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It was a bright spring Friday and Ronan Lynch was not in school because Richard Gansey III was not in Henrietta to annoy Ronan into going. He was in DC at some Gansey approved missed-school-day event, a rare occurrence for a family that didn’t even let Gansey take a day for his Grandmother’s funeral.
Ronan, for his part, was cheating on his day off because normally a missed school day would earn a lecture from Gansey about responsibility and education, but Ronan was exploring an old map he and Gansey had re-cobbled together that may or may not lead to a clue about Glendower, and Gansey couldn’t yell at him for that. He was much like his family in that regard--Ronan also got Gansey sanctioned skip days.
It was already late in the morning, the church’s ten o’clock bells had chimed half a mile ago and the scenery was beginning to look familiar, though Ronan couldn’t tell why. The map he and Gansey had been re-working had taken them in an opposite direction from the ley-line and their previous endeavors. It was most of the reason that Gansey hadn’t given as much energy to it as he did to throwaway lines in journals and folktales.
Ronan came around a bended line of trees and realized with a start why these woods were familiar. He’d been skirting the property line of the Lynch Estate half the morning. As children, he and his brothers had never been allowed this far back in the wild forest surrounding their home, but a handful of times they hadn’t been stopped. The last time Ronan had been this far back had been the day he and his brother had been taken away from the Estate for forever, per his father’s will.
He also realized there was a tomb lid thrown across the clearing he was staring at.
Which was weird because there was no graveyard on the property and Niall Lynch certainly hadn’t been left at his murder site.
Ronan crept forward, hand slipping into his jacket pocket so his fingers could curl around the pocket knife there. He followed the deep scoring left by the lid in the dirt, though another thicket and out to a stream that eventually crossed through the Lynch property.
Hunkered over the water was a body.
They were facing away from him, but Ronan was pretty certain it was a man. He was tall and built, but still slim, bent over like he was on his knees, hands on the river bank, face almost in the water.
Stranger still was his outfit. It was dusty but not really dirty and it looked like something out of a fantasy show, all brown robs and billowing shirts and tall boots. He was absolutely anachronistic.
Jesus, there was a psychopath right outside of his childhood home.
Or, worse yet, they were doing ren-fairs in the forest.
He stepped forward to confront the guy, because he was an idiot. But when a branch snapped under his foot, the man barely reacted, no more than throwing his arm out behind him. Then Ronan realized he couldn’t move. HE looked down and found vines snaking around his ankles, climbing up his legs
He yelped, tried to step back, fell flat on his ass.
“The water here is too fast for scrying,” the man said, like Ronan should know what the fuck that meant. “Why did you put me here?”
“I didn’t put you anywhere, you fucking weirdo,” Ronan snapped, struggling back to his feet.
The man turned and Ronan almost fell over again. Despite all the cobwebs hanging form his curly hair and the dust that covered his skin in a fine sheen, he was devastatingly handsome, all fine bones and striking colors.
“Who are you?” the man asked and had the gall to sound confused.
“Who am I ?” Who the fuck are you ?” Ronan demanded, shifting his feet in the vines.
“Even knights aren’t that stupid,” the man scoffed. “You woke me. You must know who I am. You must have found the king.”
“I didn’t fucking do anything to you. And I’m no fucking knight . What are you tripping on, dude?”
The man frowned at him and Ronan frowned back harder. He jerked away when the man reached a hand out, but it wasn’t like he could go very far. The man pressed his calloused, knobby, tanned hand over Ronan’s head, palm flat against his forehead, making Ronan self conscious of a scar right under it.
A sharp zap shot through Ronan--not quite electricity, more like the force that woke him before nightmares, like the feeling of Cabeswater falling in love with Gansey, like holding something dangerous and impossible when he awoke--and the man must’ve felt it too because he stumbled back.
“What are you?” he asked, wide eyed. “You’re...drowning in magic, but you’re no magician.”
Ronan’s eyes widened too and he repeated, “Who are you?”
The man was already rushing by Ronan and taking his vines with him. “My name’s Adam. I am a magician,” he said over his shoulder as he tore through the thicket again, making his way in a stumbling zig-zag back to the tomb.
Studying it now, Ronan realized why he’d never seen it around before. Dirt and soil and roots were still falling off of it and the ground around it was a breathing mound and sinkhole at once. The tomb had come out of the ground.
Adam had kneeled over the lid briefly, long fingers tracing over what looked like just stone to Ronan, before he was jumping up again and running to the tomb. He climbed into and Ronan’s stomach turned over when he realized the tomb had been made for Adam’s body exactly.
“What the fuck kind of shit are you into?” he asked, horrified.
Adam shot him an unamused look and went back to looking for what he wanted. “My name’s Adam Parrish,” he repeated.
“First son, house of God,” Ronan said. “Real subtle.”
“I’m the King’s magician. I’m supposed to wake the king when he’s found. I’m supposed to be brought back by a knight who has found the King in the world’s hour of need. I’m supposed to scry for his location, which begins the process of waking the King and his magic. The King and I are soul-bound. My magic is the only thing that can wake him.”
Ronan frowned deeply. His eyebrows even frowned. “Glendower shares a reincarnation mythos with King Arthur?”
Adam frowned deeply back at him and his eyebrows could do it too. “We based the soul-spell on King Arthur, yes, but I don’t know who Glendower is.”
“If you’re not looking for Glendower, who could you possibly be--” Ronan started, but Adam was climbing back out of the tomb and stumbling away to hold his hands against the trees around them. “Wait, wait, wait, back up. How do I know you’re not just some guy tripping out here?” he asked. Because only him and Gansey were crazy enough to search for dead Welsh kings without any kind of substance abuse involved.
Adam shot a disbelieving look at him. “I know you felt my magic, but fine.” He crossed over to Ronan on long legs and grabbed Ronan’s hand, turned it over, ran his calloused fingers over Ronan’s palm. “Your wisdom line is hidden by the rest. You don’t show your intelligence very often, but you’re very smart. Your life has been extremely hard. It breaks at one point, you almost died. But even before that, something terrible happened to you that changed you forever. You changed track entirely,” he said, following a bend in a line on Ronan’s hand. “You love deeply, but in secret. You’re hiding something. You hide your feelings all the time, but there’s a bigger secret you’re hiding when it comes to love.”
Ronan snatched his hand back and shoved it back in his jacket pocket. “Lucky fucking guess,” he muttered.
Adam rolled his eyes and went back to the trees. “This place is somewhere special to you, but I can’t figure out what. You’re disconnected from it now. Someone took it from you.”
“Enough, you circus-tent freak.”
“What is a circus?” Adam asked, sounded just as lost as ever.
Ronan brought his hand up to his face and let out a suffering groan. “Listen...just...what king are you looking for if not Glendower? My friend and I have been searching for him for years. We haven’t found anything about any other kings being buried out here.”
Adam held his hands against the trees for a moment longer before apparently not getting an answer he wanted. “What do you mean what King? Haven’t the stories survived? Someone woke me. Someone found him.”
“Who woke you? Who found him? Found who ?” Ronan demanded.
Adam ran a hand through his hair and looked at the middle distance. “King Richard Gansey. Someone found Gansey.”