The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1)

by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue never grew tired of feeling particularly needed, but sometimes she wished needed felt less like a synonym for useful.

“Is that all?” she whispered. Gansey closed his eyes. “That’s all there is.”

Adam felt the familiar pang. Not jealousy, just wanting. One day, he’d have enough money to have a place like this. A place that looked on the outside like Adam looked on the inside.

Declan’s wide jaw and smile said, Vote for me while Ronan’s buzzed head and thin mouth warned that this species was poisonous.

By the end the meal, Ronan had picked off all his moving-dolly scabs and he would’ve picked off Adam’s as well if he’d let him.

But Adam had already told Gansey he thought Ronan needed to learn to clean up his own messes. It was only Gansey who seemed afraid that Ronan would learn to live in the dirt.

Sometimes, Gansey felt like his life was made up of a dozen hours that he could never forget.

“Where did you say you found that bird again?” “In my head.” Ronan’s laugh was a sharp jackal cry. “Dangerous place,” commented Noah.

For weeks after that, Ronan had called Gansey “the S.R.F.,” where the S stood for Soft, the R stood for Rich, and the F for something else.

“Yes,” Gansey replied, with dignity. “We had a discussion about alternative professions for women.

When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.

Worst of all, in Blue’s opinion, was that there was something about his antagonism that made her want to court his favor, to earn his approval. The approval of someone like him, who clearly cared for no one, seemed like it would be worth more.

Something stuck in Gansey’s chest. “I would take all of you anywhere with me.”

“To the psychic’s? You know what that place was?” Ronan asked. “A castration palace. You date that girl, you should send her your nuts instead of flowers.”

Ronan said, “I’m always straight.” Adam replied, “Oh, man, that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”

Haven’t you heard of being hung, drawn, and quartered?” Blue asked, “Is it as painful as conversations with Ronan?”

delight of finding the ley line or the sly pleasure of teasing Blue. She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness. It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars.

As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something

musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry.

“We have to be back in three hours,” Ronan said. “I just fed Chainsaw but she’ll need it again.” “This,” Gansey replied, “is precisely why I didn’t want to have a baby with you.”

“Where do you live?” Adam’s mouth was very set. “A place made for leaving.” “That’s not really an answer.” “It’s not really a place.”

Ronan’s smile cut his face, but he looked kinder than Blue had ever seen him, like the raven in his hand was his heart, finally laid bare.

“His name wasn’t really Butternut, was it?” Gansey asked Adam in a low voice.

“I believe he’s what you call on the lam,” Ronan said.

“What do you want?” “To do this,” Ronan Lynch snarled, smashing his fist into the side of Robert Parrish’s face.

I love u ronan lynch

“Don’t try to make me feel stupid. Who whips out repugnant? Don’t pretend you’re not trying to make me feel stupid.” “This is the way I talk. I’m sorry your father never taught you the meaning of repugnant. He was too busy smashing your head against the wall of your trailer while you apologized for being alive.”

In the end, he was nobody to Adam, he was nobody to Ronan. Adam spit his words back at him and Ronan squandered however many second chances he gave him. Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year. They were always walking away from him. But he never seemed able to walk away from them.

Cabeswater was as literal as Ronan was.

Stepping forward, leaning over the hood of the car, Ronan pressed his finger to the windshield, and while they watched, he wrote: REMEMBERED

“Excelsior,” Gansey said bleakly. Blue asked, “What does that even mean?” Gansey looked over his shoulder at her. He was, once more, just a little bit closer to the boy she’d seen in the churchyard. “Onward and upward.”

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.

“Why?” Gansey asked Adam. “Was I so awful?” Adam said, “It was never about you.”