The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4)

by Maggie Stiefvater

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

He was a king. Once upon a time, the youngest Gansey had been stung to death by hornets. In all things, he had been given every advantage, and mortality was no different. A voice had whispered in his ear: 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. He’d died, but failed to stay dead. He was a king.

But he had spent several years chaining his fears and wasn’t ready to unhook their leashes just yet.

Psychic was not so much a personality type as a skill set. A belief system. A general agreement that time, like a story, was not a line; it was an ocean. If you couldn’t find the precise moment you were looking for, it was possible you hadn’t swum far enough. It was possible that you simply weren’t a good enough swimmer yet.

(for memory and clairvoyance, which are the same thing in two different directions).

But most of it was because he had dark, permanently worried eyes that indicated he had seen the world and it was too much for him.

They’re special. Adam’s tied to the ley line. Ronan’s a dreamer. Blue amplifies all of that.”

Random men from mystical groves were no longer her type. But still, she remembered loving Artemus, and this Artemus was greatly diminished.

Adam Parrish — magician and puzzle, student and logician, man and boy —

Other classmates complained about the work. Work! Work was the island Adam swam to in a stormy sea.

It was too cold for fireflies, but a multitude of them glistened in and out of being above the fields nonetheless. Those were his. Fanciful, purposeless, but lovely. Ronan Lynch loved to dream about light.

Golden-haired Aurora was the obvious queen of a place like the Barns, a gentle and joyous ruler of a peaceful and secret country. She was a patron of her sons’ fanciful arts (although Declan, the eldest, was rarely fanciful), and she was a tireless playmate in her sons’ games of make-believe (although Declan, the eldest, was rarely playful). She loved Niall, of course — everyone loved larger-than-life Niall, the braggart poet, the musician king — but unlike everyone else, she preferred him in his silent moods. She loved the truth, and it was difficult to love both the truth and Niall Lynch when the latter was speaking.

He breathed in. He breathed out. He forgot how to exhale when he wasn’t at home.

I’m just trying to understand why you think you’re not going to end up dead like your father.

Do your homework, Ronan, for once in your goddamn life. Don’t you even know what you are?

Don’t you even know what you are? Ronan didn’t, exactly, but he had thought he was getting better about living with the unfolding mystery of himself.

Matthew was a loud, joyful kid, but his room was orderly and spare. Ronan used to think that this was because Matthew kept all his clutter inside his curly-haired head. But now he suspected it was because Ronan had not had enough imagination to dream a fully formed human. Three-year-old Ronan had wanted a brother whose love was complete and uncomplicated. Three-year-old Ronan had dreamt Matthew, the opposite of Declan in every way.

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

Nothing is impossible, said the forest, or the darkness, or Ronan.

It was Gansey. Parrish wants to know if you killed yourself dreaming just now please advise

It wasn’t that he gently resolved into being. It was that somehow her brain rewrote the minute before to pretend that Noah had been slouching beside her all along. It was a little creepy, sometimes, to have a dead friend.

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.

“Blue! Your boys are out front, looking like they’re fixing to bury a body.” Again? Blue thought.

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

“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.”

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.”

“You could’ve just told me to handle this myself. My dreaming’s nobody’s business but mine.” Adam interjected, “Oh, no, Ronan. I don’t take sides — but that’s bullshit.”

He’d taken one look at her and thought if she’d been another night horror they could have just killed it or left it somewhere. A second later — no — no, less than a second, half a second, simultaneously — he hated himself for thinking it.

He hated himself, and then he hated his father, and then he gave the emotion to Cabeswater in his head and Cabeswater rolled it away.

This close to the forest, Adam felt very … Adam. His head was crowded with the ordinary sensation of his coveralls folded at the small of his back, the ordinary thought of the literature exam the next day. It seemed like he should become stranger, more other, when he was near Cabeswater, but in reality, the closer he was to Cabeswater, the more firmly present he remained. His mind didn’t have to wander far to communicate with Cabeswater when his body was able to lift a hand to touch it.

So much of magic — of power, in general — required belief as a prerequisite.

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.

Adam couldn’t help but think that there was some secret hidden beneath this language evolution. Were the teens really the first English speakers to encounter the trees? If not, why were the trees only fumbling through English now? Why Latin? Adam could almost see the truth hidden behind this puzzle.

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.

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.

Cabeswater didn’t quite understand humans, but it learned. Happiness, it insisted. Happiness.

Making Ronan Lynch smile felt as charged as making a bargain with Cabeswater. These weren’t forces to play with.

Gansey opened his mouth, and Adam could see that a borderline offensive comment was queuing up. He caught Gansey’s eye. Gansey closed his mouth.

Aurora had been created to love, and love she did, in a fashion specific to the object of her affection.

Ronan’s voice was different when he spoke to either his mother or Matthew. It was Ronan, unperformed. No. Ronan, unprotected.

Adam felt a prickle of recognition. There was no petulance or anger in the girl’s expression. She was not tantrumming. Adam had been there, crouched beside the kitchen cabinets, looking at the light fixture across the room, his father spitting in his ear. He recognized this sort of fear when he saw it. He could not quite bear to look at her.

She did not seem particularly concerned, merely pragmatic, and it occurred to Gansey that to a dream, perhaps a nightmare was simply an unpleasant acquaintance rather than anything uncanny.

Laumonier shared name and goals, but not methodology. One of them leaned toward caution and one toward fire, leaving the last as peacekeeper and devil’s advocate.

Call me crazy, my love, but I don’t trust you.” “You’re just going to have to take my word on it.” “That’s the least valuable thing you could offer,” Laumonier replied coolly.

“You are the worst father,” Piper snapped. “In fairness, you are the worst daughter.”

He didn’t know if it had been real. Real was becoming a less useful term all the time.

The forest whispered at him in its language that was equal parts pictures and words, and it made him understand why it had been so slow to come to him. Something had been attacking them both.

“Do you know what hurts the most? What this means you think of me. You didn’t even give me the chance to be okay with it. You were just so sure I’d be eaten by jealousy. That’s how you see me?”

Many years before this afternoon, a psychic had told Maura Sargent that she was “a judgmental but gifted clairvoyant with a talent for bad decision-making.”