He was a patient with a diagnosis that he couldn’t understand.
All that mattered was that something had struck the match, and Gansey was burning.
The inside of the old Camaro smelled like asphalt and desire, gasoline and dreams.
He left Chainsaw behind, much to her irritation. Ronan didn’t want her to learn any bad language.
Blue thought about what Gansey had said, about being wealthy in love. And she thought about Adam, still collapsed on their sofa downstairs. If he had no one to wrap their arms around him when he was sad, could he be forgiven for letting his anger lead him?
Gansey threw open his door. Gripping the roof of the car, he slid himself out. Even that gesture, Ronan noted, was wild-Gansey, Gansey-on-fire. Like he pulled himself from the car because ordinary climbing out was too slow. This was going to be a night.
Gansey could’ve had any and all of the friends that he wanted. Instead he had chosen the three of them, three guys who should’ve, for three different reasons, been friendless.
Reality’s what other people dream for you.
He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.
It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn’t let you admire it. The sort of beauty that always hurt.
Right, sure. Because there’s no girls in politics! I have no interest. Voting? What? I forgot my apron. I think I ought to be in the kitchen right now, actually. My rolling pin-.
This time, it was more of a thought than a feeling, a soft heat that began at her mouth and unfurled through the rest of her.
His mother had told him that when you looked into the eyes of God at the pearly gates, all the questions you ever had were answered. Ronan had a lot of questions. Waking Glendower might be like that. Fewer angels attending, and maybe a heavier Welsh accent. Slightly less judgment.
Gansey had no idea how old Blue was. He knew she’d just finished eleventh grade. Maybe she was sixteen. Maybe she was eighteen. Maybe she was twenty-two and just very short and remedial.
He danced on the knife’s edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn.
Eventually, the Gray Man thought, if he resisted using it for long enough, he himself might forget his own name, and became someone else entirely.
It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish’s nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was.
If Adam was stupid about his pride, Gansey was stupid about Adam.
His heart hurt with the wanting of it, the hurt no less painful for being difficult to explain.
I just looked at her, feeling utterly empty. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to her. My life is in that bed. Please let me stay.