His chest puffed with pride. “I am years beyond my wisdom.”

I smiled and did not correct him.

Of all the beauty Traum held—its tors and cities and peaks and woods—none had prepared me for the splendor of its seaside.

The Cliffs of Bellidine were a marvel.

Green sweeping hills spotted with sheep. The higher the hills reached, the more flowers lay upon them. Thrift flowers—carpets of them. If I rolled down any which one, I would be stained a brilliant shade of pink. The heart of the hamlet rested between hills, populated by dozens of crofts and houses made of stone. And just beyond them—

Sheer white cliffs. The glorious Sighing Sea.

We rode over the last finger of the Tenor River, saw the last birch trees, and then I was gasping—looking over the sea. “Oh, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, standing in the cart. “It’s like looking out over the edge of the world.”

It was. Even the knighthood, who were not new to the splendor like me, slowed their horses to look out over the hills, the cliffs, the water. Hands were put to eyes, lips pulled over teeth in smiles. Benji, who rode at the front of the line, winced against the wind. Next to him rode Rory. Only he wasn’t looking out over the view.

He was watching me take it all in.

I let out a heavy exhale. Held his gaze until I was burning.

Thunder rumbled overhead.

“That sounds like a storm,” Maude said.

“Pishposh.” The gargoyle stuck his nose to the wind. “I can always smell it when it’s going to rain. The thunder was but a collision of clouds.”

It began to pour twenty minutes later.

“Always smell when it’s going to rain, my foot,” I grumbled. Wind whipped and the horses brayed, rain pelting us from every angle, pinging over armor—ricocheting into faces. “Not as wise as we think, are we?”

The gargoyle wrapped his wings around himself and pouted.

By the time we got to the main road—to the circle of crofts—the king and his knights looked positively drowned. We reached an inn and adjoining stables. “I hate it!” the gargoyle wailed against the rain. “How do the flowers bear this incessant abuse?” He covered his eyes, wobbled, then fell out of the wagon into mud and thrashed. It frightened the boy who’d come to take our horses so acutely he fled into the inn and did not come out again until his mother was with him.

We took our armor off in the stables. The knights were each given a key, and a room to share. When the innkeeper gave me mine—wrought iron—I noticed that she was wearing a circle around her neck. A stone, with the center carved out.

Her eyes caught on my shroud—then lowered to my knightly under armor. “Bless me. You’re a contradiction.”

“Rude,” the gargoyle muttered behind me.

The woman smiled. There was a web of fine wrinkles around her eyes. “Sorry. I’ve never been to Aisling. Never seen a Diviner in the flesh.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat and nodded at her necklace. “Is that a loom stone?”

She put a wrinkled hand to her throat. “Got it practically the day I was born. We all wear one.” Again, she smiled. “We’re all weavers here.”

I waited for her to ask me about Aisling. For her to bring a piece of cloth, a thread, maybe, and ask me if I saw any signs or presages or portents or any which word people used when they spoke to me of the Omens.

She didn’t. She just gave me the key to my room and smiled.

“They seem a gentle folk here,” I said to Maude as we passed a reaching loom, a dozen women working it.

“They believe in the Omens as much as the others,” Maude said as we moved up the stairs. “But the Heartsore Weaver is all about presages of love. Heartbreak. Both of those things tend to bring people together. I don’t know. It’s made folk of this hamlet strangely kind.”

I opened our room and led her inside. How world-weary I’d become to be surprised that an Omen could have a benevolent impact over their hamlet. “We’re still going to kill her,” I said. “The Heartsore Weaver. We’ll kill her, and then we’ll go to Aisling.” My voice hardened. “I want to look the abbess in the eye before we rid Traum of its final Omen.”

“That’s all well and good,” the gargoyle said from the corner of the room. He shook a blanket at me. “But who’s going to tuck me in?”

Hours later, when the storm was over and the night quiet and Maude and the gargoyle snoring, a note slid under my door.

Meet at the beach?

—R

The innkeeper, knighthood—everyone was in bed. I tiptoed down the stairs, past the loom, past the room with the hearth. The fire was still alight.

“Six?”

I turned. There were five chairs pulled near the hearth. In three of them, with large cups in their hands, sat Hamelin, Dedrick Lange, and Tory Bassett.

Benji was there, too. Not seated, but pacing, walking back and forth in front of the others. When he saw me, he stopped mid-stride. “It is you.” He eyes traced my pale nightshirt. “Thought you might be a ghost.”

I smiled.

“I was just thinking about you, Six,” he said. “Debating whether or not to see if you were awake—only I didn’t wish to wake Maude. She needs her rest.”

“You can call me Sybil, you know.” I came to stand next to him. “What did you want me for?”

“We’re having a little meeting about tomorrow’s ceremony, and what comes after.” The king patted the spine of an empty chair. “Please—join us.”

He seemed different to me. There was no wine in his hand, no liquid courage. He stood taller, spoke more clearly, as if with every hamlet we’d gone to, Benedict Castor had been fortified.

Then I looked from his face into Hamelin’s and the other two knights by the fire. They weren’t Benji’s usual company. I wondered what they knew—if they knew anything at all, or if this was just pretense. Him, making merry with his knights to keep them from learning he was doing far more in the hamlets than participating in ceremonies. “You didn’t want to ask Rory to join your meeting?”

Dedrick Lange snorted.

“I did ask him,” Benji said. “Not ten minutes ago, in fact. But he was on his way out the door and said he’d catch up with me later.” Even in the dim light, I could see the king’s smile strain. “He seemed… distracted.”

“Just as well,” Tory Bassett said between sips of wine. “Myndacious has no sway over the hamlets or the noble families.”

I frowned. “What’s your point?”

“The point,” Hamelin said, his tone pleasant, but not his gaze, “is that Myndacious has nothing to bring to the table. He isn’t highborn. He’s brash, uncharismatic, and entirely without political value. No real use, save brute intimidation. In a word—a bad knight.”

I slapped his wine out of his hand. It hit the floor, splashing upon Benji’s feet, painting them crimson. Hamelin laughed, but the king silenced him; his voice was harsher than I’d ever heard it. “Careful,” Benji warned. “To question a knight’s merit is to question the king. I may not be the scholar my grandfather was, but I’ve studied my knights and applied their value well enough.” His gaze narrowed over Hamelin. “Or should I reevaluate yours?”

Hamelin went silent, and Benji’s cheeks flushed. Whatever power he’d tasted, he clearly relished the flavor. He turned to me, spine straight. “Join us, Six. I’d like to discuss your position, once we are finished in the hamlets and returned to Castle Luricht—”

Then his gaze dropped to my hand and the note therein. Clouds formed in his eyes. “Or perhaps you, too, find yourself distracted.”

Were I still Six, the Diviner upon the tor, I would give him what he wanted at the price of my own pleasure. To let my shoulders sink beneath the burden of my yeses was the only way I understood my own merit.