Rachel Gillig’s The Knave and the Moon (2026) is a gothic romantasy novel and the concluding volume in the Stonewater Kingdom duology. The book follows its predecessor, The Knight and the Moth (2025), which debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Sellers list and received nominations for the Goodreads Choice, Audie, and Libby Book Awards. Gillig is also the author of the Shepherd King duology, which became a BookTok sensation. In a kingdom built on lies, The Knave and the Moon follows Sybil, the last Diviner, who is held captive by the tyrannical King Benedict Castor the Third. The king plans to use her as a holy figurehead in a kingdom-wide spectacle to legitimize his rule, while her supposedly dead love, the knight Rodrick “Rory” Myndacious, secretly works to dismantle his regime from within a deadly tournament.

The novel critiques how political authority is constructed and maintained, exploring the theme of Spectacle as a Tool of Political Control as the king manipulates public perception through manufactured crises and scapegoating. As characters fight to expose the truth, their mission to dismantle the kingdom’s corrupt power structures addresses the theme of Breaking Cycles of Oppression. The narrative argues that true change requires not just defeating a tyrant but also confronting the violent histories upon which civilizations are built. In a world where loyalty is transactional and people are treated as political assets, the fierce, selfless bonds between Sybil and her allies illustrate Love as an Act of Rebellion.

This guide refers to the 2026 Orbit first edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, child death, graphic violence, sexual harassment, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, suicidal ideation, substance use, and sexual content.

Plot Summary

In the Stonewater Kingdom, following the destruction of Aisling Cathedral, King Benedict “Benji” Castor the Third has imprisoned Sybil Delling, the last of the magical Diviners—children who were treated as property by the abbess of Aisling Cathedral, who repeatedly drowned them in a magical spring to induce visions that she interpreted as prophecy. In The Knight and the Moth, Benji worked with Sybil and their friend, the knight Rodrick “Rory” Myndacious, to overthrow the tyrannical theocracy of Aisling Cathedral and destroy the cathedral itself. They killed the five Omens—people granted quasi-divine powers by the magic of the spring, who were worshipped as gods in Aisling’s religion—but Benji immediately turned on his friends, killing Rory and imprisoning Sybil in an effort to claim absolute power for himself. To solidify his rule, Benji creates a new state-sanctioned lie, claiming that magical creatures called sprites destroyed the cathedral and that the only magic remaining in the world resides within the five stone objects that once belonged to the Omens, which he has gifted to his five most loyal knights. To complete the illusion of a new holy order, he forces Sybil, whom he calls “Six” (the number by which she was identified when she was a Diviner), into a marriage ceremony. During the wedding, an attack by tree sprites, secretly orchestrated by Benji, creates chaos. Under the influence of ox-eye, a sedative given to her by the king, Sybil speaks a prophecy of a fractured kingdom before a spear thrown by the knight Tory Bassett strikes her in the abdomen, gravely wounding her. Sybil survives only because her organs have begun turning to limestone from years of exposure to spring water from the tor (a rocky, sacred hill where the cathedral stood). She vows to destroy Benji and his new system of belief by smashing each of the five stone objects. Since he views her as his sixth stone object—a symbol of his power—she intends to die by suicide, robbing him of herself along with the other objects.

Far away, Rory awakens on the tor with no memory of his past. He was killed by Benji, but his friend and fellow knight Maude Bauer resurrected him using the tor’s spring water, which has turned his eyes into a Diviner’s pale stone. Maude now watches over him, together with a bat-like stone gargoyle named Bartholomew, who calls everyone “Bartholomew.” Maude and Bartholomew tell Rory what they can of his past, including that he was killed by his friend Benji, who is now the king, and that he was once in love with a brave woman named Sybil, whom the king is holding captive. As they journey through the moors, they learn of the king’s grand tournament, a series of five events across the kingdom’s hamlets meant to celebrate his marriage and showcase the power of his knights and their stone objects. Seeing this as their only path to Sybil, the trio travels to Coulson Faire for the first event, the joust. Maude tells Rory that if he holds the first stone object—the Heartsore Weaver’s loom stone—his memories will be restored. On the way to Coulson Faire, they stop to rest at Maude’s former home, Petula Hall, which has been taken over by the king’s guards. The guards confront them as they camp in the nearby woods, and in the ensuing fight, Rory discovers that his body remembers the combat skills his mind has forgotten. Just as the guards are about to overpower Rory, Maude, and Bartholomew, the group is set upon by birke—fearsome, tree-like sprites rumored to eat human eyes. Mysteriously, the birke devour all the guards while leaving Rory, Maude, and Bartholomew unharmed.

In Coulson Faire, Rory, disguised as a castle guard, sees Sybil and feels instinctively drawn to her despite not consciously remembering her. He witnesses the severity of the wound to her abdomen. During the tournament, Maude wins her joust against the king and then intentionally crashes her horse into the king’s viewing box, causing a massive disturbance. In the ensuing chaos, Sybil smashes the Heartsore Weaver’s loom stone to pieces with her heel, but not before Rory briefly takes hold of it, causing his memories to come flooding back.

The tournament moves to the hamlet of the Seacht for the second event, the melee. Rory, now known only as the “Knave” due to his mysterious origins and formidable skill, enters the competition. He fights his way to the final round and defeats Dedrick Lange, the king’s champion for the Seacht, shattering the illusion that the king’s knights are unbeatable. After the match, he reveals his stone eyes to the shocked crowd. Benji, unnerved by Rory’s return, captures him. Sybil performs a mock Divination—a ritualistic seeing—on Rory, using the opportunity to confirm that he remembers her. As part of the ritual, she consumes a drop of his blood—which contains the water of the tor spring—and feels immediate (though temporary) relief from the pain of her abdominal wound. Unsure of how to handle a man with holy eyes who has won the people’s adoration, Benji allows Rory to remain as a champion. Later, at a celebratory fete, a severe earthquake damages the city. In the aftermath, Dedrick confronts Sybil, having deduced the secret of the spring water’s restorative power. To silence him, Benji stabs Dedrick. As Dedrick bleeds out, Sybil uses her hammer to destroy the second stone object, the Harried Scribe’s inkwell. Dedrick then falls into a canal, pulling Sybil in with him, but Bartholomew rescues her from drowning.

The group travels to the Fervent Peaks for the feats of strength. Bartholomew, using his stone body to his advantage, enters the competition against the knight Hamelin Fischer. The first feat of strength is a swimming race across a mountain lake. Hamelin cheats by using the third stone object, the Ardent Oarsman’s oar, to create waves that propel him across the lake. Despite this, Bartholomew finishes the swimming race in second place and handily defeats Hamelin in the next two feats—the splitting and carrying of stones. Enraged, Hamelin strikes Bartholomew with the magical oar, but Bartholomew overpowers him and snaps the magical oar in half, destroying it. Enraged, Hamelin attacks Bartholomew with a hammer. Sybil rushes to intervene, and as Hamelin raises the hammer to strike her, Benji throws the Artful Brigand’s coin—a magical object that can teleport or cause explosions—to stop him, but his aim is off. The coin obliterates Hamelin’s head, killing him instantly. Shaken, the caravan proceeds to the Chiming Wood for the fourth event, the hunt. There, Benji lays a trap, intending for Sybil to be killed by a birke. His knight Samuel Eichel discovers the treachery and confronts the king. As they fight, Benji starts a fire in the sacred grove, and Samuel is killed. Before the grove is consumed by flames, Sybil manages to shatter the fourth object, the Faithful Forester’s chime. Bartholomew flies into the fire to rescue Sybil, but the effort causes his stone body to crack and break, leaving him grievously injured.

Safely back at Petula Hall, the group discovers the truth behind Sybil’s visions. The ox-eye sedative, made from gowan flowers that grow only on the tor, allows those with limestone in their bodies to access the memories of an ancient, primordial sprite named Der ewige Mond, whose body is the tor. The earthquakes are the sprite stirring now that the oppressive weight of the cathedral is gone. Benji, having been beaten and humiliated by Rory, announces that the final tournament event will be held in the Cliffs of Bellidine. There, the assembled nobles, secretly swayed by Maude, publicly depose him. The final event is declared a duel to the death: Benji versus Sybil. On the beach, Sybil defeats Benji but hesitates to kill him. He escapes using the final stone object, the Artful Brigand’s coin, and flees to the tor, planning to use the spring water to gain immortality.

The group pursues Benji to the tor, where hundreds of sprites have gathered, preventing him from accessing the spring. Benji attempts to fight them off with the coin’s destructive power. Sybil disarms him and delivers a fatal blow with her hammer. Before Benji dies, he throws the explosive coin at a mountain sprite, and Maude deliberately steps in the stone’s path, saving the sprite’s life at the expense of her own. As she dies, she expresses regret for her family’s history of hunting sprites and hopes that her death will inaugurate a new and better legacy. A distraught Bartholomew takes the coin in his mouth and shatters it, destroying the last of the Omens’ objects. Having suffered catastrophic damage from his earlier rescue, Bartholomew then throws himself into the spring and dissolves into nothing. Desperate, Sybil dives into the spring after him and drowns, triggering one last, deep vision. The ancient sprite Der ewige Mond speaks to her, explaining her full history and charging Sybil and Rory with protecting the tor. Before the dream ends, she reveals how Bartholomew can be reborn. Upon waking, Sybil follows the instructions, carving a new body for the gargoyle from the limestone of the tor. Bartholomew is resurrected, fully healed and with his memories intact.

One hundred years later, Sybil, Rory, and Bartholomew act as guardians of the tor. Though not immortal, they can expect to live many human lifetimes. Slowly turning to stone, they greet all who make the pilgrimage, including the current monarch, King August Roane. They tell the true, unvarnished history of the Stonewater Kingdom, ensuring that the stories of false gods, fallen kings, and the misunderstood sprites are never forgotten. Bartholomew, when asked why he calls everyone “Bartholomew,” explains that the name is now “full of promise” and concludes, “Every day is a new flower, a second chance—a rebirth—when you are Bartholomew” (353). In this new era of peace, the tragedies of the past are remembered not as a cycle of despair but as a foundation for a kingdom that has finally learned to heal and grow.