“Exceptions can be made,” Rory and Maude said at the same time, sharing a smile, then sending it my way.

Benji’s gaze shifted between Rory and me. He was quiet. Then—“Six has proven helpful as a Diviner. I wouldn’t want to change her title. The influence she wields, the way the nobles look at me when I’m with her—”

“Don’t be a prat,” Rory said. “This isn’t about you.”

“Of course it’s not.” Benji’s cheeks reddened, his voice hardening. “I’m the king, and it’s never about me. I’m not respected like a craftsman or a knight or a Diviner. My first public act is to go into the hamlets and be utterly humiliated by the nobility in the names of the Omens. I know that I’m young, and that my grandfather was a heretic, but the treatment of sovereigns goes far beyond that. It’s as if my position has only ever existed to be a foil to Aisling. I am made a prostrate fool to prove how much weaker a king is to a god.”

The silence in the room was heavy.

Rory went to stand in front of Benji. When he slouched as he often did, Rory and the king stood exactly equal, eye to eye. “Perhaps that’s the system’s fatal flaw. If Aisling and the Omens have only ever painted a king as inconsequential, what does it say about them if a king is the one who brings them all down?”

Benji’s face twisted as he held back tears.

“Your grandfather would be proud of you, Benji.” Maude, despite her bandages, tried to sit up straighter. “We’re proud, too.”

I nodded in agreement, and the gargoyle leaned close to whisper in my ear. “If the boy wants to make me cry, he’ll need a sadder story than that.”

I shushed him, and the king’s gaze turned. Benji looked at me. Really looked at me. I couldn’t see the world behind his eyes, but I was certain it was vast, and that he was desperate to map it. “If you wish it, Six, of course I’ll knight you. Your loyalty is a treasure I would never deny.”

He stepped around Rory, placing himself between us. “But please understand. Our work is not yet done. Every Omen that dies, every stone object I claim, I grow closer to reclaiming the kingdom from its dreams and portents and false stories. But if I succeed in taking up the mantle, if the Omens are vanquished—if Aisling falls—I must give people something to believe in in their stead. All that power has to go somewhere.”

He took my hand, then turned to Maude, then Rory. “Do you all promise to be there with me, that I might bear it?”

“Of course, Benji,” Maude said. “We’re with you.”

Rory nodded, his gaze flickering to me.

“My business has ever been with the Omens,” I murmured. “Next, it will be with the Heartsore Weaver. And after—” My voice hardened. “With the moth. When I face the abbess again, it will be in armor, not gossamer.” I reached out. Took Benji’s hand. “With King Benedict Castor the Third at my side.”

He smiled. Boyish, brave. “Then let’s get you knighted.”

The gargoyle and I stood outside Petula Hall’s library door at sunset. Maude had chosen it for the knighting, because that was where the best western light shone, and she said she liked the feel of it on her cheek. The rest of the knights were not there, and I was glad for it. I didn’t want a display. It was only me, the gargoyle, Maude, Benji, Rory, and the blacksmith, Victor, who’d brought me my finished suit of armor that morning.

It was so… beautiful. I didn’t even remember the names of all the pieces, but the gargoyle, who had not shirked his duty as squire, had chattered in my ear about them as he dressed me. When the chainmail, then armor, was fastened, I felt like a great stone edifice. Sturdy and impenetrable, but with a beating, swelling heart within.

“You know, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, just before we joined the others in the library. “It would be all right if you did not want to become a knight.”

I turned. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know why I say the things I do.” I’d given him my hammer and chisel to hold. He weighed them in his palms, his brows lowering in contemplation. “Only, you did not ask to become a Diviner, yet you swore all your worth to Aisling. It would be a sad story, were you to do that again.” His stone eyes rose to my face. “But if you wanted to—I would not blame you. It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”

With that he stepped forward, humming to himself, and pushed open the library doors.

Benji and Maude and Rory stood by the west windows of the library, lit by a sunset sky. Maude was not wearing armor on account of her bandages, but Rory and Benji had donned full suits, the metal bright, reflecting the day’s final light.

They watched me as I came into the library, offering the moment the stillness it was due. Rory’s gaze warmed my face, and I met it, wishing with a sudden intensity that he knew I was looking back at him.

That my shroud was not there, between us.

When I stood before them, next to the gargoyle, light fell upon our faces in a way it never had in the spring upon Aisling’s chancel. The king drew an arming sword from his belt. Cleared his throat. “I am Benedict Castor the Third.” His voice was quiet at first, but then I smiled at him, and he spoke louder, projecting over the library like we were in a vast hall filled with witnesses. “It is my honor, for deeds done in bravery, in shrewdness, and in generosity of heart, to bestow the title of knight upon—”

“Sybil,” I said. “My name is Sybil Delling.”

Benji’s gaze widened, and Maude’s smile lit the room. Rory watched me with soft eyes, and the gargoyle began to clap, then sob. “Bravo, Bartholomew. Bravo.”

The king took a moment to speak. “Very well. Sybil Delling—do you accept the accolade of knighthood?”

“Yes.”

“Bend a knee.”

I did.

“A knight’s craft is love. Faith. War. Now, because the knights are not here, I will not swear you to the same vows of faith we three took. There will be no talk of the Omens. No self-effacement. Rather, I will put upon you the weight of responsibility due to the valorous of the Stonewater Kingdom, and you will tell me if you agree to its burden.” He did not seem like such a boy anymore, his spine straighter, his words surer. “Does that suit you?”

“It does.”

Next to him, Maude was grinning ear to ear. I wondered how many ceremonies she’d been to. How many times, since girlhood, she’d watched a knighting. Yet I knew, by the happy lines in her face, it meant something to her, being here for mine.

“Do you vow to protect the weak and defenseless and all those who beckon for your aid?” Benji asked.

“I do.”

“Do you vow to be a witness, pupil, and visitor to the kingdom’s peoples and keep peace within the hamlets?”

“I do.”

“Do you swear to reject pecuniary reward and all mercenary endeavors, acting only upon charity and what best suits the kingdom?”

“Yes.”

“Do you swear loyalty to the crown? To be my serving knight—and also my Diviner?”

I paused. My shroud was so much lighter than my armor. But I felt its weight upon me. “What is a Diviner, really, when nothing is divine?”

“You needn’t wear the title if it no longer fits you,” Rory murmured. “You needn’t do anything you do not wish to.”

The king’s gaze shot to him. “Yes, she does. That’s the whole point. To swear to me is to swear to my wishes, my aspirations—my kingship. If she vows to be my knight, she vows devotion. To do as I ask, just as you and Maude have.” His eyes darted to me, then back to Rory. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Rory snapped. “We swore loyalty—but not mindlessness. She’s not here to give up more of her liberty, Benedict. The abbess did not own her Diviners, the Omens do not own Traum, and you do not own the Stonewater Kingdom, nor your knights, just for some words said in a ceremony.”