More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
From this vantage point, Ronan understood the nightwash in a way he hadn’t before. It wasn’t caused by an absence of ley line energy, but rather by an excess of the human world’s energy.
That body down there had been built for a world with a different atmosphere, one pressurized with magic. Without it, this world would slowly kill him. It was neither good nor bad. It was simply a side effect of being him here.
“Sorry, I’m deaf in this ear. What did you say?”
Elation overtook Ronan. Even before he put a name to the face, he was overwhelmed with a single thought: It is going to be okay. The second voice belonged to Adam Parrish.
Part of him wanted to blame Adam—he remembered feeling misunderstood, ill-used—but most of him understood that the unpleasantness had been all Ronan’s doing.
Whatever future that spiky, vibrant past had been building to was no longer an option.
Tamquam, Ronan thought, furious that Adam was upset, euphoric that he’d come back.
Did Niall love her? Did Niall hate her?
He had hoped to never see her again, which wasn’t as conclusive an answer to those questions as one would think. She was one of those intimate villains, one of those species that was both poisonous and necessary to those susceptible. Too much of her would undoubtedly kill Niall Lynch, but too little might, too.
Love was one of this species’ weapons. It had so many hooks: the knowledge it was conditional, the desire to believe it was real.
Ronan realized Adam was going to try to scry.
Jordan was always trying to make herself better, and Hennessy was always trying to keep from being unhappy. Jordan
was succeeding at her task and Hennessy was drowning. She’d lost her childhood ability to make art that kept people awake. She’d probably killed Ronan Lynch by shutting down the ley line.
Thesis restated, bringing together all the information to prove it: Although life is unbearable now, and Adam Parrish seems to have lost everything important to him in the present by pursuing the things important to him in the past, he will be fine. Concluding paragraph describing what the reader just learned and why it is important for them to have learned it: He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine.
“Parrish,” said Ronan.
Without a body to contain them, his thoughts were drifting out in a million different directions. It was not hard to understand his alarmed expression.
“Parrish,” he said again. “Adam.”
The sound of his name made Adam’s appearance resolve. The collection of thoughts now saw themselves again
Electric joy surged through Ronan, overpowering the worry. Adam had come for him. All this way. He had not given up. He had risked everything. Slowly, though,
They were happy and sad, angry and forgiven, they were wanted, they were wanted, they were wanted.
“You were right. I was wrong. I fucked up. I fucked it all up.
I have been scared shitless every time you fell asleep since I was a kid, and I have been stopping you whenever I can. Not anymore. I am going to New York and I’m going to get a sweetmetal strong enough to wake you up.”
What was reality? He made reality. Was he awake or was he dreaming?
but I don’t think I love things—I think I am interested in them. It’s hard to tell because I’m not in anyone else’s head, but I think that’s how you experience it.”
This was the problem with getting Bryde talking. He either got boring or sad.
Did it matter? What did they owe each other?
This is all there is to me now.”
Why? Why? Why? He had been just a child. Mothers were meant to love unconditionally. Fathers were meant to know best.
He’d been denied both.
thought he preferred Ronan,” Declan said. It was the most ridiculous thing to say. It was the most meaningless of takeaways. But out it came.
Quite suddenly Ronan was cross with both voices. He was cross with himself. Both sides telling him what he was, and him believing it. How long had he been asking: Tell me what I am? Never once had he simply decided for himself.
It wasn’t a choice at all.
Adam had recently realized Ronan was a weakness to his ambition,
but he couldn’t talk himself out of it. He tried each night he was alone in the apartment over St. Agnes, and he failed every time he saw Ronan again. He was in love with Ronan, and he was in love with this lonesome green valley, and although he could not work out how either dovetailed with his addiction to the future, for the summer, he put his reservations away.
Slowly, Ronan Lynch sputtered to movement, trying to sit up even before his body was fully willing, scrambling, his voice disbelieving: “Adam?” Adam, who had been sitting quietly all this time beside Ronan, grinned weakly as Ronan seized him around the neck in a crushing, desperate hug.
