the raven cycle

In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

“I can’t watch Ronan die, Blue. And Adam – and Matthew – and all this? We don’t have anything else. You already 𝘴𝘢𝘸 my spirit. You already know what we chose!” Blue closed her eyes, and two tears ran out of them.

"You better wait in the car with your fancy face.” Gansey was too aware of his face’s fanciness to protest.

Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥.

"I don’t have to remind you I’m with Gansey, right?” "Naturally not. I’m Henrysexual, anyway. Can I take you home?”

It was just that there was something newly powerful about this assembled family in this car. They were all growing up and into each other like trees striving together for the sun.

“I take it we’re friends now,” Henry said. “We must be,” Gansey replied. “Jane says it should be so.” “It should be so,” Blue agreed.

In that formless place, he found himself intensely grateful for Ronan and Adam waiting outside for him, for Blue and her family, for Noah and for Malory. He was so grateful to have found all of them, finally.

The deeper Adam moved through the music and the white-ringed dark, the closer he got to some sort of hidden truth about Ronan. It was hidden in things Adam already knew, half-glimpsed behind a forest made of thoughts.

Adam laughed out loud at that, and she discovered that she was starting to really like this laugh that burst out of him and seemed to surprise him every time.

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.

Blue thought she heard music, but when she looked at Adam, she thought perhaps it had just been the sound of his breathing.

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.

Gansey had a pure, logicless moment where his stomach dropped and he thought, 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦. Then reason filtered back in.

Adam looked up at Ronan. “I know it was you,” he said. “I figured it out. The rent.” He held Ronan’s gaze for just a moment longer, until something inside Ronan unwound and he almost said something.

“I don’t have a brother, ma’am,” Adam replied. But Blue saw his eyes dart to Gansey.

“Lynch,” Gansey said. “We’re gone.” “That’s right,” Kavinsky called after Ronan. “Call your dog!” He said it like either Ronan or Gansey should be offended by it.

Boys like him didn’t die; they got bronzed and installed outside public libraries.

For so long, he'd wanted Gansey to see him as an equal, but it was possible that all this time, the only person who needed to see that was Adam.

Gansey had never found children fun, including the child he had been.

In the suburbs, fireworks were bought and dreamt. Doors were locked and, later, busted open. At 300 Fox Way, Adam quietly turned eighteen.