The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(61)

Ronan looked up and caught Adam’s eye.

“Take your shoes off before you go wandering around, shit-head,” Ronan said.

Adam checked himself and leaned to untie his shoe.

“Not you – I meant Matthew.” Ronan held Adam’s gaze a moment longer and then watched Matthew chuck off his shoes. As he closely attended to Matthew skidding into the dining room on sock feet, Adam understood: This celebration was for Matthew’s benefit.

Blue clambered to her feet to join Adam. In a low voice, she explained, “Matthew is going to stay with Declan. He’s moving from Aglionby.”

The picture grew clearer: This was a going-away celebration.

Slowly, over the next hour, the story came out in fits and starts, delivered in fragments by each of the people there. The upshot was this: The Barns was changing hands by way of a bloodless revolution, the crown passing from father to middle son as the eldest son abdicated. And if Declan was to be believed, rival states slavered just on the other side of the border.

This was both a goodbye party and a war council.

Adam could not quite believe it; he didn’t know if he’d ever seen Ronan and Declan in the same space together without a fight. But it was true that these were the brothers as he hadn’t seen them before. Declan, relieved and exhausted; Ronan, intense and powerful with purpose and joy; Matthew, unchanging and ebullient like the happy dream that he was.

Something about all of this made Adam feel off-balance. He didn’t quite understand it. He would catch a whiff of boxwood from the open window in the kitchen, and it would make him think of scrying in Ronan’s car. He would catch sight of Orphan Girl hiding with Chainsaw beneath the dining room table with a box of tinker toys and once again remember the shock of discovering that Ronan dreamt Cabeswater. He had wandered into Ronan Lynch’s dream; Ronan had remade everything in this kingdom in the shape of his imagination.

“Why isn’t it in here?” Ronan’s voice came from the kitchen, exasperated.

Matthew rumbled in reply.

A moment later, Ronan hooked his fingers on the doorway of the dining room, looking out. “Parrish. Parrish. Would you see if you could find a damn roll of aluminium foil somewhere? Maybe in Matthew’s room.”

Adam didn’t quite remember where Matthew’s room was, but he was glad for the excuse to wander. As conversation continued in the kitchen, he made his way through the hallways and up hidden stairways into other half-hallways and to other half-staircases. Downstairs, Ronan said something and Matthew let out a howl of laughter so unholy that it must have been terrible. To Adam’s surprise, he heard Ronan laugh, too, a real thing, unself-conscious, kind.

He found himself in what must have been Niall and Aurora’s room. The light through the window splashed over the white bedspread, tender and drowsy. Come away o human child said a framed quote beside the bed. There was a framed photo above the dresser: Aurora, mouth open in a wide, surprised, guileless laugh, looking like Matthew. Niall grabbing her, smiling, sharp and handsome, his chin-length dark hair tucked behind his ears. His face was Ronan’s.

Adam stood looking at the photo for a long time, unsure of why it held him. It could have been surprise, he reasoned, because he had just assumed Aurora was a blank palette, mild and quiet as she was in Cabeswater. It should have occurred to him that she was capable of happiness and dynamism, for Ronan to have believed for so long that she was real, not a dream.

What was real?

But it was possible that what kept him was Niall Lynch, that older version of Ronan. The likeness was not perfect, of course, but it was close enough to see Ronan’s mannerisms in it. This ferocious, wild father; this wild, happy mother. Something inside Adam hurt.

He didn’t understand anything.

He found Ronan’s room. He knew it was Ronan’s room by its clutter and its whimsy; it was a brighter cousin to his room at Monmouth. Strange little objects were tucked into all of the corners and stuffed under the bed: a younger Ronan’s dreams, or maybe a father’s gifts. There were ordinary things as well – a skateboard, a tattered roller-board suitcase, a complicated-looking instrument that must have been bagpipes lying dustily in an open case. Adam lifted a shiny model car from the shelf and it began to play an eerie, lovely tune.

Adam had to sit.

He sat on the edge of the downy white bedspread, a square of pure white light splashed across his knees. He felt drunk. Everything in this house felt so certain of its identity, so sure of its place. So certain it was wanted. He still held the model car balanced on his knees, although it had fallen silent. It was not any particular sort of car – it was every-muscle-car-ever dreamt into a form that was no-muscle-car-ever – but it reminded Adam of the first thing he had ever bought himself. It was a hateful memory, the sort of memory he would sometimes skirt the edges of by accident as he was falling asleep, his thoughts rolling close to it and then recoiling, burned. He couldn’t remember how old he had been; his grandmother had sent him a card with ten dollars in it, back when his grandmother still sent cards. He had bought a model car with it, about this size, a Pontiac. He didn’t remember anything about where he had bought the model, or why that model, or even what the occasion for the card had been. All he remembered was lying on the floor of his bedroom, driving tyre tracks into the carpet, and hearing his father say from the other room —

Adam’s thoughts rolled close to the memory and jerked back.