Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3)

by Maggie Stiefvater

“Vocabulary’s impressive.” He tapped a knuckle against a few of the words. He was kinetic. “But what’s going on with the grammar in here? And here? You’d want a subjunctive here in this fear clause. ‘I fear that they may believe this’— there should be a vocative here. I know what’s being said here because I already know the joke, but a native speaker would’ve just stared at you. This is not usable Latin.” Adam didn’t have to turn his head to feel Ronan simmering.

Have mercy on us — I’m afraid we are terrible.

“My name” — the man swept out a big swath of Ronan’s bad grammar with the edge of an eraser and used the space to replace it with efficient letters of his own — “is Colin Greenmantle.”

Nope nope nope fuck that

Here we are, living among the provincials!” Colin Greenmantle leaned out the window. Down below, a herd of cows looked up at him. “Piper, come look at these cows. This one asshole is looking right at me. ‘Colin,’ says this cow, ‘you are really living among the provincials now.’ ”

It’s a cow farm there gonna be cows

“Want this?” Blue asked Gansey. She tipped the yogurt container to him so he could see that all that was left was the fruit in the bottom. He didn’t nod, but she brought it to him anyway, giving him her spoon. It had a grounding effect — the shocking slime of the blueberries, the sugar hitting his stomach, empty from school, the knowledge that her mouth had been the last thing to touch the spoon. Blue watched him take the first bite and then turned quickly to Mr. Gray. “He’s the one who came for a reading last night, wasn’t he?”

“Better invite Blue, too. She reamed me out for not getting invited to the last one.” Gansey blinked up, eyes startled behind his glasses. “Because I didn’t invite her?” “No, me. But she’ll want to go. Trust me. She was something fearful.” “I believe you. Oh, Jesus, I just imagined her meeting the governor. I have a slideshow of her questions playing in my head.” Adam grinned. “He deserves all of them.”

lunch, T.J. came over to my table and drew a penis on the unicorn on my binder. Is that the incident Charity is referring to?” “Don’t Richard Gansey the Third at me,” Orla replied. “Because if that’s what she meant, then yes, I just stared at him. I didn’t realize it was a conversation because penis.”

But what she didn’t realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love 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.

“MY DADDY DIED IN IT. AND MY DADDY’S DADDY. AND MY DADDY’S DADDY’S DADDY.” Jesse concluded, possibly erroneously, “IT PROBABLY HAS NO END. YOU ONE OF THEM AGLIONBY BOYS, THEN?”

There was no point telling himself not to fight with Ronan. They would fight again, because Ronan was still breathing.

“Is this supposed to be a toy?” Gansey asked. “Ages six and up.” “This is the worst toy I have ever seen.” Noah grinned. He said, “Piss up a rope.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do if I find him, Noah. I don’t know what I’ll be if I’m not looking for him. I don’t know the first thing about how to be that person again.” Noah put the clay in Gansey’s hands. “That’s exactly how I feel about the idea of being alive again.”

“This is a you-should-go-contemplate-your-entitlement-Blue-Sargent-thing.”

Or, in the case of Richard Gansey III: reborn.

‘A coward’s heart is no prize, but the man of valor deserves his shining helmet.’ ”

Gansey’s eyes flew open just as Ronan hit the lights. He stood in the doorway, headphones looped around his neck, Chainsaw hulking like a tender thug on his shoulder. Ronan’s eyes found the phone by Gansey’s leg, but he didn’t ask, and Gansey didn’t say anything. Ronan would hear a lie in a second, and the truth wasn’t an option. Jealousy had ruined Ronan for the first several months of Adam’s introduction into their group; this would hurt him more than that.

“Squash one, squash tw —”

“Not now, Cheng. The king’s a little busy.” “I wasn’t talking to you, Lynch. I need someone with a soul.” The light that glinted off Ronan’s snarl caught Gansey’s eye, bringing him back to the present. He checked his stride and his watch before doubling back to Henry,

than the rest of them this summer. Who are these two? Gansey wondered. What are we doing?

“Democracy’s a farce,” Ronan said, and Adam smirked, a private, small thing that was inherently exclusionary. An expression, in fact, that he could’ve very well learned from Ronan.

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.

“I hear if you want magic done,” he said, “you ask a magician.”

“Was it always the same song? Was it the murder squash song?” “Oh, God.” The

The other boy wore a knowing expression. “Don’t tell the others,” Gansey said. “I’m dead,” Noah replied. “Not stupid.”

Give her forty

minutes and she could parallel park the Fox Way Ford in

“It’s just because you haven’t practiced enough,” Noah said generously, but he was gripping the door handle in a way that seemed redundant for the already dead.

“We are going so slow,” Noah said, craning his neck to observe the inevitable queue behind them. “I think I just saw a tricycle pass us.” “Rude.”

“YOU’RE A QUEER LITTLE THING,” Jesse Dittley decided. “LIKE ONE OF THEM ANTS.”

But then he added, “Lily.” “Noah —” “Lily. Blue.”

“What’s in the cave that makes it cursed?” “SLEEPERS,” he replied.

the unwinding of an anxious spring. He looked genuinely ill. She had worried both of them, badly.

“I’m going to call Ronan,” Gansey said quietly, “and tell him he can go back to Monmouth.” Ronan had been looking for her, too? It would have been heartwarming, if she’d been in any danger whatsoever.

“SHE WAS ALL RIGHT,” Jesse assured him. “My head knew that,” Gansey said. “But the rest of me didn’t.”

I can’t believe you aren’t dead somewhere,” Ronan told Blue. “You should be dead somewhere.”

him. “Shut up before you say something offensive. There’s something else you should know. One of the women here foretold Jesse’s death earlier this year. She didn’t know him, but she knew his name.” Adam’s head jerked up. Not because this was shocking information, but because Blue’s voice had changed just a little bit, and Persephone and Calla were busily knocking back their drinks and not looking at each other all of a sudden.

“You guys have a death list?” Ronan broke in. “That is fucking dark. Am I on it?” “Some days, I wish,” Blue said. “Can I see it?” Adam asked. “What?” “Can I see the list?” Blue turned away to make herself a cup of tea. “I don’t have it. Mom took it with her. I just remembered his name. I mean, I thought it was a girl, with an ie at the end, but the Dittley part was memorable.”

Ah, Adam thought with grim and sudden certainty. Here it is. So one of us is on it.

“I don’t remembe—” began Blue, and then broke off when Adam grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “Which one of us, Blue?” “Hey, don’t —!” She wrenched her arm free, but she didn’t step back.

Her face was unfamiliar, all mirth scrubbed from it. She wasn’t crying. Her eyes were worse than crying, though. He wondered how long she had been carrying this. His heart was thudding. He’d gotten it right. One of them was supposed to die. I don’t want to die, not now — “Blue.”

taken from them. His mind supplied the image: Gansey convulsing on the ground, covered in blood, Ronan crumpled beside him in grief. It had been months since Cabeswater showed him the vision, but he had not forgotten it. Nor had he forgotten how, in the vision, it had been Adam’s fault.

If it’s your fault, Adam thought, you can stop it.

Gansey — heedless, wild Gansey — tore into another gear as soon as they were out of the neighborhood. He sent the car hurtling from stoplight to stoplight and then, when he got to the empty highway, he let the car frantically climb in speed, his hand a fist over the gearshift.

The Camaro was like Gansey tonight: terrifying and thrilling, willing to do whatever she asked.

“When are you going to tell me what this is really about?” This made her heave a great shuddered breath that was close to tears. “Never.”

who is this person, is he still your friend, what did he give to Cabeswater, what does he become, why does terror grow so much better away from the sun — and then he said, cautiously, “I vote we go on.

“Queens and kings Kings and queens Blue lily, lily blue Crowns and birds

Swords and things Blue lily, lily blue”

“Blue lily, lily blue, you and I.”