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He’d died, but failed to stay dead. He was a king.
A Gansey reached bravely into the night-blind water, fate uncertain until the hilt of a sword pressed into a hopeful palm.
As he stepped out of the science building, he tipped his head backward, as if Ronan Lynch — dreamer of dreams, fighter of men, skipper of classes — might somehow be flying overhead. He was not.
Ronan Lynch loved to dream about light.
It was not until many years later that Ronan learned that the king had dreamt up his queen. But in retrospect, it made sense. His father loved to dream of light, too.
Slowly his memories of before — everything this place had been to him when it had held the entire Lynch family — were being overlapped with memories and hopes of after — every minute that the Barns had been his, all of the time he’d spent here alone or with Adam, dreaming and scheming. Home, home, home.
Blue didn’t care that he — it — Noah — was strange and decaying and frightening. She knew that he — it — Noah — was strange and decayed and frightened, and she knew that she loved him anyway.
“No homework. I got suspended,” Blue replied. “Get the fuck out,” Ronan said, but with admiration. “Sargent, you asshole.”
Ronan leaned forward. “Tell me, Dad, are you mad that I fucked up, or are you just mad that I skipped school?” Gansey said, “I think those both count as fuckups, don’t you?” “Oh, don’t,” Ronan retorted. “It just sounds vulgar when you say it.”
“Don’t,” Gansey said. “Jesse Dittley’s dead because of the people interested in your family’s dreaming, so don’t act like others aren’t affected by whether it stays secret or not. It’s yours first, but we’re all in the blast zone.”
Adam had seen many of Ronan’s dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he’d seen. What a frightened monster she was.
Adam could not very well judge Ronan for dreaming so vastly; Adam was also trading in magic he didn’t understand perfectly. These days, they all had their hands thrust into the sky, hoping for comets. The only difference was that Ronan Lynch’s wild and expanding universe existed inside his own head.
Because Adam practiced at many things, Adam was good at many things, but this — what was it even called? Scrying, sensing, magic, magic, magic. He was not only good at it, but he longed for it, wanted it, loved it in a way that nearly overwhelmed him with gratitude. He had not known that he could love, not really. Gansey and he had fought about it, once — Gansey had said, with disgust, Stop saying privilege. Love isn’t privilege.
Need was Adam’s baseline, his resting pulse. Love was a privilege. Adam was privileged; he did not want to give it up. He wanted to remember again and again how it felt.
He caught Adam’s eye. When Adam’s mouth quirked, Ronan’s expression stilled for a moment before turning to the loose smile he ordinarily reserved for Matthew’s silliness. Adam felt a surge of both accomplishment and nerves. He skated an edge here. Making Ronan Lynch smile felt as charged as making a bargain with Cabeswater. These weren’t forces to play with.
“Mom, are you here?” Ronan’s voice was different when he spoke to either his mother or Matthew. It was Ronan, unperformed. No. Ronan, unprotected. This tone reminded Adam of that unshielded smile from before. Don’t play, he told himself. This is not a game. But it didn’t feel like a game, if he was being honest. Adrenaline whispered in his heart.
“Working,” Ronan lied.
But ronan never lies :(
“It’s not always running away,” Jimi said, her voice deep and rumbling through her chest to Blue’s ear. “To leave.”
Maura shot Orla a dark look over her shoulder, and then said, “I wasn’t going to say good life experience. I was going to say that leaving helps, sometimes. And it’s not always a forever good-bye. There’s leaving and coming back.”
“Trees in your eyes,” Calla added, more gently than usual. “Stars in your heart.”
And here was Ronan, like a heart attack that never stopped.
“It was easier to tell hero from villain when the stakes were only life and death. Everything in between gets harder.”
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.
Ronan crossed his arms to wait, just looking. At Adam’s fine cheekbones, his furrowed fair eyebrows, his beautiful hands, everything washed out by the furious light. He had memorized the shape of Adam’s hands in particular: the way his thumb jutted awkwardly, boyishly; the roads of the prominent veins; the large knuckles that punctuated his long fingers. In dreams Ronan put them to his mouth.
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.
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 allowed Ronan to lean in to compare his eyes — close enough that Ronan felt his breath on his cheek — and he allowed Ronan to study the palm of his hand. The latter was not strictly necessary, and they both knew it, but Adam watched Ronan closely as he lightly traced the lines there. This was like walking the line between dream and sleep. The night-sharp balance of being asleep enough to dream and awake enough to remember what he wanted. He knew Adam had figured out how he felt. But he didn’t know if he could step off this knife-slender path without destroying what he had.
“Is it? Is that why you look like hell?” “Thanks, Parrish. I like your face, too.”
Electronic music bled into his awareness, reminding him that his body was actually in Ronan’s car. In this other place, it was easy to tell that the music was the sound of Ronan’s soul. Hungry and prayerful, it whispered of dark places, old places, fire, and sex.
Ronan Lynch’s stare was a snake on the sidewalk where you wanted to walk. It was a match left on your pillow. It was pressing your lips together and tasting your own blood.
Ronan finally looked at him. Adam expected to see gasoline and gravel in his eyes, but he wore an expression Adam wasn’t sure he’d seen on his face before: something thoughtful and appraising, a more deliberate, sophisticated version of Ronan. Ronan, growing up. It made Adam feel … he didn’t know. He didn’t have enough information to know how he felt.
It was this: this moment and no other moment, and for the first time that Gansey could remember, he knew what it would feel like to be present in his own life.
But this — to not only dream an entire forest into being, but to create a dreamspace outside of one’s own head. Adam stood in Ronan’s dreams; that was what this realization meant.
Ronan shrugged, but it was a shrug from caring too much instead of too little.
fakest idgafer EVER
Finally, Ronan said, “Jesus God, Sargent. Do you have stitches on your face? Bad. Ass. Put it here, you asshole.”
Blue took Gansey’s hand. Adam was glad she did. “Gross,” Ronan said, which was the most juvenile response possible.
The only oxygen to be found was the pale band of skin on Adam’s wrist where his watch had been and the glimpse of the sky between classes.
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 smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.
“Miseria fortes viros, Ronan,” Adam said. When he said “Ronan,” it meant: Ronan. “Asshole,” Ronan said again, but he felt a little better. He got in.
On the outside, the three Lynch brothers appeared remarkably dissimilar: Declan, a butter-smooth politician; Ronan, a bull in a china-shop world; Matthew, a sunlit child. On the inside, the Lynch brothers were remarkably similar: They all loved cars, themselves, and each other.
He wasn’t sure how to tell his brother this in a persuasive, unembarrassing way, though, so he said, in an unfriendly way, “I was actually thinkin’ of being a farmer.”
He used to wonder what he would have looked like if he had grown up in a place like this. Now he thought about how, if he wanted it, he could one day live in a place like this. He did not quite understand what had changed.
He had wandered into Ronan Lynch’s dream; Ronan had remade everything in this kingdom in the shape of his imagination.
Downstairs, Ronan said something and Matthew let out a howl of laughter so unholy that it must have been terrible. To Adam’s surprise, he heard Ronan laugh, too, a real thing, unself-conscious, kind.
Ronan let out a breath, put the model down on the bed beside him, and kissed Adam.
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.
He was pretty sure he had just been Ronan’s first kiss.
Ronan felt that he had caught happiness without meaning to. He could do anything.
“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 looked appropriately touched. “Ah, thanks, man.” “No problem, bro.”
