Raven Cycle Quotes

In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them.

While I'm gone," Gansey said, pausing, "dream me the world. Something new for every night.

She wasn't interested in telling other people's futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.

Is this thing safe?" "Safe as life," Gansey replied.

His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match.

If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.

I am being perfectly fucking civil.

Ronan said, "I'm always straight." Adam replied "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told.

Gansey had once told Adam that he was afraid most people didn't know how to handle Ronan. What he meant by this was that he was worried that one day someone would fall on Ronan and cut themselves.

If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.

We have to be back in three hours," Ronan said. "I just fed Chainsaw but she'll need it again." "This," Gansey replied "is precisely why I didn't want to have a baby with you.

Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.

I wish you could be kissed, Jane,' he said. 'Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.' He flailed an arm toward the stars.

He was a book, and he was holding his final pages, and he wanted to get to the end to find out how it went, and he didn't want it to be over.

You are being self-pitying." "I'm nearly done. You don't have much more of this to bear." "I like you better this way." "Crushed and broken," Gansey said. "Just the way women like 'em.

The head is too wise. The heart is all fire.

And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war.

When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.

She wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one. Ronan wasn't a fan of lamps.

They were always walking away from him. But he never seemed able to walk away from them.

She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness.

He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.

Fate," Blue replied, glowering at her mother, "is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast.

I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," Ronan Lynch said. Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, "Do you?" "Maybe I dreamt you," he said. "Thanks for the straight teeth, then," Adam replied.

What a strange constellation they all were.

It wasn't that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought.

No homework. I got suspended,” Blue replied. “Get the fuck out,” Ronan said, but with admiration. “Sargent, you asshole.

You missed World Hist." "Did you get notes for me?" "No. I thought you were dead in a ditch.

I guess now would be a good time to tell you," He said. "I took Chainsaw out of my dreams.

In his head, his mother said, 'People shout when they don’t have the vocabulary to whisper'.

Gansey's partying with his mother," Ronan said. He smelled like beer. "And Noah's fucking dead. But Parrish is here.

How do you feel about helicopters?" There was a long pause. "How do you mean? Ethically?" "As a mode of transportation." "Faster than camels, but less sustainable.

Making Ronan Lynch smile felt as charged as making a bargain with Cabeswater. These were not forces to play with.

Adam had once told Gansey, "Rags to riches isn't a story anyone wants to hear until after it's done.

I don't care to be pretty," Blue shot back hotly, "I care to look on the outside like I look on the inside.

Blue tried not to look at Gansey's boat shoes; she felt better about him as a person if she pretended he wasn't wearing them.

Silence was never a wrong answer.

I guess I make things that need energy stronger. I'm like a walking battery." "You're the table everyone wants at Starbucks," Gansey mused as he began to walk again. Blue blinked. "What?" Over his shoulder, Gansey said, "Next to the wall plug.

He strode over to the ruined church. This, Blue had discovered, was how Gansey got places - striding. Walking was for ordinary people.

Dying's a boring side effect.

Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him.

So what you're saying is you can't explain it." "I did explain it." "No, you used nouns and verbs together in a pleasing but illogical format.

Blue,” he warned, but his voice was chaotic. This close, his throat was scented with mint and wool sweater and vinyl car seat, and Gansey, just Gansey. She said, “I just want to pretend. I want to pretend that I could.

Don't tell the others," Gansey said. "I'm dead," Noah replied, "not stupid.

I think they're here because I thought they ought to be here," Gansey said. Blue replied sarcastically. "Okay, God.

Adam lived in an apartment located above the office of St. Agnes Catholic Church, a fortuitous combination that focused most of the objects of Ronan's worship into one downtown block.

He hadn't realized yet that Gansey could persuade even the sun to pause and give him the time.

The way Gansey saw it was this: if you had a special knack for finding things, it meant you owed the world to look.

Where the hell is Ronan?" Gansey asked, echoing the words that thousands of humans had uttered since mankind developed speech.

He left bloody fingerprints on the rock, but there was something satisfying about that. I was here. I exist. I’m alive, because I bleed.

Reality's what other people dream for you.

You're asking me to define an abstract concept that no one has managed to explain since time began. You sort of sprang it on me," Gansey said. "Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we don't want to suffocate. Why do we eat? Because we don't want to starve. How do I know I love her? Because I can sleep after I talk to her. Why?

What do you want, Adam? To feel awake when my eyes are open.

Sometimes Ronan thought Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn’t come with agony.

It was mint and memories and the past and the future and she felt as if she’d done this before and already she longed to do it again.

If you can’t be unafraid, Henry said, be afraid and happy.

And here was Ronan, like a heart attack that never stopped.

You really didn't see the sadness or the longing unless you already knew it was there. But that was the trick, wasn't it? Everyone had their disappointment and their baggage; only, some people carried it in their inside pockets and not on their backs.

Is that all?" she whispered. Gansey closed his eyes. "That's all there is.

Arbores loqui latine. The trees speak Latin.

Ronan's second secret was Adam Parrish.

Trees in your eyes ... Stars in your heart.

Don't panic. Are you sitting? You probably don't need to sit. Well, possibly. At least lean on something.

I never taught him to break his thumb." "That's Gansey for you. Only learns enough to be superficially competent." "Loser," Ronan agreed, and he was himself again.

Boys like him didn't die; they got bronzed and installed outside public libraries.

I'm not asking him to stay, Ronan thought. Only to come back.

He danced on the knife’s edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn.

I’ve been dead for seven years, that’s as warm as they get.

Ronan didn't need physics. He could intimidate even a piece of plywood into doing what he wanted.

It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. The sort of beauty that always hurt.

Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck. Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.

The choice was death or hurting Adam, which wasn’t much of a choice at all.

The kitchen window groaned open, and Jimi shouted out, “Blue! Your boys are out front, looking like they’re fixing to bury a body.” Again? Blue thought.

Behind him, he heard Ronan say, "I like the way you losers thought Instagram before first aid. Fuck off.

The ocean burned.

Aglionby Academy was the number one reason Blue had developed her two rules: One, stay away from boys because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Aglionby boys, because they were bastards.

When Adam kissed him, it was every mile per hour Ronan had ever gone over the speed limit. It was every window-down, goose-bumps-on-skin, teeth-chattering-cold night drive. It was Adam’s ribs under Ronan’s hands and Adam’s mouth on his mouth, again and again and again. It was stubble on his lips and Ronan having to stop, to get his breath, to restart his heart. They were both hungry animals, but Adam had been starving for far longer.

Noah crouched over Gansey's body. He said, for the last time, 'You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.' Gansey died. 'Goodbye,' Noah said. 'Don't throw it away.' He quietly slid from time.

In some parallel universe, there was a Gansey who could tell Blue that he found the ten inches of her bare calves far more tantalizing than the thirteen cubic feet of bare skin Orla sported. But in this universe, that was Adam’s job. He was in a terrible mood.

When Ronan thought of Gansey, he thought of moving into Monmouth Manufacturing, of nights spent in companionable insomnia, of a summer searching for a king, of Gansey asking the Gray Man for his life. Brothers.

Richard Gansey III had forgotten how many times he had been told he was destined for greatness.

I found it." "People find pennies," Gansey replied. "Or car keys. Or four-leaf clovers." "And ravens," Ronan said. "You're just jealous 'cause" - at this point, he had to stop to regroup his beer-sluggish thoughts - "you didn't find one, too.

Watch for the devil. When there’s a god, there’s always a legion of devils.

In the end, he was nobody to Adam, he was nobody to Ronan. Adam spit his words back at him and Ronan squandered however many second chances he gave him. Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year.

Did you get notes for me?" "No", Ronan replied,"I thought you were dead in a ditch.

You can be just friends with people, you know," Orla said. "I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys." Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other.

To think you could have been dreaming the cure for cancer," Blue said. "Look, Sargent," Ronan retorted, "I was gonna dream you some eye cream last night since clearly modern medicine's doing jack shit for you, but I nearly had my ass handed to me by a death snake from the fourth circle of dream hell, so you're welcome." Blue was appropriately touched. "Ah, thanks, man." "No problem, bro.

Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes. What do you want, Adam? To feel awake when my eyes are open.

It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars.

I’m going in,” Gansey said as Ronan sat down on the step beside Adam. As Gansey shut the door behind him, he heard Adam say, “I don’t want to talk,” and Ronan reply, “The fuck would I talk about?

It was amazing that she and Ronan didn’t get along better, because they were different brands of the same impossible stuff.

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master. This was the important thing. It had always been the important thing. This was what it was to be Adam.

Are you going to lock your shitbox?" Adam said, "No point. Hooligans got in anyway." The hooligan in question smiled thinly.

Inside, they pretended they would dream, but they did not. They sprawled on the living room sofa and Adam studied the tattoo that covered Ronan's back: all the sharp edges that hooked wondrously and fearfully into each other. 'Unguibus et rostro,' Adam said. Ronan put Adam's fingers to his mouth. He was never sleeping again.

Desire and dread lay right next to each other in his heart, each sharpening the other.

It kills Dittleys and does terrible things to my friend." "YOUR DEAD FRIEND." "That's not his fault. Why didn't you say you could see him?" "I DIDN'T SAY I COULD SEE YOU, EITHER." "But I'm not dead." "BUT YOU ARE PRETTY SHORT.

From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. Ronan finished with, “For the love of … Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.” Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.

Calla readjusted, wrapping the silk around her other thigh instead. "Which one's he again? The pretty one?" Blue and Gansey exchanged a look. Blue's look said, I'm so, so sorry. Gansey's said, Am I the pretty one?

I'm glad you misdialed." "Well. Easy mistake to make," she said. Might do it again." A very, very long pause. She opened her mouth to fill it, then changed her mind and didn't. She was shivering again, even though she wasn't cold with the pillow on her legs. "Shouldn't," Gansey said finally. "But I hope you do.

Ronan," Noah said, "I have a super bad feeling." "It's called being dead," Ronan replied.

Wanting to live, but accepting death to save others: that was courage. That was to be Gansey's greatness.

It's a hard thing to hold a civil conversation after recalling that one party has used a Taser on the other, so both of them finished the walk in silence.

What do we do now?" Gansey asked. From the other room, Calla bellowed, "GO BUY US PIZZA. WITH EXTRA CHEESE, RICHIE RICH." Blue said, "I think she's starting to like you.

Excelsior," Gansey said bleakly. Blue asked, "What does that even mean?" Gansey looked over his shoulder at her. He was once more, just a little bit closer to the boy she'd seen in the churchyard. "Onward and upward.

I know you think you're a punk," Declan said. "But you aren't nearly as bad ass as you think you are." "Oh, go to hell," Ronan snapped, just as the alter boys broached the rear doors. "Guys," Matthew pleaded. "Be holy.

As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan’s eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practiced but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes.

Depending on where you began the story, it was about Noah Czerny.

Ronan Lynch — dreamer of dreams, fighter of men, skipper of classes — might

Maura had decided sometime before Blue's birth that it was barbaric to order children about, and so Blue had grown up surrounded by imperative question marks.

Her name's Chainsaw," replied Ronan, without looking up. Then: "Noah. You're creepy as hell back there.

Adam's response was buried in the sound of the first-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!" Ronan's voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You're already dead!

He was a king. This was the year he was going to die.

Are you really going to work in that?" Maura asked. Blue looked at her clothing. It involved a few thin layering shirts, including one she had altered using a method called shredding. "What's wrong with it?" Maura shrugged. "Nothing. I always wanted an eccentric daughter. I just never realised how well my evil plans were working.

This is what you get, Maura, for using your DNA to make a baby.

There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome. One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment , but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself. Lonesome means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some.

Then Maura made something with butter and Calla made something with bacon and Blue steamed broccoli in self-defense.

If Adam was stupid about his pride, Gansey was stupid about Adam.

I wasn't talking to you, Lynch. I need someone with a soul.

How do you know I wouldn't have just been happy with the truth? I don’t care if my father was a deadbeat named Butternut. It doesn't change anything right now.” “His name wasn't really Butternut, was it?” Gansey asked Adam in a low voice.

He asked for a specific. I gave him a specific. I'm sorry it wasn't puppies.

He's a pit bull," Adam said. "I know some really nice pit bulls." "He's the kind of pit that makes the evening news. Gansey's trying to restrain him." "How noble.

His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams. In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

Blue was a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches that had been cut into circles for a fancy tea party.

Flustered, she replied, "You're not my - my - grandmother, or something." "You'd talk about this with your grandmother? I can't possibly imagine discussing my dating life with mine. She's a lovely woman, I suppose. If you like them bald and racist.

Ronan's smile was sharp and hooked as one of the creature's claws. "'A sword is never a killer; it is a tool in the killer's hand'." "I can't believe Noah didn't stick around to help." "Sure you can. Never trust the dead.

He was so much more dangerous when he wasn't angry.

Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn’t all-encompassing, that wasn’t blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she’d had this kind, she didn’t want the other.

Saw him where?" "While I was sitting outside with one of my half aunts." This seemed to satisfy Ronan was well, because he asked, "What's the other half of her?" "God, Ronan," Adam said. "Enough.

Ronan Lynch loved to dream about light.

Ronan's bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey first met him. "Hold on," Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?" "No reason. Just no reason." Ronan slammed his door. Gansey asked Adam, "Sorry. You still have that suit for the party?" Adam's response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!" Ronan's voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You're already dead!

A secret is a strange thing. There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid. And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it. Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.

If it had a social security number, Ronan had fought with it.

Tears don't become us." "What becomes us?" "Action.

Wake up, you bastard," — he said. "You fucker. I can't believe that you would ..." And he began to cry.

It should have been impossible. No one should have been able to dream any of these thing, much less all of them. But Adam had seen what Ronan could do. He'd read the dreamt will and ridden in the dreamt Camaro and been terrified by the dreamt night terror. It was possible that there were two gods in this church.

Ronan was angry-every one of his emotions that wasn't happiness was anger.

Listen to you sounding all badass. I bet you're just listening to a CD called 'The Sounds of Crime' while you cruise for chicks outside the Old Navy in your Camaro.

I'm sorry no one saved you.

It was just that there was something newly powerful about this assembled family in the car. They were all growing up and into each other like trees striving together for the sun.

Ronan Lynch lived with every sort of secret.

The journal and Gansey were clearly long acquainted, and he wanted her to know. This is me. The real me.

It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish's nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was.

It'll be OK. I'm ready. Blue, kiss me.

If you can't be unafraid, be afraid and happy.

No, you used nouns and verbs together in a pleasing but illogical format.

Tell me," Artemus whispered, " when you dream, do you dream of the stars?

It could kill you," Maura said. Then there was the awkward moment that arrives when two thirds of the people in the room know that the other third is supposed to die in fewer than nine months, and the person who is meant to die is not one of the ones in the know.

People shout when they don't have the vocabulary to whisper.

Well,” said Ronan, “I hope he likes it. I’ve pulled a muscle.” Gansey scoffed, “Doing what? You were standing watch.” “Opening my hood.

Dreamers are to be classified as weapons. Ronan already knew he was a weapon ; but he was trying to make up for it.

Are you crying?" "Only a little." "Why?" "Generalized sadness.

I know you are not the same as him, Adam said. But in my head, everything is always so tangled. I am such a damaged thing.

Her aura is like yours—it's blue," he said. "The clairvoyant aura!" "Is it?" She was going to be extremely annoyed if this was how she had gotten her name—like naming a puppy Fluffy.

What's that?" "Jane!" Gansey said joyfully. Adam said, "It's a wizard in a box." "It will do your homework," Noah added. "And it's been dating your girlfriend," Ronan finished. Blue scowled. "Are you all drunk?

Was Ronan even human? Half a dreamer, half a dream, maker of ravens and hoofed girls and entire lands.

Above him, the stars were brutal and clear.

Gansey had no idea how old Blue was. He knew she'd just finished eleventh grade. Maybe she was sixteen. Maybe she was eighteen. Maybe she was twenty-two and just very short and remedial.

He left Chainsaw behind, much to her irritation. Ronan didn't want her to learn any bad language.

More than anything, the journal wanted. It wanted more than it could hold, more than words could describe, more than diagrams could illustrate. Longing burst from the pages, in every frantic line and every hectic sketch and every dark-printed definition. There was something pained and melancholy about it.

I like you better this way." For some reason, admitting this made her face go hot right away; she was very glad that he still had his face pressed into his pillow and the other boys were still in Noah's room. "Crushed and broken," Gansey said. "Just the way women like 'em.

She drifted towards the bedroom, on her way to have a bath or take a nap or start a war.

The approval of someone like him, who clearly cared for no one, seemed like it would be worth more.

Ronan did not smoke; he preferred his habits with hangovers.

I take it we're friends now," Henry said. "We must be," Gansey replied. "Jane says it should be so." "It should be so," Blue agreed.

Non mortem, somni fratem.

The buck stops here," Ronan said, pulling up the hand brake. "Home shit home.

I have to walk dogs." "Oh," Gansey replied, sounding deflated. "Well, okay." "But it'll only take an hour." "Oh," he repeated, about fourteen shades brighter. "Shall I pick you up, then?

It was not just a touch, an action. It was a simplification of both of them: They were no longer Noah Czerny and Blue Sargent. They were now just him and her. Not even that. They were only the time that they held between them.

Adam finally sat down on one of the pews. Laying his cheek against the smooth back of it, he looked at Ronan. Strangely enough, Ronan belonged here, too, just as he had at the Barns. This noisy, lush religion had created him just as much as his father's world of dreams; it seemed impossible for all of Ronan to exist in one person. Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him. The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he'd been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.

The fact was, by the time she got to high school, being weird and proud of it was an asset. Suddenly cool, Blue could've happily had any number of friends. And she had tried. But the problem with being weird was that everyone else was 'normal'".

What an impossible and miraculous and hideous thing this was. An ugly plan hatched by an ugly boy now dreamt into ugly life. From dream to reality. How appropiate it was that Ronan, left to his own devices, manifested beautiful cars and beautiful birds and tenderhearted brothers, while Adam, when given the power, manifested a filthy string of perverse murders.

But what [Gansey] said was, "I'm going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. This isn't just for Blue, either. All of us." Ronan said, "I'm always straight." Adam replied, "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told." Blue said, "Okay.

She felt one thousand years old. She also felt like maybe she was a condescending brat. She wanted her bike. She wanted her friends, who were also one-thousand-year-old condescending brats. She wanted to live in a world where she was surrounded by one-thousand-year-old condescending brats.

No homework. I got suspended,” Blue replied. “Get the fuck out,” Ronan said, but with admiration. “Sargent, you asshole.” Blue reluctantly allowed him to bump fists with her as Gansey eyed her meaningfully in the rearview mirror. Adam swivelled the other way in his seat – to the right, instead of to the left, so that he was peering around the far side of the headrest. It made him look as if he were hiding, but Blue knew it was just because it turned his hearing ear instead of his deaf ear towards them. “For what?” “Emptying another student’s backpack over his car. I don’t really want to talk about it.” “I do,” Ronan said. “Well, I don’t. I’m not proud of it.” Ronan patted her leg. “I’ll be proud for you.

As always, there was an all-American war hero look to him, coded in his tousled brown hair, his summer-narrowed hazel eyes, the straight nose that ancient Anglo-Saxons had graciously passed on to him. Everything about him suggested valor and power and a firm handshake.

There was something unfamiliar about him. Something ferocious about his eyes, some sort of bite in his faint smile. Something altogether hectic and unsettled. She stood on the ledge of his smile and looked over the edge.

It's like scrying into that weird space. There's so much coming out of him, it shouldn't be possible. Do you remember that woman who came in who was pregnant with quadruplets? It was like that, but worse." "He's pregnant?" Blue asked.

What was a kiss without a kiss?" It was a tablecloth tugged from beneath a party service, everything jumbled against everything else in just a few chaotic moments. Fingers in hair. Hands cupping necks. Mouths dragged on cheeks and chins in dangerous proximity.

One moment, she was wearing clothing, and the next moment, she was wearing a bikini. Fifty percent of the world was brown skin and fifty percent was orange nylon. From the Mona Lisa smile on Orla's lips, it was clear she was pleased to finally be allowed to demonstrate her true talents. A tiny part of Gansey's brain said: You have been staring for too long. The larger part of his brain said: ORANGE.

There were many versions of Gansey, but this one had been rare since the introduction of Adam's taming presence. It was also Ronan's favorite. It was the opposite of Gansey's most public face, which was pure control enclosed in a paper-thin wrapper of academia. But this version of Gansey was Gansey the boy. This was the Gansey who bought the Camaro, the Gansey who asked Ronan to teach him to fight, the Gansey who contained every wild spark so that it wouldn't show up in other versions. Was it the shield beneath the lake that had unleashed it? Orla's orange bikini? The bashed-up remains of his rebuilt Henrietta and the fake IDs they'd returned to? Ronan didn't really care. All that mattered was that something had struck the match, and Gansey was burning.

In the hall stood Richard Campbell Gansey III in his school uniform and overcoat and scarf and gloves, looking like someone from another world. Behind him was Ronan Lynch, his damn tie knotted right for once and his shirt tucked in. Humiliation and joy warred furiously inside Adam. Gansey strode between the pews as Adam's father stared at him. He went directly to the bench, straight up to the judge. Now that he stood directly beside Adam, not looking at him, Adam could see that he was a little out of breath. Ronan, behind him, was as well. they had run. For him.

Oh, it's good," Matthew said enthusiastically. It was not much of an endorsement. Matthew Lynch was a golden indiscriminate pit into which the world threw food. "It's real good. When I saw your phone number, I nearly shit myself! You could sell your phone, like, as new-in-box." "Don't fucking swear," Ronan said.

How arrogant we are, Adam thought, to deliver babies who can't walk or talk or feed themselves. How sure we are that nothing will destroy them before they can take care of themselves. How fragile they were, how easily abandoned and neglected and beaten and hated. Prey animals were born afraid.

His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he’d let them overflow and now there wasn’t a damn place in the ocean that wouldn’t catch fire if he dropped a match. <...> “Headlights? That’s hardcore, Parrish.” Ronan held out his hand; Adam took it. Ronan hauled him up, his mind all palm against palm, thumb crossed over thumb, fingers pressed into wrist bone – and then Adam was facing him and he released his hand. The ocean burned.

He was clearly related to Declan: same nose, same dark eyebrows, same phenomenal teeth. But there was a carefully cultivated sense of danger to this Lynch brother. This was not a rattlesnake hidden in the grass, but a deadly coral snake striped with warning colors. Everything about him was a warning: If this snake bit you, you had no one to blame but yourself.

Ronan hadn't known anything about who Adam was then and, if possible, he'd known even less about who he himself was, but as they drove away from the boy with the bicycle, this was how it had begun: Ronan leaning back against his seat and closing his eyes and sending up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God: Please.

Adam retreated to sit beside Mary as Ronan stretched out on the pew, rubbing out the dingy plan with the legs of his jeans. Something about his stillness on the pew and the funereal quality of the light reminded Adam of the effigy of Glendower they'd seen at the tomb. A king, sleeping. Adam couldn't imagine, though, the strange, wild kingdom that Ronan might rule. "Stop watching me," Ronan said, though his eyes were closed.

The king sleeps still, under a mountain , and around him is assembled his warriors and his herds and his riches. By his right hand is his cup, filled with possibility. On his breast nestles his sword, waiting, too, to wake. Fortunate is the soul who finds the king and is brave enough to call him to wakefulness, for the king will grant him a favour, as wondrous as can be imagined by a mortal man.

Casually, out of the view of Ronan, making sure Adam was still sleeping, Gansey dangled his hand between the driver's seat and the door. Palm up, fingers stretched back to Blue. This was not allowed. He knew it was not allowed, by rules he himself had set... She would not see the gesture, anyway. She would ignore it if she did. His heart hummed. Blue touched his fingertips. Just this-- He pinched her fingers lightly, just for a moment, and then he withdrew his hand and put it back on the wheel. His chest felt warm. This was not allowed. Ronan had not seen; Adam was still sleeping. The only casualty was his pulse. -Page 36 <3

Gansey leaned back, head thrown to the side, drunken and silly with happiness. "I love this car," he said, loud enough to be heard over the engine. "I should buy four more of them. I'll just open the door of one to fall in to the other. One can be a living room, one can be my kitchen, I'll sleep in one..." "And the fourth? Butler's pantry?" Blue shouted. "Don't be so selfish. Guest room.

At one store, Gansey had started to pay for Blue's potato chips and she'd snatched them away. "I don't want you to buy me food!" Blue said. "If you pay for it, then it's like I'm... be---be---" "Beholden to me?" Gansey suggested pleasantly. "Don't put words into my mouth." "It was your word." "You assumed it was my word. You can't just go around assuming." "But that is what you meant, isn't it?" She scowled. "I'm done with this conversation.

Haven’t you heard of being hung, drawn, and quartered?” Blue asked, “Is it as painful as conversations with Ronan?” Gansey cast a glance over to Ronan, who was a small, indistinct form by the trees. Adam audibly swallowed a laugh. “Depends on if Ronan is sober,” Gansey answered. Adam asked, “What is he doing, anyway?” “Peeing.” “Trust Lynch to deface a place like this five minutes after getting here.” “Deface? Marking his territory.” “He must own more of Virginia than your father, then.” “I don’t think he’s ever used an indoor toilet, now that I consider it.

Gansey stepped in then, putting his phone neatly into his pocket, fetching out his keys instead. There was still something stretched thin about his expression. He looked, in fact, like he had in the cave, his face streaked and unfamiliar. It was so strange to see him without his Richard Campbell Gansey III guise on in public that Blue couldn't stop staring at his face. No — it wasn't his face. It was the way he stood, his shoulder shrugged, chin ducked, gaze from below uncertain eyebrows. "SHE WAS ALL RIGHT," Jesse assured him. "My head knew that," Gansey said. "But the rest of me didn't.

When she opened her eyes, she was both in her body and watching it, nowhere near the cavity of the tree. The Blue that was before her stood inches from a boy in an Aglionby sweater. There was a slight stoop to his posture, and his shoulders were spattered darkly with rain. It was his fingers that Blue felt on her face. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Tears coursed down the other Blue's face. Though some strange magic, Blue could feel them on her face as well. She could feel, too, sick, rising misery she'd felt in the churchyard, the grief that felt bigger than her. The other Blue's tears seemed endless. One drop slid after another, each following an identical path down her cheeks. The boy in the Aglionby sweater leaned his forehead against Blue's. She felt the pressure of his skin against hers, and suddenly she could smell mint. It'll be okay. Gansey told the other Blue. She could tell that he was afraid. It'll be okay. Impossibly, Blue realized that this other Blue was crying because she loved Gansey. And that the reason Gansey touched her like that, his fingers so careful with her, was because he knew that her kiss could kill him. She could feel how badly the other Blue wanted to kiss him, even as she dreaded it. Though she couldn't understand why, her real, present day memories in the tree cavity were clouded with other false memories of their lips nearly touching, a life this other Blue had already lived. Okay, I'm ready- Gansey's voice caught, just a little. Blue, kiss me.

Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldn't forget it on mornings like this one—fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting in front of the mountains, the Pig running cool and loud, Ronan climbing out of the passenger seat and knocking knuckles on the roof with teeth flashing, dewy grass misting the black toes of his shoes, bag slung over his blazer, narrow-eyed Adam bumping fists as they met on the sidewalk, boys around them laughing and calling to one another, making space for the three of them because this had been a thing for so long: Gansey-Lynch-Parrish.

There were three boys in the doorway, backlit by the evening sun as Neeve had been so many weeks ago. Three sets of shoulders: one square, one built, one wiry. “Sorry that I’m late,” said the boy in front, with the square shoulders. The scent of mint rolled in with him, just as it had in the churchyard. “Will it be a problem?” Blue knew that voice. She reached for the railing of the stairs to keep her balance as President Cell Phone stepped into the hallway. Oh no. Not him. All this time she’d been wondering how Gansey might die and it turned out she was going to strangle him.

I thought I was hallucinating,” Adam said, next to the lockers, an announcement droning on over the hall speakers. “Ronan Lynch in the halls of Aglionby.” Ronan slammed his locker. He had not put anything in it and had no reason to open or close it, but he liked the satisfying bang of the metal down the hall, the way it drowned out the announcements. He did it again for good measure. “Is this a real conversation, Parrish?” Adam didn’t bother to reply. He merely exchanged three textbooks for his gym hoodie. Ronan wrenched his tie loose. “You working after school?” “With a dreamer.” He held Ronan’s gaze over his locker door. School had improved. Adam gently closed his locker. “I’m done at four thirty. If you’re up for brainstorming some repair of your dream forest. Unless you have homework.” “Asshole,” Ronan said. Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.

A floorboard cracked; knuckles tapped once on the open door. Adam looked up to see Niall Lynch standing in the doorway. No, it was Ronan, face lit bright on one side, in stark shadow on the other, looking powerful and at ease with his thumbs tucked in the pockets of his jeans, leather bracelets looped over his wrist, feet bare. He wordlessly crossed the floor and sat beside Adam on the mattress. When he held out his hand, Adam put the model into it. “This old thing,” Ronan said. He turned the front tyre, and again the music played out of it. They sat like that for a few minutes, as Ronan examined the car and turned each wheel to play a different tune. Adam watched how intently Ronan studied the seams, his eyelashes low over his light eyes. Ronan let out a breath, put the model down on the bed beside him, and kissed Adam. Once, when Adam had still lived in the trailer park, he had been pushing the lawn mower around the scraggly side yard when he realized that it was raining a mile away. He could smell it, the earthy scent of rain on dirt, but also the electric, restless smell of ozone. And he could see it: a hazy gray sheet of water blocking his view of the mountains. He could track the line of rain travelling across the vast dry field towards him. It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there and watched it approach. Even at the last minute, as he heard the rain pounding the grass flat, he just stood there. He closed his eyes and let the storm soak him. That was this kiss. They kissed again. Adam felt it in more than his lips. Ronan sat back, his eyes closed, swallowing. Adam watched his chest rise and fall, his eyebrows furrow. He felt as bright and dreamy and imaginary as the light through the window. He did not understand anything. It was a long moment before Ronan opened his eyes, and when he did, his expression was complicated. He stood up. He was still looking at Adam, and Adam was looking back, but neither said anything. Probably Ronan wanted something from him, but Adam didn’t know what to say. He was a magician, Persephone had said, and his magic was making connections between disparate things. Only now he was too full of white, fuzzy light to make any sort of logical connections. He knew that of all the options in the world, Ronan Lynch was the most difficult version of any of them. He knew that Ronan was not a thing to be experimented with. He knew his mouth still felt warm. He knew he had started his entire time at Aglionby certain that all he wanted to do was get as far away from this state and everything in it as possible. He was pretty sure he had just been Ronan’s first kiss. “I’m gonna go downstairs,” Ronan said.

He said, “I know somebody you could kiss.” “Who?” She realized his eyes were amused. “Oh, wait.” He shrugged. He was maybe the only person Blue knew who could preserve the integrity of a shrug while lying down. “It’s not like you’re going to kill me. I mean, if you were curious.” She hadn’t thought she was curious. It hadn’t been an option, after all. Not being able to kiss someone was a lot like being poor. She tried not to dwell on the things she couldn’t have. But now— “Okay,” she said. “What?” “I said okay.” He blushed. Or rather, because he was dead, he became normal colored. “Uh.” He propped himself on an elbow. “Well.” She unburied her face from the pillow. “Just, like—” He leaned toward her. Blue felt a thrill for a half a second. No, more like a quarter second. Because after that she felt the too-firm pucker of his tense lips. His mouth mashed her lips until it met teeth. The entire thing was at once slimy and ticklish and hilarious. They both gasped an embarrassed laugh. Noah said, “Bah!” Blue considered wiping her mouth, but felt that would be rude. It was all fairly underwhelming. She said, “Well.” “Wait,” Noah replied, “waitwaitwait.” He pulled one of Blue’s hairs out of his mouth. “I wasn’t ready.” He shook out his hands as if Blue’s lips were a sporting event and cramping was a very real possibility. “Go,” Blue said. This time they only got within a breath of each other’s lips when they both began to laugh. She closed the distance and was rewarded with another kiss that felt a lot like kissing a dishwasher. “I’m doing something wrong?” she suggested. “Sometimes it’s better with tongue,” he replied dubiously. They regarded each other. Blue squinted, “Are you sure you’ve done this before?” “Hey!” he protested. “It’s weird for me, ‘cause it’s you.” “Well, it’s weird for me because it’s you.” “We can stop.” “Maybe we should.” Noah pushed himself up farther on his elbow and gazed at the ceiling vaguely. Finally, he dropped his eyes back to her. “You’ve seen, like, movies. Of kisses, right? Your lips need to be, like, wanting to be kissed.” Blue touched her mouth. “What are they doing now?” “Like, bracing themselves.” She pursed and unpursed her lips. She saw his point. “So imagine one of those,” Noah suggested. She sighed and sifted through her memories until she found one that would do. It wasn’t a movie kiss, however. It was the kiss the dreaming tree had showed her in Cabeswater. Her first and only kiss with Gansey, right before he died. She thought about his nice mouth when he smiled. About his pleasant eyes when he laughed. She closed her eyes. Placing an elbow on the other side of her head, Noah leaned close and kissed her once more. This time, it was more of a thought than a feeling, a soft heat that began at her mouth and unfurled through the rest of her. One of his cold hands slid behind her neck and he kissed her again, lips parted. It was not just a touch, an action. It was a simplification of both of them: They were no longer Noah Czerny and Blue Sargent. They were now just him and her. Not even that. They were only the time that they held between them.