Nothing felt holy anymore, except maybe the dead.

“The Wood is so vast,” I said, tripping over bramble as I walked with the others into the village. “Where do we even begin to search for the Forester’s chime?”

“There is a glen,” Maude said. “It’s sacred, because some nitwit from the Eichel family claimed he saw the Faithful Forester there some decades ago, and the elders have used it as a place of meditation ever since.”

Rory spun his coin between deft fingers. “That’s where they have their ceremonies when a new king comes.”

“Which means as soon as the knighthood gets here, we’ll be permitted inside.” Benji kicked rocks. “Your king will be a useless spectacle for the Wood’s nobles, leaving the rest of you to search the glen for the Faithful Forester’s stone chime.”

“I wouldn’t call you a useless spectacle,” Rory said, throwing his arm over Benji’s shoulder. “Just a happy little distraction.” He mussed the king’s hair. “You’re getting good at it. Looking all doe-eyed, practically weeping reverence to the Omens, Mr. Ever But a Visitor.”

“The kingdom’s finest actor,” Maude offered.

“Or her best liar,” the gargoyle said pleasantly.

Benji’s blue eyes shot to my face, as if to say, They don’t know what it’s like to have to perform. But you and I do.

I was still angry at him for the secrets he’d kept about lost Diviners. But I could see in his blue eyes how eager he was to find the stone objects. To take up the mantle and succeed where his grandfather had not. To prove his worth. I’d been like that not so long ago. Of all the faces I’d seen since I’d left the tor, I feared I saw my own in Benedict Castor’s the most.

It took effort, but I smiled at him. “You bear it well.”

On the seventh day in the Chiming Wood, we received a falcon that the knights were near. On the eighth day, we came to the village to receive them. I sulked beneath a birch tree, picking yellow leaves off a branch, waiting.

Across the square from me, leaned up against a tree next to Benji and Maude, Rory spoke to a pair of woodsmen. He was listening to them, but unnoticed by anyone else, his left hand had dipped into the nearest man’s cloak. When he took it out, he was holding a pipe. He stuffed it into his own pocket, looked up, and winked at Maude, who eyed him with exasperation.

Thief.

“You’re making a face at the knave,” the gargoyle said, startling me. He was playing with the fuzzy seeds of a dandelion, peering around me at Rory. “Why are you giving him the cold mouth?”

“It’s ‘the cold shoulder,’ gargoyle.”

He blinked. “What would he want with your shoulder?”

“What would he want with my mouth?”

Amazing how, even with a face entirely of stone, the gargoyle could admonish me with a single look. He’d been giving me that look for days now. Maude and Benji, too—though they’d taken to running like dogs who’d heard a high-pitched whistle every time Rory and I were in the same room. A frequency no one could hear, but we all felt.

It had begun the night I’d told Rory my name. Maybe earlier, if I was being honest with myself. But I’d noticed it distinctly when he’d changed the bandage on my neck.

He’d peeled old linen away with such poignant effort, you’d think he was removing my skin. One hand on my chin, the other on my shoulder, Rory had turned my head, tendering the teeth marks in my neck a pointed look.

“Well?”

“Getting better.” I’d smelled something sharp, then the sweet, aromatic scent of beeswax. Rory spread wax over the punctures the Oarsman had left.

I’d shivered when his thumb had grazed the hollow of my throat. “Just a chime and a loom stone left,” I’d said, “and your king will have successfully taken up the mantle.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he’d murmured, eyes on his work. But then they’d lifted, darting over my mouth. His cheeks had gone red, and my heart had cantered, and I’d felt his do the same in the pulse of his thumb… two beats, arguing for dominance.

Rory had dropped the linen. Cursed. “I’ll get more.”

Left the room in a rush.

And that was how it went. He’d change my bandages, applying balms and ointments and honey, and I’d hold so still I imagined myself carved of stone. But no matter Rory’s precision or my stillness, we were always flushed and breathless by the end.

I thought it would stop once I’d healed. But telling him my name—grieving in front of him—had changed something between us.

It felt like a fever, looking at him. I was dizzy and thoughtless for it.

The gargoyle tutted. “You two have been posturing long enough.” He shouted at Rory. “I say, Bartholomew! Won’t you come over here a moment?”

“What are you doing?” I seethed.

Rory’s dark eyes swung my way. His throat hitched, and then he was coming over, looking bored but for the telltale red in his cheeks. “Help you with something?”

“For the sake of my sanity—” A dandelion seed flew up the gargoyle’s nose. He leaned back. Cried out. Sneezed in Rory’s face.

I barked a laugh, and Rory shut his eyes. “That’s why you called me over? To sneeze on me?”

“A thousand apologies. What was I saying? Ah, yes.” The gargoyle put a stone hand on my shoulder. “For the sake of my sanity, put Bartholomew out of her misery. Tell her you’re in love with her.”

Rory eyes jerked open, brows locking in a scowl. Behind him, Benji and Maude, who were doing a poor job masking the fact that they were eavesdropping, let out a collective exhale that came out a wheeze.

“In love with…” Oh, he was red now. Rory’s hands lowered to his sides, gauntlets tinging as he fidgeted, his eyes narrowing over the gargoyle, then me.

I choked on my own tongue and leveled a finger in the gargoyle’s face. “You can’t just say things like that. It’s horrifying.”

He tapped his stone chin. “Have I gotten it wrong?”

“Decidedly.”

“Oh dear.” His chest puffed. “Then it’s you who’s in love with him, is that it?”

There was no knightly virtue vital enough to keep Maude from hiding her glee. She was quivering with it. Benji, slightly less so. His eyes were shifting between Rory to me in quick turns.

“Pith—no.” Sweat pooled in my palms. “Must you always make nothing into something?”

Again, he tapped his chin. “Was it nothing, that knock in the Fervent Peaks, Bartholomew?” He nodded at Rory. “He came to our door, and you disappeared for many hours. When you returned you were wet and took off your tunic and threw blankets over yourself. I tried to sleep, but you were terribly annoying, breathing loudly, sighing and making little sounds and stirring in your bed—”

I slapped a hand over his mouth.

Maude gripped the king. “I told you they were sneaking around. I knew from that first night at Aisling when he came back and smoked an entire branch of idleweed that he was fucked, one way or another.”

“So I’ve gotten it right?” The gargoyle clapped. “How marvelous. Oh—look! The knighthood has arrived.”

He sauntered off, humming, as if he hadn’t just massacred my pride in the village square.

Voices echoed. The Chiming Wood was a palette of green and white and yellow, grass and birch trees. But through it, down the brambly road, I could see flashes of purple, of silver. The king’s banners—and the knights beneath them.

I followed Maude and Benji on their way to greet them, knocking into Rory’s shoulder. “An entire branch of idleweed?” I quipped.

“Little sounds?” came his slow, mirthful reply.

Back at Petula Hall, gray clouds swaddled the sun, lending the sky outside my window the same pallid quality as birch bark. “Looks like rain for the ceremony.”

There was a bang, followed by an affronted shriek. “Careful of my toes, Bartholomew!”