The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4)

by Maggie Stiefvater

“Ronan! Before he died, when he and I were out together, Dad told me a story about you.” It was wickedly unfair. It was wickedly unfair because there was nothing else that would have stopped Ronan from walking away.

Declan was unlike his father in many ways, but, like Niall Lynch, he could tell a story. A story, after all, is a lot like a lie, and Declan was an excellent liar.

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.

“I know you’re a dreamer like him,” Declan said in a low voice. “I know you’re good at it. I know it’s pointless to ask you to stop. But Dad didn’t want you to be alone like he was. Like he made himself.”

Declan replied, “Did you really think Dad kept track of this stuff on his own?” Ronan had, but he didn’t say anything.

“Dad dug us all a grave. He promised people stuff he hadn’t even dreamt yet. He made deals with people who didn’t always care about paying and who knew where we lived. He pretended he’d found this artifact — the Greywaren — that let people take shit out of dreams. Yeah. Sound familiar? When people came to him to buy it, he foisted something else on them instead. It became legendary. Then, of course he had to play them off each other and tease that psychopath Greenmantle and end up dead. So here we are.” Earlier this year, this sort of statement would’ve been enough to instigate a fight, but now the bitter misery in Declan’s voice outweighed the anger. Ronan could step back to weigh these statements against what he knew of his father. He could weigh it against what he knew of Declan. He didn’t like it. He believed it, but he didn’t like it. It had been easier to merely fight with Declan.

“I tried to tell you he wasn’t who you thought.” But that wasn’t exactly true. Niall Lynch was exactly what Ronan had thought, but he was also this thing Declan had known. The two versions were not mutually exclusive. “I meant, why didn’t you tell me you were up against all these people?”

“Parrish always was a creepily clever little fuck,” Declan observed, sounding a little like their father despite himself.

Don’t you see? Even after that deal is over, they’re gonna show up because Henrietta’s a giant supernatural beacon. And because who knows what of Dad’s business I haven’t cleaned up yet. And if they find out you can dream — God help you, because it’ll be over. I’m just —” Declan stopped speaking and closed his eyes; when he did, Ronan could see the brother he’d grown up with instead of the brother he’d grown away from. “I’m tired, Ronan.”

“Take Matthew to D.C. and keep him safe,” Ronan repeated. “Yeah? And what about you?” They looked at each other, warped mirror images of each other. “This is my home,” Ronan said.

Blue said, “I can’t get in this car. Do you see what’s happening behind me? I don’t even want to look.” Henry said, “How about you give me the finger and shout at me now and withdraw with your principles?” He smiled winningly and held up three fingers. He counted to two with devil horns. “This is incredibly unnecessary,” Blue told him, but she could feel herself smiling.

The Barns had a strange effect on Adam. He had not known how to diagnose this feeling the first few times he had visited, because he had not truly believed in the two things that the Barns was made of: magic and love. Now that he had at least a passing acquaintance with both of those things, it affected him in a different way.

The Barns was changing hands by way of a bloodless revolution, the crown passing from father to middle son as the eldest son abdicated.

He was ever so slowly moving himself out of that trailer.

Ronan let out a breath, put the model down on the bed beside him, and kissed Adam.

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.

when he saw the spacious longing in Declan’s face, he realized how much Declan had missed by growing up neither dreamer nor dreamt. This had never been his home. The Lynches had never tried to make it Declan’s home.

The last time they’d stood on this roof together, their parents had both been alive, and the cattle in these fields had been slowly grazing, and the world had been a smaller place. That time was gone, but for once, it was all right. The brothers both looked back over the place that had made them, and then they climbed down from the roof together.

Let it be thus, or whatever.” It was thus, or whatever, according to the word of Piper.

They talked about Henry. Gansey was mindful that he was telling Henry’s closely guarded secrets, but he had also decided by the end of the school day that to tell Gansey something was to tell Adam and Ronan and Blue.

This was wearying; Gansey could see precisely the argument that it was heaving toward. Adam would shoot something cool and truthful over the bow, Ronan would fire back a profanity cannon, Adam would drip gasoline in the path of the projectile, and then everything would be on fire for hours.

“While we’re being forthright, have you dreamt any other geographical locations that you should tell us about? Mountains? Water features?” “No,” Ronan said. “But I did dream Matthew.” “For God’s sake,” Gansey said. He lived in a continuous state of impossibility, occasionally agitating to a higher state of even more impossibility.

“I suppose … she makes me quiet. Like Henrietta.” He had told Adam this once before; about how the moment he had found the town, something inside him had gone still — something he hadn’t even realized was always agitating inside him.

“Ronan kissed me,” Adam said immediately. The words had clearly been queued up. He gazed studiously into the front yard. When Gansey didn’t immediately say anything, Adam added, “I also kissed him.” “Jesus,” Gansey said. “Christ.” “Are you surprised?” He was chiefly surprised Adam had told him.

Now that Gansey had had more than a second to think about it, he considered all the ways such a thing might have played out. He imagined Adam, ever the scientist. Ronan, ferocious and loyal and fragile. “Don’t break him, Adam.” Adam continued peering out the window. The only tell to the furious working of his mind was the slow twisting together of his fingers. “I’m not an idiot, Gansey.” “I’m serious.” Now Gansey’s imagination had run ahead to imagine a future where Ronan might have to exist without him, without Declan, without Matthew, and with a freshly broken heart. “He’s not as tough as he seems.” “I’m not an idiot, Gansey.”

Everything Ronan had ever said about Adam restructured itself in Gansey’s mind. What a strange constellation they all were.

But it wasn’t that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought.

So he had no real way to explain how he felt about trying to befriend Richard Gansey and the members of Gansey’s royal family.

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 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 longer.

“Not today!” Artemus said. “No, thank you! Too many events this decade. Perhaps later! Cannot do the shock! Thank you for your time.”

“I am a slow-growing creature!” Artemus wailed. “I cannot adapt so quickly!”

“If someone is robbing us, come back after business hours!” Calla’s voice came from upstairs.

His mouth remembered Ronan Lynch’s. What was he doing? Ronan was not something to be played with. He didn’t think he was playing. You’re leaving this state, he told himself. But he hadn’t felt the fire on his heels for a long time. There was no longer the understood second half of the statement: and never coming back.

He couldn’t tell if he was letting himself idolize this place or Ronan, and he wasn’t sure there was a difference.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Ronan was looking at him, as he had been looking at him for months. Adam looked back, as he had been looking back for months.

“Is this a nightmare, or is this real?” Adam held his gaze. This was where they were now: Nightmares were real. There was no difference between dreams and reality when they stood here in Cabeswater together.

“Ronan,” Adam warned as dread welled up in him. At the tone in Adam’s voice, Ronan turned. There was a brief moment where he was looking just at Adam, and Adam wished that he could keep him in it forever.

He wanted to stay so badly, in this place where he had begun to put violence down. In the place where he’d learned how to feel again. In this place that he loved.

“Ronan,” Gansey said again. In a very low voice, Ronan replied, “I’m waiting for you to tell me what to do, Gansey. Tell me where to go.”

Gansey said, “I don’t know how to find Glendower.” “You do, Gansey,” Ronan replied, voice uneven for the first time. “I know you do. And when you’re ready to get him, I’ll be sitting right here, waiting to go where you tell me.”

Blue started, then stopped, then started again. “Am I human?” “Maura is human.” He did not say and so am I. He was not a wizard, a human who could be in trees. He was something else. “Tell me,” Artemus whispered, “when you dream, do you dream of the stars?”

Gansey had gone after Glendower. Gansey had gone without them. Gansey had gone without him.

Ronan’s mind was still a fresh horror of seeing his mother’s body. The recent memory effortlessly cross-pollinated with the older one of finding his father’s body, creating a toxic and expanding flower. He did not want to go back into his head right now. But he would.

He did not say I can’t stand the idea of finding Gansey’s body, too. He did not say If I can’t save my old family, I can save my new one. He did not say I will not let the demon have everything. He did not say that the only true nightmare was not being able to do something and that this, at least, was something.

“Did you really think I’m going to stay in this place for you?” Adam said in his other ear, all chilly dismissal. The real Adam was standing with his head turned to the side as an unreasonable facsimile of his father screamed in his face, the cadence of his voice perfectly and eerily matched to the real Robert Parrish. There was a firm set to Adam’s mouth that was less fear and more stubbornness.

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

Gansey had never found children fun, including the child he had been. He had always looked to a future where he could change his own address at will.

‘Cheng’ isn’t Korean, is it?” “My father isn’t,” Henry said. “I am. I got that, and the vandal part, from my mother.

“You had RoboBee looking out for me.” “It was friendly. That was a friend thing.” He seemed anxious for Gansey to believe that his motives were pure, so Gansey said quickly, “I know that. Just — I don’t meet many people who make friends like I do. So — fast.”

“Should we split up, or is this a horror movie?” “Scream if something eats you,” Gansey said,