. Rory held my arm so tightly, the five of us running until we were at the wall, panting and sweating.

We watched as Aisling Cathedral fell in on itself, a dragon slain.

When the stones stopped rolling and the world stopped shaking, I felt a great stillness in my body. I let go of Rory. Let go of the gargoyle. Moved to stand alone in the shadow of the wall. Then—

A familiar sound came on the wind. Horses, whickering. Were I to climb the wall, I knew what I would see. Purple banners.

The knights had caught up to their king.

“They’re here,” Maude said through a wince. “I can hear them coming.”

Benji’s voice was full of fire. He came to stand by Rory and the gargoyle and drew his sword once more—as if Aisling had bowed to him, prostrate. “About fucking time.”

He swung.

His sword lodged in Rory’s side, into chainmail, into skin. Rory let out a sharp gasp—

Benji caught his wrist. Took his coin. He shoved Rory to the ground and kicked him in his wound, then let the coin fly.

It hit the gargoyle, shattering his left wing, putting fissures up his arm and into his chest. He stumbled back. Blinked his stone eyes.

Fell.

I screamed.

Maude lunged forward, but Benji’s sword was already there, pointed in her face. “Lower your axe,” he told her. “Throw it over the wall.”

Her voice came out soft. But her green eyes were beyond recognition—brimming with pain. “Benji. What are you doing?”

“Your axe, Maude.”

With jerking motions, she did as she was told.

I don’t remember how I got on the ground, only that I was in the grass next to Rory, next to the gargoyle, crawling over blood and broken stone to be near them.

Rory’s hand was on his side, the warmth in his skin gone. “Oh gods.” I pressed my hand over his wound, blood seeping between my fingers. “Rory—Rory.”

He winced, blinking rapidly. Next to him, the gargoyle lay upon the grass.

Unmoving.

An inhuman sob tore out of me. I threw myself over him, wrapped my arms around his stone body and pressed with all my might, as if I could mend the cracks in his chest with the sheer force of my strength. “Please. Please. ”

Nothing answered, save the wind as it whispered through gowan flowers. Then—

“I forget, Bartholomew,” came a slow, craggy voice. “What were we talking of?”

My tears filled the cracks in his chest.

Benji retrieved Rory’s coin from the ground. He stood above me, blotting out the moonlight, coin in one hand, sword in the other. He moved its tip from Maude to me. “Come here, Diviner.”

Rory surged up. Landed a brutal punch to Benji’s knee. The king faltered back but kept his feet, swiping his sword through the air, slicing Rory over the cheek.

Rory fell back onto grass, shaking, bleeding.

“Stop!” I stumbled to my feet, weaponless as I stood between Rory and the king.

Benji swore. “Gods, Rory.” He took a few limping steps. “Stay down. I don’t want to kill you.” He turned to me, flushed. “But that’s up to Six.”

My voice trembled. “What do you want?”

“The Omens are gone. All that power has to go somewhere. I want you to help me carry the burden. I want you to come to Castle Luricht.” He said it simply. Like he was telling me a story. “I want you to be my queen.”

Maude let out a low hiss, and Rory—my back was to Rory. But the noise that came out of him was animalistic. Pain, and fury.

“Benji.” I searched the king for his easy, boyish quality. I couldn’t find it. “There’s nothing left to Divine. You know that.”

“I do,” he said. “But dismantling the cathedral is not like dismantling faith. That takes time. With the spring gone, the hamlets must put their belief somewhere—and I’ve paid for the privilege.”

He leaned his head to the side. “You see, all the wealth your abbess paid her Omens. The piles of gold the Artful Brigand and the Ardent Oarsman hoarded, the money abandoned in the glen in the Chiming Wood and the Heartsore Weaver’s cave—the Harried Scribe’s stores of books in the Seacht. That wealth, like power, needed to go somewhere. So I put them in the hands of the nobles—well, the knights, really. Hamelin Fischer, Dedrick Lange, Tory Bassett. You remember their mothers. Noble elders. Very influential. I think even my grandfather would appreciate the enterprising nature of it all. He stopped believing in the Omens, just as I did, but time and time again, our hamlet’s creed proves true: The only god of men is coin.”

“The spring is buried under a mountain of rubble,” Maude shouted. There were tears on her cheeks. “There’s no way to make Sybil dream. What influence can she have?”

“Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot!” Benji’s face went red. He paused. Hauled in a reclaiming breath. “For all her conniving brutality, the abbess did me one favor. She never made it known how the dreams worked. It’s why every ma’am and sir and clod of Traum tried to peer beneath Six’s shroud. To them, she’s magic.” He tapped his fingers on the hilt of his sword, as if waiting for the rest of us to catch up. “If the noble elders of the hamlets speak highly of me, if Six is mine, folk will come. Pay respect—fill my coffers. I’ll put a shroud back over her stone eyes and say only she, the last Diviner, can read the signs of someone’s future.”

His cheeks were flushed. With every word, Benedict Castor seemed to convince himself of the truth of his story. “A new system, a new market—not upon the tor, but upon the king’s door. A new tale of faith now that Aisling’s is to the wind.”

“She’s not yours.” Rory struggled to his knees, then his feet. He brought the gargoyle up as well, though it cost him a great deal of blood. He was looking at Benji with so much hate I felt it in the air. “She’ll never be yours.”

“She will. Or she’ll watch the knighthood beat, then stone you and the gargoyle for the desecration of Aisling Cathedral. Rogue Myndacious and a mad gargoyle.” Benji looked upon Rory, face twisting, like he was trying not to cry. “I didn’t want it to be this way. It didn’t matter that you held no political sway; I’ve always looked up to you. But I could see the signs plain enough. You aren’t loyal—except maybe to her. You encouraged her not to vow to me during her knighting, and I knew once the Omens were vanquished that the two of you, lost to lovesickness, would no longer be of any use to me.” Breath shuddered out of him. “You’re a bad influence, Rory. A bad knight. Sooner or later, it would have come to this.”

He turned to Maude. “And you, my dearest.” This time, he did cry, twin tears falling from his eyes. “I’ve needed you too much. Grown accustomed to you being there, telling me what is right. You never saw me as an equal for it. If I am ever to stop being the boy-king, I must separate myself from you.” He swallowed. “Besides, I already know what you will say. You are too noble, too good, to side with me on this. Maybe that’s why my grandfather never got this far. Neither of you understood that for things to go right, you must often do the wrong thing.”

Maude’s gaze turned from Rory to Benji. Her green eyes held pain—but fury, too. For the second time in her life, she stood upon the tor and had to deny her king. “Then I must withdraw from your knighthood, Benedict Castor. If yours is the crown, I bear no allegiance to it.”

Benji brushed away his tears. Turned to me. “You’re awful quiet, Diviner.”

“Her name is Sybil,” Rory snarled, holding his side, his skin ghostly white.

Benji ignored him. “I thought maybe, since you had a hand in destroying Traum’s faith, that you might consider helping me rebuild it. That the blood of all those dead Diviners might still mean something to you.” He nodded at Rory and the gargoyle and Maude. “I will let them go. But only if you come with me.”

Rory surged forward. “Ah, ah, ah,” Benji said, leveling the tip of his sword with his throat. “Don’t be unknightly. Let the lady have her choice.”

It was a beggar’s bargain. A losing sport. A failed craft. Either way, I was defeated. And Rory…

Was bleeding out.

I put a gentle hand on his chest. Pressed him back until it was my throat, not his, at the tip of Benji’s sword. “Let them go first.”

Rory’s fingers dug into my arm. “Sybil—”

“Take care of the gargoyle, like you said.” I turned. Brought his bloodied knuckles to my mouth and kissed them. “Take care of yourself, too.”

“Sybil.”

The knighthood was coming. I could hear the sounds of their horses over the gravel in the courtyard. Hear their gasps as they took in the desecrated remains of Aisling.

Benji tossed the Artful Brigand’s coin. There was a rumbling explosion—rock and dust in the air. When it cleared, there was a hole in Aisling’s wall.

“Your exit.” Benji retrieved the coin from the grass. “Over here!” he called to the knighthood, turning once more to Rory and Maude. When he looked upon them, his gaze was so forlorn I was sure he would change his mind. That the easy, boyish Benji would appear and apologize and make everything right.

I was wrong. The king’s blue eyes grew clouded. Cold. “This is the only gift you get. If you try to retrieve her, if I see you again in any capacity”—his gaze fell to the wound in Rory’s bloodied side, then the gargoyle’s shattered wing and its answering fissures—“and that certainly is an if , I will proffer no pity. You’ll be executed.” He nodded to the hole in the wall. “Now go.”

Rory was still saying my name, leaving a trail of blood in the grass, when Maude began to drag him.

“Where are we going?” the gargoyle asked sweetly, dropping pieces of stone from his wing as he followed Maude.

Rory caught himself on the wall. I felt his gaze on my face, in the air, in the broken pieces of stone around us. He didn’t say it, but I knew. He’d do anything I asked of him.

So I looked at him in his fathomless eyes. Watched as they lost their light. Told him, in a voice cold as stone, “Go.”

“Where are we going?” the gargoyle asked again. He looked back at me. “We can’t go without Bartholomew.”

I turned away, tears falling down my face.

“Wait—wait.” The gargoyle began to sob, more pieces of stone falling from his body. “I’m her squire. We cannot be apart.”

He had to be hauled away by Maude, who was already doing the same to Rory. I heard his wailing sobs on the other side of the wall. “Bartholomew!”

And then they were like all the other things I’d dared to love.

Gone.

The knighthood came into the courtyard, and I was just as I’d been all those weeks ago. Barefoot in the apple orchard, martyring myself.

“Have a little faith, Six,” Benji said, his voice stilted. “Can’t you see I’ve set you free?”

I looked over my shoulder, the ghost of Aisling still on me. Cold, beautiful, and disapproving. “ Free , boy-king?”

“You don’t need the signs anymore. You’ve seen this world for what it is. A tale of lurid contradictions—a true story, and also a lie. You’ve known coin, knowledge, strength, intuition, love, life and death—and beaten them at their craft. You’ve known everything , Diviner. And to be all-knowing…”

The king of Traum smiled at me, his future queen. “What is a god, if not that?”