But Six was gone.

“I’d love to discuss tomorrow’s ceremony with you, Benji,” I said, shooting Hamelin a glower. “But right now, I’m meeting someone else. He’s brash and uncharismatic and entirely without political value. The best knight I know.”

I left, slamming the inn door behind me.

The air outside was tepid, the sky clear, and the path to the beach well marked by woven banners. I followed them, slipping between thrift flowers, basking in the pleasure of treading over dirt, then sand, with my bare feet.

The Sighing Sea was gentle, unassuming—a low, steady rush. I stopped twenty paces onto the beach, arrested by the sight of the water. It seemed the sky, ever patient, had waited the entire day for the sea to be calm enough to touch. And now that the weather had cleared, the night sky pressed itself over the water. I could not tell where the sea ended and the moon, the stars, began.

“Storm’s over,” a voice called from behind me. “It’s always pretty like this afterward.”

I turned. He stood in shadow, leaned up against the rock face.

Rory.

He looked lazy. But the nearer I drew, the more apparent the illusion. I could hear his quick inhales. See the pulse in his neck jump.

We hadn’t told anyone about what had passed between us at Petula Hall. We hadn’t spoken of it ourselves. But it was there between us. Every time we looked at each other, brushed hands, breathed the same air—it was there.

Rory’s fingers flexed. “Come here.”

I was on him. Shoving him against the wall of rocks and kissing him. He grasped the nape of my neck, anchoring our mouths together. “I like that you’re a bad knight,” I said, pressing my teeth into his bottom lip. “It’s what makes you a good one.”

Rory reached for my face—took off my shroud. When it fell away, I couldn’t bear the reverence that flickered through his eyes. It scared me, thrilled me so much that I wrestled him to the ground and we went at one another so roughly they must have heard us in the village; must have known it wasn’t just the sea, crashing and moaning, after the storm.

I wanted to throw him down so hard the earth cracked. I wanted to break something for needing him so badly. I wanted him to break me, too—for him to sink his teeth into my neck or breasts or thighs. After so long thinking there was sacrality in drowning, I worried nothing was divine unless it arrived on the beckoning hand of pain.

But then I thought of that first time at Petula Hall, when we’d gone slow. When we’d been witness, pupil, visitor, then craftsman, of each other’s pleasure. When the little deaths had come again and again and there had been no pain upon their wings.

Not everything had to hurt to be holy. Bad, to be good.

But damn me if I wanted it to sometimes.

In the morning, I woke in my room to a blushing dawn. Turned over in bed.

And saw that the gargoyle was gone.

“Sybil?” Maude sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s missing.” I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like waking up in my Diviner cottage and finding that Four, Two, Three, Five, then One, had vanished. “My gargoyle. He was here when I got back from the beach last night, and now he’s”—I put a hand to my chest—“lost.”

Maude braced the frame of her bed to get up, but I was already throwing on a tunic, bursting from our room, out of the inn and into morning light.

And all while I looked for the gargoyle, through crofts, through sheep-speckled fields and hills of thrift flowers, climbing higher and higher, I was thinking on lost things. On death. On how I’d searched the hamlets, like I searched now, and hadn’t found a single one of my darling Diviners to put back into my arms. How fate was cruel, life frail, and how lonely it felt, in the vastness of Traum, that the only person I’d come close to finding was myself.

I sobbed like a child.

Then, at the tallest cliff, in a bed of flowers, I saw him. Looking out over the dawn, the sea—the edge of the world—hands folded delicately in his lap. Utterly content.

“Oh, you stupid, stupid gargoyle!” I ran to him. Threw my arms around his shoulders—bruised myself on his body for holding so tightly. “Why did you leave and not say anything?”

He blinked. “Are you crying, Bartholomew?”

“Of course I am, you dingbat.”

I didn’t know if he fully understood why I was upset, but he seemed pleased to be the one to comfort and not the one to cry, because his shoulders straightened and he began to hum. “I think,” he said when my breath had finally soothed, “that we were never meant to stay so long behind that stone wall, Bartholomew.” He rested his heavy head on mine. “Thank you for bringing me with you. I don’t think I would have been brave enough to leave the tor alone.”

I held his hand, and we looked out over the view. “Why did you come out here?”

“I am a battlefield of admiration.” He nodded at the horizon. “I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”

We watched the sun rise over the sea. I leaned against his shoulder. “Do you still think about Aisling, gargoyle?”

“Endlessly.” He stretched his wings. Yawned. “The tor was the only home I ever knew. But I have stepped down from its height and seen the world with my own eyes. You can’t take something like that back. Even if I returned to the cathedral, nothing can be as it was.” His fangs pressed over his teeth as he smiled. “You can never really go home.”

“Rather a tragic way to see things, don’t you think?”

He patted my leg. “You sound troubled.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Often, but also rarely.”

I keep my eyes upon the vast, liminal sea. Thought of life and death and the Diviners.

We’ll go to the Cliffs of Bellidine and look out over the Sighing Sea, all six of us. We’ll shout so loud and long that our echoes will sound behind us. We’ll lie under the stars on beds of pink thrift flowers and stain our teeth with wine. We’ll sleep, but never dream.

I stood. Walked to the edge of the cliff.

And shouted.

It came from deep in my belly. A forlorn yell that sounded so loud and so long that it put a buzz in my ears, its echo devouring the Sighing Sea, the Cliffs of Bellidine. All of Traum, perhaps.

And I thought, maybe the life of Sybil Delling was paid for with the death of Six’s dreams. That it wasn’t just the Omens that weren’t real, but the stories I’d told myself. That I had to suffer to earn a home at Aisling Cathedral—that I had to hide my face and name to be useful, to be strong, to be special. That the Diviners and I would spend our lives together—that our sisterhood was eternal.

But nothing was eternal, and I could never go back home. Death fluttered over the world like a breeze, stirring our hair, and I knew it well. I’d quested through Traum. Battled Omens, sprites—loneliness and longing. I’d made the agonizing pilgrimage from Six to Sybil.

That was death in and of itself.

But, just on the other side of it, waiting behind gossamer—

Was life, too.

I reached into my hair. Took off my shroud. Held it out over the edge of the cliff. When the wind took it in its teeth, I did not resist. I simply… let go.

I watched as my shroud fluttered away, as if on pale wings. It flew and it flew until I couldn’t see it anymore, because the light over the sea was so bright.

I cried. Just a little. When I turned, the gargoyle was there, smiling at me. So was Maude.

Rory too.

“Oh.” I wiped tears from my cheeks and levied a threatening finger. “Don’t you dare say anything.” But the threat fell flat—I was smiling right back at them.

Rory bridged the distance between us.

Morning light warmed his face. His dark hair caught the wind, and when he looked at me with unmasked adoration, I felt an instant tightness in my chest.