“Beside,” I murmured, peeling off my clothes. “‘Beside myself with fatigue’ is the proper expression.”

The gargoyle’s stone brow knit. “If I were beside myself, there would be two of me, and the washing would have taken half the time.”

He turned his back before I could reply and let me work the buttons of my clothes in privacy. First off was the billowing gossamer over gown. Next came the thin flaxen chemise. I wore no jewelry, no knit leggings, no shoes. I eased off my braies and let them drop down my legs. When I was done, the only fabric left on my body was my shroud.

Naked, I shivered.

The Divining robes were still warm from the clothesline. I took the one with VI embroidered into its cuff. White and unblemished and silken, so much finer than the clothes I’d just stripped away, the robe felt decadent, but not comforting.

“I’m ready.”

I’m ready, my echo taunted, ricocheting against the cathedral’s stone walls.

The gargoyle turned. He looked upon me with stone eyes and offered his hand once more, leading me onto the transept. There, situated in the center of the cathedral like a heart—

Was the spring.

A great limestone had fissured long ago, and Aisling was built around it. From the stone’s wide fissure, an ancient spring leached, like a long, narrow bath. Its water was oily and dark and smelled of rotting flowers.

The cathedral bells rang again. There was tightness in my chest. Tightness in my throat. I approached the spring slowly—lifted the hem of my robe.

The gargoyle handed me in.

The viscous water reached just above my navel. It, like everything in the cathedral, was cold. I shivered, the spring taking me into its frigid womb, lapping up the silk of my robe, rendering it translucent.

I looked up. Above me, high in the cathedral’s cloister, five stained-glass windows loomed, each depicting a stone object—the same objects held in the hands of the courtyard statues.

A coin, an inkwell, an oar, a chime, and a loom stone.

The sixth and final window was centered on the east wall—an enormous rose window, fixed with thousands of pieces of stained glass. Its design was different than the others, depicting no stone object, but rather a flower with five peculiar petals that, when I studied them, looked all the world like the delicate wings of a moth.

The final rays of daylight set the windows aglow, but the light remained high—out of reach. The spring I stood in was the holiest place in Traum, and yet I was in darkness.

Silent, they came from the shadows of the transepts—six more gargoyles. They marched until they’d positioned themselves around the spring like hour markers on a sundial.

The cathedral doors pushed open.

The king’s knights came into the narthex. They were hushed now, as if Aisling Cathedral had sucked the words from their mouths. Helmets removed, their heads lifted as they took in the artistry of the cathedral—its fine marble floors, its carved reliefs and vaulted ceilings and stained-glass window.

The bells stopped ringing.

Behind his knights came King Castor, walking side by side with the abbess. With his glimmering armor and her pale robes, her shroud like a veil, they might have been bride and bridegroom, taking the long walk down the nave to say their vows upon the chancel. The difference was—

A bride does not hold a knife.

The knights found their seats upon the pews. When the abbess and the king reached the stone in the heart of the cathedral, they stood opposite each other—directly in front of me.

The abbess spoke as she always did during a Divination. Without feeling. “This is your first time being Divined for, Benedict Castor. Have you brought your offering?”

The king stood before me, his blue eyes wide and glassy. “Twenty gold pieces.”

“And what is it you wish to learn from this Diviner’s dream?”

“Nothing.” A touch of red bloomed across the king’s face, his voice coming out frayed. “That is, I want to know if they favor me, I suppose, now that I am the new king of Traum.”

He trembled, and I stood perfectly still. The poor boy was afraid, and he looked even younger for it, despite his distinguished armor. I wondered if, in that moment, I was seeing Benedict Castor more clearly than anyone ever had. It was why I loved being a Diviner. I felt so much wiser, stronger, standing in Aisling’s spring. It was grotesque, but it roused me.

Even if I hated what came next.

The abbess stayed silent a long while. Then, slowly, she handed the king of Traum the knife. “Then begin.”

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CHAPTER TWO OMENS

The blade made no noise when King Castor cut himself. He did it over the heartline of his palm, then curled his fingers, holding the responding swell of blood in his hand like a chalice holds wine. It was a sacred act—giving a bit of oneself up for the art of Divination.

The abbess took King Castor by the wrist and brought his bloody hand to my mouth. The king went gray and turned his gaze to the wall, like he could not bear the sight of his blood—or me.

“Drink,” the abbess commanded.

I opened my mouth, and the king’s blood poured over my tongue, viscous and warm. It tasted vile. Blood always did.

I swallowed, straining against the urge to be sick.

The abbess began her oration. “Traum is an old name for an even older land. Its history is as outlandish, as lurid, as a dream. But in many ways, its true history began upon this very tor—”

She paused, turning to the king. “Though perhaps a Castor like yourself would not like to hear the story I tell before a Divination. Shall we simply proceed with the dream?”

King Castor shuffled his feet. “I would like to do things the proper way. Please, go on.”

The abbess touched my cheek, a familiar act of silent affection, then continued. “We know Traum and its hamlets like our own five fingers. Coulson Faire, the hamlet of merchants. The scholarly city-heart—the Seacht—the hamlet of scribes. The Fervent Peaks, near the mouth of our river, the hamlet of fishers. The cosseted birch forest, the Chiming Wood, where the foresters dwell. The florid Cliffs of Bellidine, occupied by weavers.”

The abbess sighed. “The old stories vary, of course, but in one way they are all alike. Traum was full of monstrous creatures. Sprites, who roamed the hamlets. Folk tried to fight them, but the hamlets were not unified, floundering without gods, without divine principles, without a ruler. And when none of those things exist—”

There are inevitable tragedies, I recited to myself.

“There are inevitable tragedies.” The abbess’s voice echoed. “Food and coin and children were stolen from the hamlets by sprites. Murder was committed. Crops died, boats crashed, wool was infested by beetles. Soon, Traum’s people were like sprites themselves—wild creatures, strange and ravenous and entirely without virtue.”

“Sounds like a good time to me,” one of the knights muttered.

King Castor managed a shaky grin. I glowered at him from behind my shroud.

The abbess continued. “The deaths grew, and so did discord between the hamlets.”

Until one night.

“Until one night. One dark, lonely night, when the air was so cold it painted the sky an incomparable purple hue, six gods visited Traum.”

A scoff echoed through the cathedral.

Armor rattled and low voices sounded, then one of the knights was pushing away from a pew, his steps loud on the stone floor. He shoved the cathedral door open, evening light flittering through dark hair and over three gold bands in his right ear.