Excerpt: The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
Get ready for a showdown filled with tension and scorching chemistry in this excerpt from The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig (US | UK), available now!
The knighthood went wild with applause.
“Oh-ho! Challenge it is.” King Castor stepped farther into the field. “All right, Rodrick Myndacious. I challenge you to your knightly craft of war. I say you cannot keep your footing against three assaults. If you can, I’ll happily concede my loss, shed my clothes, and howl at the moon. But if you falter a step or are knocked from your feet”— the king’s blue gaze found me in the crowd— “you must return to Aisling and have your future Divined.”
Next to me, Maude was grinning. “This should be good.”
“He won’t do it,” I said, clipped. “The man has made no secret of his revulsion for Aisling, for the Omens, for Diviners.” For me.
“I don’t know,” Maude said. “He might surprise you yet.”
“Well?” King Castor drank heartily from his cup. “Will you be stripping, Myndacious?”
“Three assaults to knock me off my feet?” Rory came closer. Smacked the king’s ale out of his hand. “Fine, you git, I accept.” He crossed his arms and planted his feet wide. “So long as I choose from whom.”
Another cheer echoed across the field.
King Castor clapped, then rubbed his hands together. “I may be seeing double, but I can still knock you over.”
“Not you.” Rory turned toward the pyre. When his gaze landed on us, Diviners all in a row, it narrowed. “Them.”
All eyes turned our way. And I understood then why Rory had called me a spectacle the moment we’d met. The knights were looking at us exactly how they’d looked at me yesterday when I’d Divined for the king. Rapt. Anticipating amazement.
Wanting a good show.
“Marvelous,” King Castor called. “And to sweeten the deal—” He extracted a sash from a nearby knight, then moved behind Rory. “He’ll have his hands tied.”
Maude laughed, sauntering away to join the king. “Too bad you don’t have that hammer and chisel,” she said to me. “He’s a stone wall.”
Four was all business. “Gather, shrews.”
We huddled together, six hairlines pressing in a circle. “All right,” One said. “Who’s gonna knock him over?”
“Just to have to Divine for him later? Pfff.” Three shook her head. “Not worth it.”
I disagreed. Heartily. “I say we pummel him.”
“Absolutely. He was very mean to Six. Let’s flatten him.” Five pressed a reproachful hand to her chest. “But not me, mind. We all know my hands are my greatest beauty.”
“He was mean to you, Six?” One popped her knuckles. “I’ll take a shot at him. My blood’s up from dancing besides.”
“We don’t even know him,” Two complained. “Not very gener-ous to knock him over.”
“Hey,” Four bit back, “don’t get sweet. You remember our pact? Knights are strictly for fun. Give ’em nothing— especially generos-ity. We swore it under the sacred smoke of idleweed!”
Provided by this particular knight, I noted.
“Fine,” Two muttered. “Go ahead and thrash him.”
Three chuckled. “I don’t think we’ve ever agreed on anything so ast without a short straw. One, Four, Six— you’re volunteering?”
We looked at one another. Nodded. “Let’s flatten him.”
Our circle broke, and the knighthood hollered their approval as One, Four, and I stepped closer. They beat their cups upon the tables again and again, a steady bang, bang, bang— a new drum, goading us forward.
Rory looked us up and down, then faced King Castor’s devilish grin. “Who first?”
The king leveled a finger. “The tallest.”
One rolled her shoulders.
“He’s got an injury,” I whispered into her ear. “Left ribs.”
“How on earth do you know that?”
“Trust me,” I murmured. “Left ribs. Hit him. Hard.”
She stepped away from the fire and into the field.
The knights hailed her with more animated banging. Rory straightened his back, black eyes narrowing. “Don’t hurt yourself, Diviner—”
One slammed her foot into the left side of his armor.
The resulting noise from the knights and their cups made it impossible to know if Rory cried out. His face twisted, eyes screwed shut, muscles in his jaw jumping.
But his feet stayed firmly on the ground.
“A hit,” the king called above the noise. “And what a hit it was! You got two more in you, Rory?”
He sucked in a breath. Shot it out his nose. “Hardly felt a thing.” One shrugged and skipped back to my side. “That felt shockingly good.”
King Castor’s finger, slightly wobbly, pointed once more. “The pretty one.”
Rory’s eyes flitted to me. But the King’s finger, the knighthood’s collective gaze, was trained on Four.
She grinned. “Let’s try a new tactic.” Four walked up to Rory. Put both hands on his face.
And kissed him full on the mouth.
Breath lodged in my throat.
The knights had been raucous. Now, their noise was cataclysmic. Four deepened the kiss, pressing into Rory, who stood so still I wondered if he was even breathing.
He didn’t falter a step.
It took too long for Four to pull away. “Huh,” she said, patting her lips. “That usually works. You’re going to wish it had.” She turned with a knowing smile. “She’s next.”
Rory’s gaze shot up. Crashed into my shroud. The effect was like ale, like idleweed. A low, hazy hum through my body.
Bang, bang, bang, went the cups. Four stepped back, and King Castor’s finger was aimed once more, a pointed beckoning that landed straight over me. “My Diviner,” he slurred. “You’re up.”
The Diviners pushed me forward. When I stepped into the field, the knights whooped in delight.
Rory watched me, his bottom lip still wet from Four’s mouth. “You look nervous, Number Six.”
I said nothing, squaring off with him. His shoulders looked even wider with his hands tied behind his back. But just like last night, he did not wield his width, his height. Indeed, he stood a little hunched over, lazy and indifferent but for his eyes— narrowed and menacing and trained acutely on me.
“Good of you, by the way, telling her where to kick me.” He sucked his teeth. “My adoration for Diviners grows by the moment.”
“Thrash him!” King Castor called from the sideline, smacked over the head a moment later by Maude’s retributing palm.
Rory leaned forward. “Go ahead,” he murmured. “Hit my side. Hit me where I’m weak. Hit me as hard as you can.”
“If I let you win,” I said, a little breathless, “you won’t come to Aisling for a Divination. I’ll never have to see you again. That’s a victory in itself.”
“Let . . . me . . . win.” His lips curled at the corners. “You are nervous. Why’s that, Diviner? Thinking of kissing me, too?”
“I’d rather put you on your back.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good ti—”
I sprang forward.
He was indeed a wall. A wall that had humiliated me. Mocked and belittled me. But even without hammer, without chisel—
I knew how to mind a stone wall.
Bending at the knees, I wrapped my arms around Rory’s waist. My thighs trembled and I shut my eyes. The asshole was heavy.
Teeth gritted, muscles shuddering, I pressed up. Lifted Rodrick Myndacious off his feet. Took a full step forward.
And slammed the two of us down onto grass.
The outburst from the Diviners, the knighthood, split the sky, cheers and claps and the bang of cups upon the tables a clamorous thunder. I was on top of Rory, hands braced in the grass on either side of his hips. Arms still trapped behind his back, he was helpless but to lie under me.
“See?” We were both panting. “I know how to have fun.” The splinter in his derision was there again, thicker than before.
Eyes wide and black as ink, like he could not fully believe what had happened—t hat he had been so thoroughly and publicly destroyed— he looked up. Searched my shroud.
But he couldn’t find me.
“You’re a fucking scourge.” He groaned, dropping his gaze to my mouth. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to kiss me?”
“And deny myself any pleasure?”
He smiled, startling us both.
One and Four lifted me off him. Knights swept up around me—there was music, applause. When I looked back at Rory one last time, I felt like Aisling Cathedral itself. Cold, beautiful, and disapproving. “I’ll see you in the spring.”
"Prepare to meet your next obsession." — Rebecca Ross, author of Divine Rivals
From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Gillig comes the next big romantasy sensation, a gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a young prophetess forced on an impossible quest with the one knight whose future is beyond her sight. Perfect for fans of Jennifer L. Armentrout and Leigh Bardugo.
Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.
Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil's visions. But when Sybil's fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she'd rather avoid Rodrick's dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.
