The Raven King (The Raven Boys #4)(68)

“I’m serious.” Now Gansey’s imagination had run ahead to imagine a future where Ronan might have to exist without him, without Declan, without Matthew, and with a freshly broken heart. “He’s not as tough as he seems.”

“I’m not an idiot, Gansey.”

Gansey didn’t think Adam was an idiot. But he had had his own feelings hurt over and over by Adam, even when Adam had meant no harm. Some of the worst fractures had appeared because Adam hadn’t realized that he was causing them.

“I think you’re the opposite of an idiot,” Gansey said. “I don’t mean to imply otherwise. I just meant …”

Everything Ronan had ever said about Adam restructured itself in Gansey’s mind. What a strange constellation they all were.

“I’m not going to mess with his head. Why do you think I’m talking to you? I don’t even know how I …” Adam trailed off. It was a night for truth, but they both had run out of things they were sure about.

They looked out the window again. Gansey took a mint leaf out of his pocket and put it in his mouth. The feeling of magic that he had felt at the beginning of the night was even more pronounced. Everything was possible, good and bad.

“I think,” Gansey said slowly, “that it’s about being honest with yourself. That’s all you can do.”

Adam released his hands from each other. “I think that’s what I needed to hear.”

“I do my best.”

“I know.”

In the quiet, they heard Blue and Ronan talking to the Orphan Girl in the kitchen. There was something quite comforting about the fond and familiar murmur of their voices, and Gansey felt that uncanny tugging of time again. That he had lived this moment before, or would live it in the future. Of wanting and having, both the same. He was startled to realize that he longed to be done with the quest for Glendower. He wanted the rest of his life. Until this night, he hadn’t really thought that he believed that there was anything more to his life.

He said, “I think it’s time to find Glendower.”

Adam said, “I think you’re right.”





Depending on where you began the story, it was about Henry Cheng.

Henry had never been good with words. Case in point: The first month he’d been at Aglionby, he had tried to explain this to Jonah Milo, the English teacher, and had been told that he was being hard on himself. You’ve got a great vocabulary, Milo had said. Henry was aware he had a great vocabulary. It was not the same thing as having the words you needed to express yourself. You’re very well-spoken for a kid your age, Milo had added. Hell, ha, even for a guy my age. But sounding like you were saying what you felt was not the same as actually pulling it off. A lot of ESL folks feel that way, Milo had finished. My mom said she was never herself in English.

But it wasn’t that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought.

So he had no real way to explain how he felt about trying to befriend Richard Gansey and the members of Gansey’s royal family. He had no words to articulate his reasons for offering up his most closely guarded secret in the basement of Borden House. There was no description for how difficult it was to wait to see if his peace branch was accepted.

Which meant he just had to kill time.

He kept himself busy.

He delighted Murs in history with his focused study on the spread of personal electronics through the first world; he aggravated Adler in administration with his focused study on the disparity between Aglionby’s publicity budget versus their scholarship budget. He screamed himself hoarse at the sidelines of Koh’s soccer match (they lost). He spray-painted the words PEACE, BITCHES on the Dumpster behind a gelato parlour.

There was so much day left. Was he expecting Gansey to call? He didn’t have words for what he was expecting. A weather event. No. Climate change. A permanent difference in the way that crops were grown in the northwest.

The sun went down. The Vancouver crowd returned to Litchfield to roost and receive marching orders from Henry. He felt 20 per cent guilty for longing to become friends with Gansey and Sargent and Lynch and Parrish. The Vancouver crowd was great. They just weren’t enough, but words failed him to say why. Because they were always looking up to him? Because they didn’t know his secrets? Because he no longer wanted followers, he wanted friends? No. It was something more.

“Take out the trash,” Mrs Woo told Henry.

“I’m very busy, aunt,” Henry replied, although he was clearly watching video game walkthroughs in his underwear.

“Busy carrying these,” she said, and dropped two bags next to him.

So now he found himself stepping out the back door of Litchfield House into the gravel lot in just a Madonna T-shirt and his favourite black trainers. The sky overhead was purplegray. Somewhere close by, a mourning dove swooned dreamily. The feelings inside Henry that had no words rushed up anyway.

His mother was the only one who knew what Henry meant when he said that he wasn’t good with words. She was always trying to explain things to his father, especially when she had decided to become Seondeok instead of his wife. It is that, she for ever said, but also something more. The phrase had come to live in Henry’s head. Something more explained perfectly why he could never say what he meant – something more, by its definition, would always be different than what you already had in your hand.