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

by Maggie Stiefvater

“Maybe I dreamt you,”

a reluctantly curled fern, the last foliage before the sunlight faded.

He had not even hesitated before grabbing her. I can’t let myself forget that.

If they die, I die, too.”

Gansey dangled his hand between the driver’s seat and the door. Palm up, fingers stretched back to Blue.

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.

The only casualty was his pulse.

Gansey allowed Blue to exchange a meaningful glance with him in the rear-view mirror

“I’ve learned a lot. I’m glad you misdialled.” “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.”

This struck her as impractical and Gansey-like and made her feel a bit more benevolent towards the professor.

the bathroom, which was also sort of the laundry room and kitchen.

Ronan’s room was forbidden, but she looked inside anyway.

Gansey caught sight of Blue then, and he rewarded her with his best smile – not his polished one, but the more foolish number that meant he was excited.

Ronan was always saying that he never lied, but he wore a liar’s face.

he was surprised that the person was Gansey and not Ronan.

How ungrateful they’d become, how greedy for better wonders.

although she’d preferred her unicorn non-gendered.

But fear hurt, too.

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.

Adam felt Ronan’s eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practised but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really:

Adam considered Ronan’s admiration of him. Someone like him treating someone like Adam as someone worthy—

his face softened by uncertainty and caution.

rendering him stark and handsome and terrifying and someone else.

cautious, Ronan dark and incendiary. This was Ronan at his most truthful.

Ronan knew a great deal about how Adam worked.

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.

and he realized that while he’d been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.

Ronan and Adam kept vanishing places together,

Only enough to block an assault, not her view.

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.

a strange, hideous comfort

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?”

Ronan Lynch smiled then, too, and it was a weapon.

Instead she said, “You know, you’re not such a shithead.” “No,” Ronan replied, “really I am.”