Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ronan is awake. He’s in the creaky bed in Malory’s guest room, staring up at the ceiling and rolling the pearl around between his open palms. Every once in awhile he tempts fate by plucking it up between two fingers and running it across his lips. It would take so little to press it through them and onto his tongue. It would take so little to bring Adam back to him. Which is why he can’t do it.

He closes his fist around the pearl and rolls over to watch the candle on his bedside table flicker away inside its curved glass case. Ronan leaves it lit at night in the hope that the light will chase away the nightmares that are always close on his heels in the dark. Now he focuses on the flame and tries to push away all thoughts of his chance encounter with magic outside of his own. He’s almost mastered the focus of his attention when the wick reaches its end and the candle flickers out.

With the flame gone there's nothing to tether his meandering thoughts. They drift back to Adam, to the tight coil of his tail around Ronan's legs and the salt on his tongue. Ronan feels like the fire has disappeared into him, licking at his veins. He feels like if he stays where he is the sheets will begin to smolder. He gropes around for his pocket watch and squints at it in the wane moonlight filtering through the gauzy curtains. It’s not ticking. He’s forgotten to wind it again.

“Damnable, cussed thing.” He chucks it roughly back onto the table and throws off the bedclothes.

Ronan gets dressed in the dark. The pearl slips easily enough into his trouser pocket, but he has to do up the buttons on his shirt several times before he gets them even. Once he’s more or less decent he opens the door slowly to keep it from squeaking and tiptoes out into the hallway carrying his boots. He learned early on in their stay that Malory is a light sleeper. Ronan’s just not sure he can put up with the old man’s inane rambling while he’s feeling this anxious.

There’s a light on in the kitchen. Ronan sticks his head around the door to find Gansey slumped over on a large book, lantern flickering brightly near his right hand. In its close, warm glow Gansey looks golden, almost like the light is coming from within him.

Ronan’s had that dream before, the one where Gansey heeds his calling to greatness and ascends in one way or another. It always ends the same way. It always ends with Gansey leaving him behind. Ronan has spent so much of their time growing up together trying not to fall in love with his best friend. Not because Gansey doesn’t love him back, but because he does. Ronan’s not sure Gansey knows how to do anything but love the things he discovers, and those things include him.

So Ronan is hard and brittle, so he makes himself into something no one would want to be close to. Gansey gets close anyway. Ronan takes a step back. In some ways Ronan has been leaving Gansey since the moment he was shipped off to England to live with the Gansey family after his father’s death. It’s easier, he thinks, than accepting that one day he’ll be the one left alone.

He puts his boots down quietly, gently pulls the book from beneath Gansey’s face so that his head slides onto his arm, and then closes the book and drops it with a loud smack onto the wooden table. Gansey shoots bolt upright, his arms swinging wide as he wakes. He barely misses upsetting the lantern. It takes him a moment to collect himself. In that time the glow fades. Ronan feels like he can breathe again.

“Ronan.” Gansey runs his hand through his hair and looks around, as if trying to remember how he got there. “You’re dressed.”

“So are you.” Ronan retrieves his boots and sits down opposite Gansey at the table to pull them on.

“Yes, but you’re dressed again.”

“It happens every day. Sometimes twice a day.”

“Sometimes no times a day.” Gansey rustles through the sheafs of paper spread over the table. When he finds what he’s looking for he lets out a small ah ha and puts a mint leaf into his mouth.

“Do you have a preference?” Ronan asks.

“For you? Always as much clothing as possible.” Gansey grins up at him, tired and indulgent. “The climate here really is a shame. It allows you to get away with far too much. Or too little, as the case may be.”

“Yes, I think I’ll stay forever.”

Gansey shakes his head. “Don't even joke about that. As if I could leave you behind.”

“Maybe you should,” Ronan says. He keeps his attention trained on his boots to avoid having to take responsibility for the hurt he knows he’s inflicting.

“I know you’re always trying to get away from me, but the least you can do for an old friend is pretend to appreciate my company.”

It is, Ronan thinks, the literal least he could do. He wouldn’t even have to pretend. And yet. He pushes the chair away from the table roughly and stands. “I’m going to the tavern. Do you want to come?”

Gansey frowns, finding the whole idea of the tavern distasteful. “No, I rather think I’ll stay here. Do say hello to the barmaids for me.”

“Sure,” Ronan says. It’s a subtle dig. The kind Gansey usually reserves for public. When they’re alone he doesn’t shy away from teasing Ronan about his interests. Or lack of them. “I’ll goose the prettiest one, just for you.”

“Oh god, don’t.”

The pained look on Gansey’s face makes Ronan bark out a laugh.

“I may go down to the docks at dawn,” Gansey says carefully. “If you’re still out you might meet me?”

Ronan turns away from the lantern light to hide his reaction. He knows that no amount of trying to set his face into something blank will keep Gansey from easily ferreting out his feelings on the matter. “That’s a fool’s errand. They’re not going to come looking for us.”

“They may.”

“They won’t.” It’s us, Ronan thinks, who should go looking for them. The very idea of it sparks the fire in his veins again. He walks to the door, trying to stomp the fire out with each echoing step. “Stop thinking about them. I have.”

Behind him, Gansey sighs. “Good night, Ronan.”

Ronan grunts and lets himself out.

Dawn is still an hour away when Ronan trips out of the tavern and into the balmy night. He’s feeling warm, and the closest he ever comes to kind. The alcohol has drowned away any threat of combustion and left him with only the sensation of floating through time and space, like perhaps if he slows down everything he’s ever wanted might just catch up to him. So he takes the long way home, walking along the edge of town with his arms swinging and his heart beating giddily in his chest. He’s only a few minutes from Malory’s when he realizes someone is following him.

He’s felt like he was being followed for weeks, since they hit land again, but he’s not actually seen anyone until just now. Whenever he brings it up Gansey says that it’s normal to feel that way when you’re coming out of a long time spent in relative confinement. Getting the lay of a city again, of that expanse of space being lived in by so many new people with their foreign lives, can take time. At this very moment, Ronan doesn’t think that what he needs is time. What he needs is for strange men to stop following him down dark alleys.

He makes a left down a side street and follows it for a few homes before running up the alley between two of them. When he turns to check the shadows there’s no one there. He strolls back up the next street over trying to look nonchalant, not hunted. Just a drunk stumbling home. It’s a part he plays well in any port he finds himself in.

Right here, under the Caribbean moon and half a world away from where his father lived and died, he’s been able to feel young again. He feels invincible. He feels like even if there is a man following him it won’t matter, because there’s not a force on this earth that can knock him down. Not one that’s walking the land, anyway. His drunken train of thought shunts off to eyes the color of the ocean on the horizon at mid-day. He pushes the thought down deep and focuses on his surroundings.

At the end of the street he stops to get his bearings, trying to decide whether he should go back to the bar or continue making his way to Malory’s home. If there is someone following him it won’t do to drag them back to Gansey and the old man. But he’s tired. Not sleepy, bone deep exhausted and swaying on his feet. If he passes out in the garden again Gansey will have his head. He turns right toward Gansey and Malory and makes it exactly five steps before someone grabs him from behind.

A rough hand clamps over his mouth and there’s the unmistakable feel of the edge of a blade being pressed against his throat. Every ounce of drunken glow leaves him.

“Make a sound, and I’ll carve your heart out.”

“Joke’s on you,” Ronan says. His voice is muffled through the broad fingers. He bites down on one of them and shoves the arm holding the knife away from his neck while stepping down on the man’s foot with the heel of his boot. The bastard cries out. Ronan ducks and tosses him neatly over his back and into the dirt. The knife falls to the ground and Ronan picks it up. He places his foot squarely on the man’s chest, pinning him down and studying him while lazily flipping the knife. “I’ve been told I don’t have one.”

His assailant spits into the dirt and leers up at him. Two more men rush from the darkness. Ronan grips the knife handle sideways in his fist and swings at the closest of them. He connects with the man's jawbone with a pop. The second man scrambles around his friend and Ronan steps up onto the man in the dirt and levels a swift kick right into the gut of the one coming toward him. The force of the blow throws him off balance and he ends up sprawled on the ground with the air knocked out of him. He is, he thinks, apparently not as sober as the adrenaline has made him feel.

He’s seeing stars as he climbs back to his feet. Another man has joined the fray, but with him, not against him. It’s a frame that’s familiar from time spent in close quarters. It’s The Gray Captain. Ronan had not expected to see him again. He’d certainly not expected to be pleased to see him again. While the captain tackles the two still on their feet Ronan leans over the first where he’s lying on the ground recovering from Ronan’s weight on his sternum. Ronan runs the tip of the knife from his chin down his neck.

“What is this about?” he asks. “The beggars getting more aggressive?”

“S’not personal. You have something we want.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Greywaren,” the man hisses.

Ronan blinks and takes a deep breath. He flips the knife around and digs the butt of the handle into the hollow at the base of the man’s throat. “What could you possibly know about that?”

“We know enough.” The man gasps in pain as Ronan digs in a little deeper. “We know it’s magic.”

“Magic isn’t real,” Ronan says, repeating the words Declan has told him to say over and over again. Magic isn’t real to anyone outside of the family. Their father’s power was nothing but trouble. Ronan will only follow in his footsteps.

“Come now, you don’t believe that,” The Gray Captain says. He’s standing next to Ronan now. He kicks Ronan’s man in the head with his boot. The man’s neck pops as his head is knocked sideways.

Ronan jerks back. Killing was never his plan. He shoots to his feet and turns on the captain, holding the knife between them. “What did you do that for?”

“It was a tedious exchange, I thought you’d be pleased to be done with it.” The Gray Captain slips a large dagger back into a strap over his thigh.

“How am I supposed to stop them coming if I don’t know who’s sending them?”

The Gray Captain raises an eyebrow. “You think you could stop them? Do you even know what it is they’re looking for?”

“No,” Ronan says, because it’s enough of a truth. He knows that what they’re really looking for is him, but he doesn’t know what it is they think they’re looking for. If they knew he was it instead of just the person they needed to take them to it he’s sure he’d have been shot months ago.

“It’s not safe for you here.”

Ronan looks at the men on the ground. “It’s not safe for me anywhere,” he says. “Might as well be not safe here in the sun than at home in the cold and the wet.”

“I don’t think it’s the cold and wet you’re averse to.” The Gray Captain steps forward and holds out his hand. “You were a natural on board my ship and I’d count myself lucky if you came with us when we left this place.”

Ronan studies his hand, wary. He wipes the blade of the knife on his trouser legs and slips it into his jacket pocket. “If you welcome me you welcome those who hunt me.”

“Better me than your friend and his professor, I should think.”

Ronan knows that Gansey can take care of himself in a fight. He's the one who taught Gansey how to throw a punch. He has never doubted Gansey and he’s not going to start now. But that doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t Gansey’s fight at all. Gansey has other discoveries to make and other reasons that he’s dragged himself across the sea. Gansey doesn’t deserve to be dragged into Ronan’s family business as well, messy as it is.

Slowly, Ronan reaches out and clasps The Gray Captain’s hand in his own. “When do you set sail?”

The Gray Captain shakes Ronan’s hand and gives him a crooked smile. “Two days hence, with or without you.”

Ronan makes no promises, though he’s already made up his mind.

“I wish you wouldn’t go,” Gansey says.

He’s leaning against the door to Ronan’s room with his arms crossed, watching as Ronan paces and tries to decide what he absolutely needs to take with him. It’s not like Ronan has anything from his old life left after the shipwreck. Still, he’s managed to acquire more in the last several weeks than he thinks he should carry around indefinitely.

Ronan places a leather bound journal into his pile of belongings and then pulls it out again, debating. “You’ve said those words to me so often over the last seven years that they’ve lost all meaning.”

“That’s funny coming from you. You never treated them like they had any meaning at all.”

Gansey pushes away from the door frame and steps into the room. He stops next to Ronan at the edge of the bed and picks up the journal, turning it over in his hands before opening it. Inside there are two weeks of Ronan’s notes on his dreams and the people following him. Every page has ocean waves doodled at its edges, some of them embellished with fins or great black birds. The raven watches them from his headboard.

“We’re meant to be doing this together,” Gansey says. He closes the journal and places it back in Ronan’s pile of things to take.

Ronan picks it up and presses it into Gansey’s stomach. “I’m coming back, you know. Or you’ll come find me in Europe. The fates themselves have never managed to keep us apart for long.”

Gansey accepts the journal and clutches it close to his chest like it’s precious, like he knows that it’s actually Ronan’s heart to which he’s been granted custody. It’s not far from the truth. “It’s not the actions of the fates I’m worried about.”

“Where’s the old man?” Ronan asks, because if this conversation continues cutting too close to the quick like it is currently, he’s going to punch something. That will only upset Gansey more.

“Off trying out his new toy, I assume. There was a shipping box with the Greenmantle stamp on it on his desk when I came back from my morning walk.”

“It’s not very scholarly to dabble in the occult. What is it this time? Something to make the birds draw themselves?”

Gansey grins. “It’s quite amusing, isn’t it? All these people trying to convince themselves magic exists when we know?”

“Are you talking about me or your mermaid?”

“One of us should talk about his mermaid at the least,” Gansey says. “Since the other one refuses to mention it at all. When he’s awake anyway.”

Ronan turns to him abruptly. There’s a smile playing at the corner of Gansey’s lips that he doesn’t like. “You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” he asks, eyes wide, the picture of innocence. “Help my drunk friend into his bed? Listen to him as he rambled on about the beautiful boy he left in the sea?”

“I know your mother taught you not to take advantage of people in weakened states,” Ronan says, reaching for the journal. “I was there for the lessons!”

Gansey jumps away and hides the journal behind his back. “No take backs!” he shouts, and dashes from the room.

Ronan chases after him, scrambling through the house and weaving around piles of books, sending drawings of birds from Malory’s studies flying in his wake. Gansey lets out a yelp of a laugh that goes straight to Ronan’s gut. It’s been a long time since they’ve been boys at play. He misses the recklessness of it. He misses this Gansey, young and free and urged on by something other than responsibility.

“You loooove him!” Gansey calls over his shoulder. “You’re going to find him!”

“That’s not—” Ronan says through his teeth. “That’s not it at all.” He finally traps Gansey in the front room and pins him to the door with his hands heavy on Gansey’s shoulders.

Gansey squirms a bit, but smirks up at him. “You could have just said, you know. That that’s why you were going. I wouldn’t stop you. I’d ask you to keep an eye out for mine as well.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Ronan snaps. It loses some of its edge in his breathlessness.

If it was true, if Ronan was merely casting himself to sea to find Adam again, Gansey wouldn’t stop him. Gansey believes in the idea of true love and doing whatever you can to find it more than anyone Ronan’s ever met. He believes in true love so much that Ronan’s never felt like he needs to give it a thought. Like Gansey’s belief might be enough to manifest it for the both of them. Other people find it to be naive, but Ronan finds it comforting, along with the rest of Gansey’s optimisms. He needs Gansey to stay in love with the possibility inherent in the world so he doesn’t lose faith in it entirely.

“But it won’t hurt if it happens anyway, right?” Gansey says. “If maybe in the course of things you find that boy who saved your life and can thank him properly? I know you, Ronan Lynch, don’t even pretend I don’t.”

Ronan glares at him. It’s a look that’s intimidated many a pirate and soldier. It has never once intimidated Gansey. When Gansey refuses to be sufficiently cowed, Ronan looks away. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he mutters. “He’s a fucking myth.”

“We both know that’s not how hearts work,” Gansey says. He leans forward against Ronan’s weight and plants a quick kiss to Ronan’s cheek.

Startled, Ronan lets go of him. It’s not like it’s the first time Gansey’s kissed him, but it’s the first time it has felt permissive, like Gansey’s giving him his blessing. Ronan brushes his hand down the side of his trousers, feeling the comforting bump of the pearl in his pocket.

Ronan hates half measures and he hates living with one foot back home and one foot wherever he lands. He needs to finish what his father started if he’s ever going to have his own life. “What is it you want me to tell the sea rat if I see her?” he asks.

The smile Gansey gives him is so bright it will bring light to his dreams for a week at least. “Apologize for me?”

“Out of the question.” Ronan rarely apologizes for his own actions. He’s not about to pass on someone else’s meaningless platitudes if he’s got nothing to back them up with.

“Very well then. Just make me look good.”

Ronan reaches up and ruffles Gansey’s hair, rucking it up magnificently. Gansey still manages to look like someone with power and standing to spare. Ronan misses him already. “That’s an impossible job,” he says. “But I’ll do what I can.”

Life on the pirate ship is monotonous without Gansey around to distract Ronan with the promise of adventure. He finds that it involves a great deal more waiting than anything else. Especially since the crew refuse to let him help with any of the work and give him a wide berth.

It shouldn’t bother him. He’s not looking to make friends. He’s just looking to get back home and maybe cause some trouble along the way, but the feeling of uselessness that comes with idleness frustrates him. The only person on the ship who looks at him like he’s anything at all is The Gray Captain. This makes him uncomfortable for a whole other reason he can’t put his finger on.

Ronan accepts the invitations to dine in the captain’s quarters all the same and spends his evenings discussing magic and faith, which seem to be the captains only interests. The purely academic way the captain talks about both makes Ronan feel viciously homesick. It’s a feeling that’s compounded by the way he has to deny any special knowledge of either. Whenever it becomes too much to bear he thinks about Declan telling him to keep his head down for the sake of the family. Most nights this allows him to burn his melancholy into anger. When that doesn’t work he drinks twice the rum and drowns it instead.

They’re several evenings into their journey and several glasses of whiskey into their evening when The Gray Captain says, “Eire is supposed to be a land of magic, is it not? It seems it would be impossible to grow up there and not believe in at least something.”

“If you want stories about banshees and leprechauns you’ve come to the wrong person,” Ronan says. The banshee he doesn’t discuss any more than he would discuss the ghosts of his own family, and he’s yet to see any real proof of leprechauns one way or another.

The Gray Captain gives him a speculative once over, but before he can say anything there’s a knock on the cabin door. He pushes himself out of his chair and crosses to it. The conversation is low. Ronan doesn’t have a hope of making out the words over the sound of lapping water and creaking wood.

After a few quiet exchanges the captain turns back to him. “I apologize,” he says. “It seems I need to take care of something for the men. I’ll return shortly.”

Once the door is shut tight behind him Ronan is left alone with his alcohol and his thoughts. It’s a state of existence he tries his hardest to avoid. He can handle his thoughts or he can handle his liquor, he’s never quite managed to handle both at once. The raven, who has spent the entire conversation perched quietly in his lap, looks up at him now with her piercing black eyes.

“What?” he asks her.

She croaks at him and paces up his thigh before flapping across the small space between his chair and the captain’s desk.

“Hey!” he says, as she starts shuffling through the papers and pulling strips off the edges. “That isn’t ours to touch.” He tries to scoop her up off the desk, but she dances around his hands and picks up the corner of another piece of paper in her beak. She drags it over to him and puts it down, looking between him and it pointedly. He sighs and strokes the top of her head. “You’re impossible.”

He picks it up and reads it over. His blood runs cold. He reads it over again. The raven flies up to perch on his shoulder as if she is trying to read it as well. There are maybe a couple hundred words in the letter, all in the same precise script that contrasts greatly with the over-designed header for the Greenmantle Company, but it’s one word in particular that stands out on the page as if it’s written down in his own blood: Greywaren. His hands start to shake. He drops the letter onto The Gray Captain’s desk and places them flat over it, hiding his own damnation and willing them to still.

Behind him the cabin door creaks open and then closed. “Sorry, I did not mean to keep you waiting.”

Ronan takes one deep breath after another as The Gray Captain walks the familiar floorboards and clinks the familiar glasses. Ronan feels lightheaded, gripped suddenly with a rage like he hasn’t let overtake him since leaving Declan back home. It comes upon him swift and coursing. Its sisters guilt and grief follow hot on its heels. He wipes a frustrated tear away from his eye before standing up straight and turning around.

The Gray Captain is close behind him, holding out a fresh glass of whiskey. When their eyes meet his mouth dips into a frown. “What is it?”

“What do you know of magic?” Ronan sneers, throwing his words back at him. The Gray Captain has the decency to look caught out, but not enough to look remorseful. Ronan supposes remorse doesn’t get a man like him to where he is now. “Tell me about your dreams.”

“You have to have known the man who came for your father would not be appeased by blood. Not with otherwise empty hands too heavy with wanting.”

“Was that man you?”

The Gray Captain doesn’t answer, only forces the glass into Ronan’s hand. Ronan downs it out of spite without breaking eye contact. It doesn’t douse his anger. He tips the glass upside down and places it over the letter, letting the residue form a ring around his legacy.

“I told you. I told you that very first day that you remind me of a man I once knew.”

“Do you get to know a man very well while you’re killing him?”

“Depends. Do you get to know a man very well while you’re beating him? Blood is blood, son. It doesn’t wash.”

Ronan spits on the floor between them. Bile rises in his throat. “I’m not your son.”

He’s surprised when his fist lands square on its mark, because he expects The Gray Captain to dodge the blow. He’s seen the man fight and knows he doesn’t really stand a chance, but he deserves one, so he takes it.

The Gray Captain wheels and stumbles back a few steps, but doesn’t go down. He draws his sword and holds it up between them. The tip is inches from Ronan’s throat, just close enough to be a threat. “You get a pass for that, because emotions are a bitch, but there won’t be another.”

“You going to kill me to be fucking sure of it?”

“No.” The Gray Captain lowers his sword and lets the tip fall forward until it’s resting against Ronan’s shirt, just over his heart. “I still need you to lead me to the Greywaren. You’re useless to me dead. You can either stay civil, or you can spend the remainder of the journey below decks in irons. I lose no skin either way, but I will miss our talks.”

There’s a sickly and malformed burst of hope in Ronan’s chest as he realizes this man doesn’t know any better than the others. Hand still shaking, he reaches up and wraps his fingers around the blade. Not tightly enough to cut himself, just enough to guide it back away from his chest. The Gray Captain lets him push it easily.

“There’s always a third option,” Ronan says.

The captain shakes his head with the certainty of a man who’s used to his way being the only way. Ronan has never taken the paths presented to him. For him there has never been an only way and he's not going to start accepting defeat now.

He waits until the captain has brought the blade to rest straight up against his shoulder before dodging around him and darting from the cabin. The raven swoops out just behind him and the door slams shut after her. Ronan sprints across the deck and up the narrow set of steps leading to the upper deck.

“Stop him!” The Gray Captain calls.

Ronan grabs a hold of one of the ropes and uses it to haul himself up onto the railing. He pauses, looking down at the churning waters. They’re a solid black against the brighter black of the sky and the dull black of the hull. It’s a black black night and there’s no way he’s going to let it claim him any more than he’s let any other black black night before. The black black bird that has become his companion circles over him, crying out sharp kerahs.

His hesitation gives the others time. Someone grabs at his boots and the raven dives down to peck at them. Ronan kicks backward, trying to brush the man away. As he does it, he loses his balance and tumbles gracelessly into the sea.

He hits the water back first. It knocks the wind from his lungs. Startled, Ronan gasps for air and inhales a mouthful of briny water. Coughing and sputtering he rights himself long enough to hear something hit the water to his right and then rhythmic splashing. Swimming. They’re coming for him. The raven continues to circle and call, but won’t come close to the water.

Desperate, he digs his hand into his pocket, feeling for the pearl. Once he finds it he throws it into the back of his throat and takes another gulp of salt water to help it down. It gags him and he has to swallow hard to avoid choking on it. A hand reaches for him just as he manages to get it down. Ronan pulls away just enough that a ragged nail scratches at the skin of his neck, but misses the crushing grip it was going for. He takes a deep breath and drops below the water, letting himself sink.

Under the sea everything is dull. The moonlight is dimmer. The men diving for him sound like they’re coming through a hundred layers of wool. Even his mind feels dull, slower as it fights the lack of oxygen. He grips at his own chest, trying to tear away the ties of his shirt that feel like they are strangling him. In his panic he forgets he should be holding his breath.

Ronan doesn’t try to breathe again, because something in him knows it won’t work, but he’s not holding his breath anymore either. There’s no pressure trying to force its way out like the last time he drowned. His lungs aren’t burning. His eyes aren’t stinging from the salt. There’s just…nothing. As if he’s become a part of the water and it’s flowing through him, around him, perfectly content to let him drift for as long as he wants.

He reaches up and tentatively runs his fingers over his neck and chest, worried that the bit of mer-magic has made him more like them, but there are no gills etched into the skin above his collar bones. His legs are still legs. He kicks them experimentally and shoots forward with more speed than should be possible. Giddy with the discovery he does a few somersaults, but the adrenaline of it doesn’t last long. He pauses to look up and back and make sure he’s not being followed.

It hits him hard then that he’s alone and he has no idea how to find Adam. The pearl is supposed to bring Adam to him, but the ocean is massive. How long might he be waiting here, caught adrift in the current and getting more and more lost by the day? The anger of minutes before is washed away and all that’s left in its place is the fear of what his own foolhardiness has wrought. Ronan closes his eyes and does something he hasn’t done since he left home.

He prays.

Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, he mouths. Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.

He’s lost count of the Hail Marys when he feels something grip his arm. He blinks sleepily into the blur of darkness. Another face presses itself close to his. It’s Gansey’s sea rat. She squeezes his shoulder and leans closer still, lips brushing his ear as she speaks.

“Come with me,” she says, voice as muddled by the water as everything else.

She trails her fingers down his arm and grabs his hand. He lets her tug him along, because what other choice does he have? At least he was found by a familiar face and not one that’s home to rows and rows of knifelike teeth. Ronan thinks she probably won’t eat him. Not until she’s brought him to Adam first. Maybe they’ll eat him together. It still might be better than the alternative.

They dive down. The deeper they go the less he can see. After what feels like ages, she pulls him into the mouth of a cave. The world inside of the cave is tinged a shining green and blue. The light coming from along the algae covered walls is weak, but it’s enough to catch the golden highlights in Blue’s dark hair and make the whites of her eyes glow. She lets go of his hand and points up before flipping her tail a few times and rising without him. He follows.

When he breaks the surface of the water he gasps out of habit, chest heaving. He swims to a rock ledge on the far wall and pulls himself up onto it, situating himself so his legs are still in the water. It's far warmer than the air. Blue anchors herself to the ledge with her arms next to his thigh and watches him.

He has a moment to study her properly with a clear head now that he’s not worried about finding Gansey or afraid he’s going to drown. It’s easy to see why Gansey is so taken with her. The darkness of her hair and eyebrows are a stark complement to her pale skin. There’s a naturally wicked curve to her lips. When her curious eyes find his they won't let him go.

“Adam got caught up,” she says. “He’ll be here when he can.”

“Alright,” Ronan says. He feels sleepy all of a sudden, mind foggy like the ocean at this depth. Now that he’s out of the water his muscles ache, as if the gravity of the surface world is once again claiming him for its own.

“I can see why he’s fascinated with you. You are different than the others. You shimmer. It’s almost like you’re not a human at all.”

“I shimmer?” Ronan asks. “What else could I be?”

“I would like to know,” she says. “I will say this. He is my best friend. I love him dearly, but I do not always trust his heart. If you hurt him I will send the sirens to pull your skin from your bones.”

“I thought your people didn’t brook with sirens.”

Blue scoffs and says the word people as if it’s a curse. “You humans think you’re the standard. Mostly we don’t. Adam doesn’t. But I have dealings with many schools of beings.”

Ronan believes the fierce conviction behind her words. He understands what she’s doing. He’s done the same to the often frivolous girls who have come for Gansey’s attentions. It’s insurance to be paid in case the heart you love the most is broken. He understands her, but that doesn’t mean that he likes being treated like an errant thief or an irresponsible child.

“There’s no way for me to know he won’t hurt me either, you know,” he says.

She looks up at him for a long time without blinking. The dim light reflects off the lapping water and paints her skin in shifting patterns like rippling scales. “It was really stupid of you to come down here without knowing that.”

“And yet still not the most stupid thing I’ve done in the last week.” Ronan closes his eyes and grips the edge of the ledge. He hopes the raven is okay. He really should give her a name if he finds her again.

“Rest,” Blue says. “Don’t let yourself dry out completely, or the magic will leave you. For now you’re safe here.”

Ronan’s not sure about that. He feels like ‘safe’ might be a relative term between their two species, but he’s too tired to care. She slips below the surface before he can say anything, leaving him alone in the blue-green glow. He pulls his legs out of the water and curls up on his side. He dips his fingers over the edge of the ledge to keep a part of himself somewhat wet. The sound of the water lapping at the sides of the cave lulls him quickly to sleep.

Ronan doesn’t dream, but when he wakes up his hands are full all the same. Adam is leaning over him with his palm pressed flat against Ronan’s chest just over his heart and Ronan is gripping his wrist. For a moment Adam looks gaunt and terrifying like the things that haunt Ronan’s dreams. The dim light from the cave fluorescents gives his skin a ghoulish pallor. His eyes are black. Ronan shakes Adam’s arm and Adam blinks several times until his eyes return to normal.

“I was just checking,” Adam says. He pulls his arm out of Ronan’s grasp.

Ronan sits up and crosses his legs. He brushes his hand across his chest where Adam’s had been, tracing the warmth through the damp cloth. “Checking for what?”

“Pearl magic doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to on humans. I was making sure no part of you had transmuted to accommodate the effects.”

“How would you even be able to tell?” What Ronan means to ask is, Who taught you about human bodies? What other hearts have beat beneath your fingers?

Adam answers the first question. “You’re full of water. I...resonated with it.”

“Oh, sure,” Ronan says, because what else can he say?

The line for magical shit he’s willing to believe in—a line which had previously extended to his family, the hills surrounding their home, and not much further—had been crossed the moment Adam dragged him to shore. It’s so far behind him now he’s not sure it will ever matter again.

Adam pulls himself out of the water and sits next to Ronan on the ledge. He places a wet hand against Ronan’s cheek and then slides it down his neck, looking at him unblinking. It’s a look that makes Ronan feel aware of the body he inhabits like he rarely is. “What brings you back to me?”

Adam’s fingers are warm where Ronan’s skin has gone clammy. Ronan shivers into the touch. “Would you believe the possibility of drowning was suddenly the safest option?”

“I will believe men can be vicious and cruel and stupid and that most are a combination of at least two of the three.”

Ronan leans away from him, affronted on behalf of his entire race. Not that he necessarily disagrees, he just doesn’t usually lump himself in with his assessment. “Which two am I?”

“You are not stupid.” Adam slides his hand down Ronan’s shoulder and pulls it back. Ronan follows the movement of it as Adam settles it gracefully in his lap. “You are the others to the point of survival and no further. You do not take your survival for granted. It’s why I watch you. It’s why I saved you. I knew if I gave you a life you’d do something with it, unlike most ungrateful men who mistake the sea’s permissiveness for subservience.”

“Am I meant to know the difference?”

“I watch you because you are the difference.”

“Weren’t on duty tonight though, I see.” It comes out angrier than Ronan means it to, but Adam doesn’t react to his venom, only his words.

“Despite what you or Blue may think, I do have things to do that aren’t follow after ships like some sort of smitten shark. I was tending to the forest.”

Ronan wants to ask just how often Adam follows him, if maybe he’s come to Gansey’s docks looking for him and been disappointed that Ronan doesn’t follow after Gansey like a lost puppy himself. But that seems too close to the heart of the matter. Closer than Ronan thinks he’s willing to get at the moment. Instead he says, “Are sharks quite lovelorn?”

Adam looks at him strangely for a moment and Ronan realizes it’s because he’s on the cusp of a smile. A laugh spills from his mouth and Ronan is so startled by it that he jumps. The jumping causes Adam to laugh harder. Ronan catches on and starts to laugh along. He’s laughing at himself. He’s laughing at the absurd nature of this whole exchange. He’s laughing at the impossible parts of his life that have brought him to an underwater cave, saved by merpeople. Twice.

“Sharks are terrible,” Adam says between shallow breaths and trailing giggles. “One followed Blue around for days once before she managed to shoo it off.”

“Handy pet to have, I imagine. It could guard your things from all the other creatures with insane teeth.”

Adam shakes his head. “We don’t do that. We live with the other creatures, not above them.”

“That’s a shame,” Ronan says. “Here I was picturing you with giant seahorses pulling your golden chariot. Like a proper king of the sea from my illustrated primers.”

“Humans have such queer ideas about things they refuse to explore.”

“To be fair, most of us would die trying.”

“You don’t think many of us haven’t died in the same way reversed?”

Ronan hasn’t thought of it at all, honestly. He doesn’t know why anyone would confine themselves to land if they could take to the sea or the air. Being at sea on a ship has always made him feel like something more. The way the wind whips around him when they pick up speed, the vision of the horizon always retreating and just out of reach, the roll of the water beneath them pitching the boat—it has always made him feel like something grand and invincible. It has always made him feel like the kind of man he wants to be but knows he’s never going to become.

Being at sea without a ship feels like a fever dream he’s afraid to wake up from. Any moment he’s going to blink and Adam will be gone. Ronan’ll be back in his bed in Malory’s stuffy, dusty home. His grand adventure will be over and he’ll have to face the threat of Greenmantle and the weight of his father’s legacy alone with empty hands. He holds his hands in front of him and looks down at the pale, waterlogged palms.

“I guess I don’t know,” he says.

Adam places his hand in one of Ronan’s and Ronan closes his fingers tight around it instinctively. “Why are you here, Ronan?”

“I told you.”

“You didn’t. You said something glib and I accepted it, but I can’t help you if I don’t know what I’m trying to help with. Please.” Adam reaches out and takes Ronan’s other hand as well. “Let me help you.”

Ronan looks down at where Adam has twined their fingers together. No one outside of his family has ever reached for him this way. He takes a deep breath and wills the words to be there. “My father was killed when I was younger and it was my fault. The men who did it are still out there looking for me.” He’s never said any of it out loud before, not even to Gansey. Doing so makes him feel curiously lighter. “Well, have found me. Hence why I leapt off a ship in the middle of the ocean.”

“You’re desperate, of course.” Adam nods, as if that’s the whole of the explanation, and Ronan doesn’t correct him. “Where do you need to go?”

“Home.” The idea of home sits just outside of Ronan’s understanding on the best of days. Now, with some idea of what he’s up against, with some idea of what his brothers will be up against without him, it looms large and dark. Like the memories of his father. Like the nightmares he’s had since his father’s death. “Ireland.”

“That’s a long swim,” Adam says.

“If you could help me get to where I can catch another ship. Anything headed toward Europe will do. I can make my way from there. I have money.”

Adam grimaces. “What would I do with your money?”

“No, I meant—” Ronan meant to say that he could use his money for passage across sea and land, but he realizes then and there that he has nothing to offer Adam for saving his life. He never really gave him anything for saving his life the first time. Just the flower, and the kiss which has haunted his thoughts since. He doesn’t consider himself an accomplished kisser, having never had an overabundance of practice, so it seems like quite a paltry form of payment. “I don’t have anything to give you.”

“Do you trust me?” Adam asks.

“You seem to be in the habit of saving my life,” Ronan says, sarcasm slipping over his want. “Even when you’re not there.”

“A terrible habit, I’m sure.” Adam squeezes Ronan’s hands and lets them go. He slips off the ledge and back into the water. “If I promise to help you in whatever way I can, will you take me with you?”

“To Ireland?”

“Anywhere. You can show me the world. The walking world.”

“I don’t exactly have a bathtub on wheels. How do you plan on following?”

Adam purses his lips in response, showing Ronan that he doesn’t find him nearly as entertaining as Ronan finds himself. “I have something to show you.”

Ronan slides in after him. The water is warm compared to the chilly air of the cave. He slips underneath to make sure he can still survive without his breath. Adam drops down next to him and holds his hand out. Ronan takes it and lets Adam pull him away to whatever adventure is next.

Adam guides them over reefs and through tunnels, past incredible creatures in colors he never could have imagined and around stalks of kelp the size of the trees on land. It’s deeper into a dense formation of these stalks that Adam takes him. The light dims considerably as they travel further down with the gently waving limbs of green thrusting up on either side of them. Adam’s tail is the same color of the leaves at this depth. His tanned skin and sand colored hair stand out starkly against the rest of it.

They break into a clearing and the dark, jagged shadow of a ship juts up before them. It appears to be ancient, with coral and other animals clinging to its hull of spongy wood. The dim blue light that’s being diffused through the water forms a faint glowing barrier around it in contrast to the dense darkness of the forest surrounding everything. The whole scene has the air of a haunting. Ronan wonders if ghosts can swim.

Adam leans in close. “This is my forest,” he says, lips brushing against Ronan’s ear. “I take care of it, and it takes care of me.”

Ronan drags his gaze away from the wreck and looks Adam over. “You don’t look like you need taking care of,” he says.

Adam tilts his head in question and Ronan leans in close the way Adam and Blue did to talk to him to repeat what he’s said. He’s hyper aware of how close his lips are to Adam’s skin. He wants trail them across his cheek. He pulls away.

Adam follows to answer. “You are meeting me at one of the more fortunate points in my life.”

Ronan doesn’t want to think about Adam having unfortunate points in his life. He doesn’t want this awe inducing creature in front of him to be able to commiserate with any of the deep scars that Ronan seems to re-open daily. The insides of his arms itch just thinking about it. He wants to keep Adam as safe as Adam has kept him, but Adam is a being made of far sterner magic than Ronan himself. What can Ronan possibly offer him? A feeling of helplessness trickles into his gut.

“It was the ship,” Adam continues. “It damaged the energy and sent it fracturing, causing sparks to crackle throughout the sea. The line lashed out in its pain and trapped everything like a net until I offered myself up to it in order to keep everything else safe. Now I help keep it free and clear of other debris and make sure the route for the energy is more or less the straight path it wants to take.”

How stupid, Ronan thinks, to sign one’s life away, to tie oneself to one place. How brave and selfless and fiercely kind to take the burden from everything else and carry it on one set of slim shoulders. “How long have you been doing this?”

The corner of Adam’s lip quirks up. “I’m old, but I’m not as old as this ship. I guess that when it first happened the line healed around the ship, but at some point the ship shifted and tore the wound open again. The energy and I sort of found each other. We both needed something to fix us.”

“So you’re just in the habit of saving unfortunate things.”

“You,” Adam says. “Are far from unfortunate.”

Ronan barks out a short, derisive laugh that causes a pillar of bubbles to erupt from his mouth. What is his whole life if not unfortunate? How could he ever have found himself here without his misfortunes? No, he has not known much fortune that was his own, until now.

Adam flicks his tail dismissively in response. “You don’t even see it, do you?”

“See what?”

“Your energy is like this energy. You’ve always shimmered, but now that you’re here in it, you’re positively glowing.”

Ronan can’t see it. Nothing about him has ever glowed. But maybe, he thinks, if he knows what he’s looking for he can feel it. He closes his eyes and thinks about his dreams. He opens and closes his fists as if waiting for them to be filled. A bright silver shadow of a thought takes shape in the back of his mind and he can feel it start to pace. Its footsteps leave behind a trail of gleaming puddles that trickle down his spine and then shoot up it again. Bright white light starbursts against the backs of his eyelids and every cell in his body starts to hum at a frequency that reverberates against the energy around him. He suddenly feels so much larger than his skin.

He reaches blindly and grasps Adam’s shoulder, pulling him close. “This is incredible,” he whispers. “Is this what you feel like all of the time?”

“I don’t think so,” Adam says. “I think that’s something that’s just for you. And so is this.”

Adam kisses the shell of Ronan’s ear, his cheek, and his chin before settling on his mouth. Ronan kisses him back and tries to pour all of his wonder into it. He grips Adam’s hips where he transitions from fish to man. Part of Adam is made of cold scales that are hard like armor and sharp like knives. Part of him is soft skin radiating heat into the water around him. The closer Ronan pulls Adam to him the warmer he gets.

Adam wraps his arms around Ronan’s back and his tail around Ronan’s legs, holding them flush together just like he did the first time they kissed. Ronan responds by trailing one of his hands up Adam’s side to tangle his fingers in his hair. He opens his mouth and Adam’s lips open with him. Where their tongues meet there’s salt and tickling whirls of bubbles from Ronan’s lungs. He experimentally runs a finger down Adam’s collarbone and across his gills. They flare under his touch and Adam twists his tail a little tighter.

The stalks of kelp begin to sway wildly. Movement ripples through them like waves washing on shore, and though there must be some current causing the commotion, it never reaches the boys. Ronan wonders if it’s coming off of them somehow. If the two of them together are more of a force than they ever could be apart. If that’s the case, how utterly lucky it is that they somehow found each other. The world is wide and the ocean is deep. It’s so improbable that any two pieces of flotsam should meet, but here they are

How…fortunate. How like a triumph it feels, here among the magic that has touched both of them.

A sharp whistle cuts through the hum and Adam breaks off the kiss. Blue appears at their side. Adam relinquishes his hold and Ronan feels like he’ll drift away now that he’s not tethered to Adam. Blue puts her arms around their shoulders and pulls them into a tight huddle to anchor them together.

“This is sweet and all,” she says. “But we have more important business to attend to.”

“That was part of my business,” Adam says.

Blue narrows her eyes. “Are you sure you’re ready to do this? It’s not like slicing off a barnacle. The forest has anchored itself to every part of you. Losing it is going to be like losing a fin.”

“If it works, I’ll lose both fins.”

“And it’s going to hurt twice as much.”

“What does she mean?” Ronan asks.

Blue rolls her eyes. “She is right here, asshole. And what I mean is that giving up who you are always comes with a price. I need to be sure Adam still wants to pay it.”

“I’m not asking to sever our ties,” Adam says. “I’m just asking it to loosen the bindings.”

“Did you ever think they’re tight for a reason?”

Adam shakes his head, mind made up. He wraps an arm protectively around Ronan’s waist. “I know what I want.”

“I never said you didn’t,” Blue says quietly, looking down to where Adam’s fingers are curled at Ronan’s hip.

She lets go of Ronan and wraps both of her arms around Adam’s shoulders, hauling him close for a tight hug. Ronan doesn’t hear what she says, but when she pulls away her eyes are bright. He wonders if it’s possible to cry when you spend your life immersed in water. If a tear gets washed away the moment it’s formed, was it ever really a tear at all?

Adam lays his head against Ronan’s shoulder and studies his face. “Don’t be afraid.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Ronan says.

“Impossible.” Adam rights himself again so that he’s floating straight and tall between Ronan and Blue, holding both of their hands. “I’m ready!” he shouts.

Ronan hears the words as if they’re a train going by. They’re loud as they pass him, but as he watches the ring shaped shockwave of them hurtle toward the hull of the ship they get quiet and eventually die out. For a moment the sea is deathly still in response. Even the leaves of kelp have stopped drifting in the water. Then he blinks and the forest throws itself into a frenzy.

The stalks whip wildly around them. Over the tops of them Ronan spots what appears to be a reverse water spout. A tornado of air plows through the water and the forest, ripping leaves off the kelp as it passes. It skims around the side of the ship, pulling boards loose and leaving them floating in its wake.

The three of them watch the spout with trepidation and awe as it heads straight for them. Ronan tries to dive out of its way and tug Adam with him, but before he can move Adam is ripped out of Ronan’s grasp and sucked up into it. He disappears behind the turbulent, spinning wall. Ronan kicks his feet, trying to follow, but the current from the vortex turns repellent and he can't make any headway.

Blue throws herself in front of him and puts her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back. Even though he's stronger than usual with the magic of the pearl coursing through him, she's stronger still. “No!” she shouts. It's hard to hear her over the roar of the water. “This is what he asked for. No one said it would be pretty. Magic rarely is.”

The helplessness from before is growing in Ronan in a sticky tangle. He continues to push against her, even though it’s just for show. “What if it kills him?”

“The forest won't kill him. Not directly. But if you want to make sure he survives this, you need to be ready to swim harder than you've ever swam in your life.”

The vortex disperses just as quickly as it came on. Over Blue’s shoulder Ronan can see Adam. He's naked except for the pouch still tied around his waist, suspended in the water as if he was caught mid-fall, arms and legs floating up like they're reaching for the surface. Arms and legs and no gills. Human.

Oh shit, Ronan thinks. He pushes against Blue, his strength renewed by his fear. Oh shit.

Blue whirls around and swims to Adam. She cups his face in her hands and kisses his mouth. Bubbles billow up from between their lips. He kicks suddenly and opens his eyes. Adam opens his mouth and chokes on the water that was a part of him for his whole life. He reaches for his throat with his fingers and kicks again, trying to rise.

Ronan darts to meet them. He grabs Adam under his armpits and looks to Blue before kicking his legs and swimming as hard as he can for the surface. She follows after him fast and close, keeping her hand on Adam’s chest, bubbles trailing from their mouths and nostrils as she tries to keep the water from logging in his lungs now that they're all he has. A hot, sharp jealousy cuts through Ronan at the intimacy of it, even though he knows he doesn't have any oxygen to spare. He wants Adam to live. The rest will have to be sorted on land.

Land. God, he has no idea where they are. What if there is no land?

The ocean seems to go on for kilometers above them. Adam goes limp in his grasp. Blue swims up and grabs Ronan the same way Ronan is holding Adam and whips her tail as fast as she can. They rise and rise and rise. Around them the water gets lighter. There are shafts of sunlight penetrating the blue of the water in pillars of silver and white. Every one of Ronan's muscles is stretched and burning. It's still not enough.

When they finally break the surface Ronan gasps, greedily gulping air into his lungs. He wraps his arms around Adam's waist to hold him upright and Blue cradles Adam’s head in her hands to keep it above the surface. Ronan coughs and sputters as the residual water is pushed out of him.

“Can you hold him?” Blue asks. “I think we're close to the peninsula, but I want to check.”

Ronan can't talk with his throat burning the way it does, so he nods vigorously and adjusts his grip on Adam’s waist to hold him closer. Blue slips under the surface and is gone.

Kicking like mad still, Ronan tilts back, trying to leverage Adam's face up and toward the sun. It's incredibly bright after the permanent twilight of the bottom of the sea. Adam’s ear is resting on Ronan's chin. “Come on,” Ronan croaks. “Come on. You can't die. I haven’t paid you back for saving my life yet.”

Adam's chest falls and rises and then he's sputtering and coughing water and bile. Ronan feels so relieved he could weep. Adam twists in Ronan’s arms and anchors himself to Ronan's shoulders. He breathes harsh and heavy in Ronan's ear.

“Where are we?” he asks, voice raspy.

“Blue went to find a shore.”

“She should have sent Noah.”

“Who's—?”

Blue comes back to them just then. She places her hand on the nape of Adam’s neck and Adam tilts his head back into the touch. “I was right,” she says. “We're close.”

Adam starts kicking slowly, his legs tangling with Ronan’s. He pushes at Ronan’s shoulders and twists, trying to pull away. Ronan raises an eyebrow at Blue, who shrugs, so Ronan lets Adam slip through his grasp and float between them. He treads water while they all get their bearings.

“Do you think you can swim it?” Blue asks.

Adam grimaces. “How far?”

“Just over the horizon there.” She points to the west, shell bracelets clacking with no water to buffer them.

Adam follows the direction of her finger with his gaze and then starts swimming slowly. Ronan pulls up next to him and tries to take his elbow, but Adam shakes him off with a determined look and keeps going.

“Don't take it personally,” Blue says, slipping up beside him. “He's never been good about accepting help.”

“What if he can't make it?”

“He'll be easier to drag if he's unconscious.”

“That's callous,” Ronan says. He's never been under the impression that the merpeople had the same priorities as humans, but he always figured like would look after like. “I thought you were supposed to be his best friend.”

Blue scowls at him. “Friends respect the wishes of the people they love. Is that not how it works on land? If it isn’t I guess I won't be waiting too long for him to return.”

She swims off after Adam before Ronan can say anything in return and anger flares in his gut. It’s partially because he can think of many times when Gansey hadn't respected his own wishes for everyone to just leave him to his misery, and while he's better off for it, he doesn't agree with it on principle. It's something that's always chafed. And also because he realizes that, even though he has a mad fascination with Adam, he doesn't really know him. Not yet. He has a lot of work to do. Ronan starts swimming again and catches up with them just as a strip of land comes into view in the distance.

Blue and Ronan do end up pulling Adam for the last leg of it, which he takes with about as much grace as Ronan has ever taken any of the help given to him. Luckily, this shore is mostly kinder than the last they’d encountered together and no one is bleeding by the time they’ve dragged themselves up onto dry sand. Adam lies in it face down with his head propped on his arms and breathes deeply. Blue rubs her hands across his shoulders and murmurs to him encouragingly.

Ronan shrugs out of his shirt and drapes it across Adam’s bare ass. There are some things, he’s realizing belatedly, that they have failed to consider. Adam pushes himself up suddenly and rolls over until he’s sitting on Ronan’s shirt. Ronan looks away from the bare expanse of him, but not quickly enough that the sight doesn’t burn itself into his brain. Ronan was caught off guard by Adam’s beauty in the beginning, but chalked the etherealness up to Adam being a creature of magic. Now, here he is, tan skin stretched to accommodate an utterly human form, and it is still too much for Ronan to take.

“Call him,” Adam says, voice still hoarse. “I don’t think I can anymore.”

Blue opens her mouth and lets out one clear, pure note. Ronan starts to make a sarcastic comment about what stands in for music under the sea, but before he can get the words out a cool breeze brushes over his bare chest. He swears it whispers don’t to him as it goes by. He closes his mouth again.

Where the water is slowly washing closer up the shore there’s a collection of foam that the breeze picks up and floats over to them. At first it looks like an undulating eel. Blue reaches out and runs her fingers along its back and it grows and ripples until it looks like a boy of white fog contained in foam borders. Ronan rubs his eyes and blinks rapidly a few times, wondering if it’s a hallucination caused by suddenly having too much oxygen where he’d recently had none.

“No,” Blue says, gauging his reaction. “He’s really there. Ronan, this is Noah. He’s an air spirit who is a friend. Noah, this is the jerk Adam is leaving us for. He is not a friend.” Ronan scowls at her. “Not yet, I guess,” she amends.

The spirit flits over to him and presses his face up close to Ronan’s. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think he’s a friend. He really loves Adam.”

Ronan has never wanted to punch a ghost so much in his life. It’s not like the way he feels is a secret anymore, he guesses, but it feels entirely too soon to be using that word. Not outside of teasing or taunts. Not when it might actually come to mean something bigger than Ronan thinks he’s capable of giving. The spirit grins like he knows what Ronan is thinking and holds a finger up to his insubstantial lips.

“Sorry,” he says. Then he flits over to Blue and Adam and runs his fingers through Adam’s hair. “Are you alright?”

“It’s so hot up here,” Adam says. “I feel like I’m being boiled from the inside.”

Ronan shifts around next to him, wanting to reach out and make it better and knowing he can’t. This is a decision Adam made and he knows by now that Adam will not accept help when it comes to his own decisions. Not yet, anyway. If Ronan is anything, he’s a being of hope.

Noah places his cool hands against Adam’s cheeks and forehead. Adam turns his face to nuzzle into the touch and Ronan can see his dazed smile through the form of Noah’s fingers. “Wait until you try to stand,” Noah says.

Adam looks down at his legs and experimentally wiggles a toe. “That doesn’t seem too bad,” he says. Noah runs a finger Adam’s sole and Adam lets out something between a hiss and a startled laugh. “Stop it,” he gasps.

Noah giggles. “You are never going to pass for human like that. I’ll be back.” He disappears on the breeze.

Blue turns to Adam and presses her hand against his cheek. “I have to get going,” she says.

Adam reaches up and clasps his hand over hers. “Thank you for looking out for it for me while I’m gone.”

“Well,” she sniffles. “I’ll be a poor substitute, but I’ll do what I can.”

“You’ll be great.”

She drops her hand to his knee and leans in to press a kiss to his cheek. “Just don’t forget to come back. And send me messages with Noah whenever you like.”

“I’ll send you riveting tales of the most mundane of human activities.”

“I don’t know that this one is capable of performing mundane activities without calling a whole hell of a lot of trouble down on the both of you.”

Ronan frowns and something in Blue’s eyes goes uncharacteristically soft.

“Take care of him,” she says, tone deceptively cheery. “Or my threat stands.” She bares her teeth at him in a wide grin and then turns and begins to crawl down the beach.

“Hey,” Ronan calls after her.

Blue pauses and looks back at them over her shoulder.

“My friend. He wants you to know he’s sorry.”

“I hope that’s working out for him,” she says.

Ronan rolls his eyes. “He spends a lot of mornings down near the docks. Do me a favor and tell him I delivered his message?”

“Tell him yourself when you bring my best friend back in one piece.” Blue drags herself back into the sea.

“That means she’ll tell him,” Adam says. He draws his knees up, testing the individual movement of his new limbs. “It was the sirens wasn’t it?”

“What was?”

“Her threat. She threatened to send the sirens after you. I’d like to say she wouldn’t do it, but I’ve known her too long to believe different and I like you too much to lie to you.”

“She sure is a bundle of sunshine.” Ronan watches the way Adam digs his toes into the sand. The skin of his legs is as tan as the rest of him. Ronan isn’t sure what he expected, but somehow he didn’t expect for them to look like Adam’s always had them. He wonders if that’s the way change always looks from the outside.

Adam lets out a breathy laugh. “You have that in common. You have quite a lot in common.”

“Like a raven and a writing desk,” Ronan mutters. Just then, a heavy piece of cloth rains down from the sky and lands on his head. He pulls it off just in time for it to be followed by two more pieces of clothing. Noah gusts over him and gently settles Adam’s clothes in his lap.

“Oh, this was looking for you too,” Noah says, just as a shoe bounces off Ronan’s thigh.

“What the ever loving, blasted, tarna—” He covers his head with his arms just as a second shoe drops down next to his knee. A heavy bird lands on his shoulder, digging its talons into his skin. He slowly pulls his hands away and finds himself face to beak with the raven. “Oh.”

The raven caws at him loudly and paces sideways down the slope of his shoulder and back, leaving light scratches in her wake.

“Joseph, Mary, and fucking Christ,” Ronan says, shaking his shoulder and trying to get her to budge off. “Just take my damn arm and leave my eardrums behind.”

Adam reaches out and runs his finger over her beak. She preens and hits Ronan in the face with the tip of her wing. “I didn’t know you had a familiar,” Adam says.

“I don’t have a familiar. I’m not a bloody witch.” Adam raises his eyebrows in question as he continues to stroke around the raven’s neck. “She’s not my, she’s, you know the flower?” Ronan asks.

Adam nods and pulls his hand away. He reaches around to the small pouch and digs through it. When he turns back he has the blue five pointed stone flower perched on his palm. The raven picks it up and flaps upward with it, pushing off Ronan’s shoulder with a heavy clutch of talons.

“Oof,” Ronan grunts, glad she’s going and giving his arm a rest. “Yeah, she’s like the flower. I dreamed her.”

Adam stares at him wide eyed. “No wonder the forest liked you. You bring life. Does she have a name?”

“No, she doesn’t have a name. I oughta call her Chainsaw though, for all the time she spends trying to rend me limb from limb!” The last part he shouts at where the raven is circling above them and shakes his fist in her direction. The raven drops back down and places the flower in Adam’s palm.

Noah claps. “I think she likes that! Good Chainsaw.” He ghosts his hand down her back and she squawks and jumps away from him. He looks disappointed and huffs. “Bad Chainsaw.”

“She’s not good or bad, she’s a bird,” Ronan says.

He sorts out the clothing Noah’s brought him and pulls the thin white shirt over his head. There’s also a deep green vest he decides to ignore for the time being. He leaves it in the sand and stands to change out of his waterlogged and salt striped trousers into the fresh brown ones. The muscles in his legs immediately protest the amount of work he’s put them through in the last twelve hours and he bites back a groan.

Adam watches him do all of this carefully. Ronan knows it must be because he’s never had to put on clothing before and doesn’t know how to, but it doesn’t make Ronan feel any less affected by the heavy gaze. He pulls the trousers up quickly and frowns at how tight they are.

Noah leans over to Adam and loudly whispers, “You’re welcome.”

“Are you always such a nuisance?” Ronan asks.

“Yes,” Noah and Adam say in unison. Noah throws his head back and laughs so hard he dissipates, leaving Adam and Ronan alone on the beach.

Adam picks up his own shirt, a light blue the color of the mid-day sky, and holds it in front of him. He has it backward, so Ronan pulls it gently from his hands and turns it around. Adam holds his arms up and Ronan slips it over his head. He lets Adam tug it down into place. Adam picks up the trousers and holds them up correctly after eyeing Ronan’s. He gingerly slips his legs through the holes and pulls the waist of them as far up his thighs as he can while he’s still sitting.

Ronan bends down and holds his hand out to Adam. Adam takes it. Ronan gives him a tug and pulls Adam to his feet. Almost immediately Adam cries out and topples forward, hands gripping Ronan’s shoulders. All of his weight is resting against Ronan and it threatens to send them both into the sand. Ronan staggers back a few steps, but manages to stay up. He clutches Adam around the waist and holds him close.

“Are you okay?”

Adam grimaces and nods, but when he tries to push himself up again he hisses. His knees buckle. Ronan lowers him into the sand and kneels down next to him. He keeps an arm around Adam’s waist.

“I’m fine,” Adam grits out. He is clearly not fine.

“What is it?”

“It just, it hurts more than I thought it would.” He looks up at Ronan, wonder and helplessness written all over the tightness in his face. “Does it always hurt like this?”

“I don’t know what like this means, but generally, if something in your body hurts, shit’s gone wrong.”

“It’s like those shoals from the island,” Adam says quietly. “It feels like I’m being cut to ribbons.” He drops his head onto Ronan’s shoulder and takes a few deep, shaky breaths. “Ah, there’s always a price for hubris.”

Ronan looks over Adam’s shoulder to make sure his feet aren’t actually being cut open. There’s no blood. The soles of them look perfect and pale, not even marked by the callouses Ronan’s own feet have built up over years and years of running over both land and sea. He cards the fingers of his free hand through Adam’s hair.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispers into Adam’s ear. “You don’t have to walk until it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“If we’re waiting for life to not hurt anymore, we’ll be waiting a very long time. Let’s just.” The stubborn determination from before floods back into Adam’s eyes and he shakes his head. He pushes against Ronan’s shoulders. Ronan stays on his knees, helping support Adam as he struggles to stand.

Once Adam is leaning with his hip against Ronan’s shoulder, Ronan tugs the trousers the rest of the way up Adam’s waist and buttons them closed. Adam leans over and presses a kiss next to where his hand is resting on top of Ronan’s head. Ronan flushes and hopes he can blame it on the sun.

Adam experimentally steps away from him with his arm out in case he needs to be caught. Then he takes another hesitant, awkward step and another, grimacing through each of them. After a few minutes he’s pacing slowly up and down in the sand in front of Ronan. Ronan climbs to his feet. Chainsaw lands on his shoulder and watches Adam with interest.

Once he’s passed in front of Ronan several times he stops, takes a deep breath, and says, “I think I’m ready.”

Ronan doesn’t believe that Adam is ready. He doesn’t even believe he’s ready and it’s his journey. But he does believe in determination. It’s gotten him through enough painful things that he thinks it might just get them both through this.

“Okay,” he says. He offers up his hand and Adam takes it. Chainsaw hops over and lands on Adam’s shoulder. He sways under her weight for a moment, then they both turn bright, curious eyes on Ronan. “Let’s get you in shoes and then we’ll find a ship that will take us as close to home as we can manage.”

“Home,” Adam echoes.

Chainsaw cries out and launches herself up into the sky, the manifestation of Ronan’s impatience with the idea of returning.

The night is mild and the easy wind is warm. Ronan is standing on the upper deck of a Spanish trade ship with his hands gripping the railing. He has his eyes closed and all he’s thinking is breathe in, breathe out.

They’re three days into the voyage back toward his home and he has not let himself think about what that means. If he starts thinking about it he’ll obsess over it. If he starts obsessing he’ll slip back into being that person Gansey was constantly afraid for. He promised Gansey he wouldn’t be that person again.

So he breathes and he catalogues the feel of the mist and wind on his face, the weight of Chainsaw on his shoulder, the knowledge that Adam is close by. Ronan can hear him speaking to one of the sailors in Spanish. Adam’s not fluent, but he’s spent much of his time living in waters being traversed by ships like this one, so he knows much more than Ronan. Ronan is happy to leave him to it. He doesn’t want to talk to strangers at the best of times. These are not the best of times.

His money easily secured them passage on the vessel as it was leaving from Florida, so they don’t need to work, but Ronan wants to. He takes the night shifts, hoping his exhaustion will distract from his worry and fear. Truth be told, he needs the distraction from Adam as well, because he knows that given half an opportunity he will let himself drown in him. You can take the merman from the depths of the ocean, but you apparently cannot take the depths of the ocean from the merman.

Footsteps approach him on the deck. Ronan tilts his head as they come to a stop next to him. When he opens his eyes Adam has his hands next to Ronan’s on the railing and he’s leaning on to them, trying to shift some of the weight off his feet.

“It still hurts,” Ronan says. Not a question.

“Magic isn’t about fairness,” Adam replies. Not an answer.

“You can go back whenever you get tired of it.” It comes out harsh. Ronan breathes in sharp through his nose and blows it out through his mouth. Adam’s pain makes him angry.

“I will,” Adam says, not returning his anger. Adam never returns his anger.

Ronan grunts in response. He doesn’t doubt him. He doesn’t have a reason to. He doesn’t understand Adam yet either, but he’s working on it. On his shoulder, Chainsaw ruffles her feathers and then launches herself up to start the first of several wide laps around the ship.

Adam turns around and lowers himself to the deck. He sits with his legs sprawled out in front of him, still a bit taken by the very sight of them separated. Ronan hunches over and drops his elbows to the railing so he can hear Adam when he speaks.

“They ask about you,” Adam says.

“Did you tell them I paid them enough to mind their own business?”

Adam huffs, amused. “No, mostly I answer their questions. As well as I can anyway. There’s a lot I don’t know.”

“What you don’t know isn’t very interesting.”

“If that was true you wouldn’t have leapt off a pirate ship. If that was true we wouldn’t be speeding toward the place you call home on the first available ship even though you never talk about it, and as far as I can tell, don’t really want to be going back. One disaster in a month is an accident. Two can be a coincidence. What will three be?”

The night stretches out around him on all sides. Even though the moon is full the water is black and the horizon is murky and indistinct. The crests of the small waves lapping along around them shine like diamonds. The beauty of it makes him anxious. “I don’t believe in coincidence, and we’ll label three when we get to it.”

“You don’t believe in coincidence?”

“I suppose you think coincidence brought you here?”

“Oh no, I don’t believe in coincidence either, but I’m maybe starting to buy into fate.”

“If fate is responsible for the two of us being here at this moment. Me fleeing one fight for another. You ripped from your home and in constant pain. Then fate better hope we never meet. I’ll tear its throat out.”

“My company is so terrible for you?” Adam asks. “You’d rather be alone, pretending you’re not terrified of losing the fight you’re headed for?”

Ronan would rather be alone, but not because Adam’s presence is terrible. Adam’s presence is unbearable for a whole other reason. Ronan wants Adam in every way he can think to want a person. He wants him in a way he’s never wanted anything in his life and the depth of it scares him. He’s terrified of losing him. He’s terrified of being something that would tie Adam to a time and place. Adam wants so badly to see the world that he’s wordlessly putting up with the reminder his forest left him. Ronan knows that every step Adam takes calls him home to where his body isn’t heavy and he’s not the stubborn source of his own pain.

Adam’s life probably hadn’t been perfect, but it was what had made him who he was. Who is he now? Drifting. Letting Ronan pull him away over the back of the ocean that was his home. Letting Ronan wrap arms around him when they sleep as if he’s become a cage, as if he can keep Adam from slipping overboard if he really wants to. Ronan wouldn’t ever force Adam to stay with him, but he’s also too scared to say that out loud, in case it makes Adam second guess his place at Ronan’s side.

“What does a creature of myth know?” Ronan spits, drowning his steadily growing affection in venom. He’s convinced both will hurt Adam, but that the latter will hurt less in the long run.

“I’m not a myth,” Adam says. “I’m right here.” He looks up at Ronan. In the silvery-blue dead of night he looks almost like he had underwater, just more defined. More real. Adam is so very real. Ronan wants to cup his face in his hands and smooth out the sharp edges of him.

“Well bully for you.” Ronan squats down next to Adam on the deck so that they’re at the same eye level. “I am. Every man who presumes to know himself is. We’re the lies we tell ourselves to keep the truths hidden. No two people can tell a lie the same.”

“If you make the lie beautiful enough people will take more care in the telling.”

“Or keep it to themselves.”

Adam reaches out and Ronan leans away from the touch. He’s aware of the other men watching them. He’s aware of some of the things they say, even though Adam doesn’t translate all of it. There are key terms he’s picking up and he understands the looks that go with them well enough. He understands their Catholicism, so like his own, and what their accusations mean to their shared God.

Adam pulls his hand back, face pinched. “What is it you’re so afraid for everyone to see?”

Me, Ronan thinks, even as Adam’s gaze pierces him to the core and no doubt comes away with more than Ronan ever meant to give up. Whatever answer he was going to come up with is cut off by Chainsaw’s plaintive cries as she lands on Adam’s knee. A ripple of shouts comes down from the crow’s nest and across the deck.

“Sirena!” the man closest to them shouts in their direction, clear and loud.

Ronan jumps up, prepared to defend Adam. His mind is racing and stumbling, trying to figure out how they know. But instead of coming for them the man rushes the other way, toward the edge of the ship, and takes up his pistol.

“Shit,” Adam says.

He holds out his hand and Ronan hauls him to his feet. All of the men are gathering on the port side. Adam runs down from the upper deck to stand on the starboard side of the ship. Ronan is close on his heels.

“That will be the advance!” Adam calls out as he comes to the railing. “A distraction! We need men on both sides to repel the rest!”

A bell clangs above them in frantic warning and men come up from below deck to swarm both sides of the ship. They push Ronan and Adam back to get to the railing, but Adam fights his way forward and one of them hands him a pistol. There’s a volley of gunshots and some muffled cries, then the first ghoulish face pushes its way over the railing and reaches for the closest sailor. All of them fall back and dodge out of the way. It climbs onto the deck, white skin and tail pale and lurid in the moonlight. Two others follow close behind. The first one heads straight for Adam. He tries to take another shot, but he misses. Ronan can see that his hands are shaking.

“Adam!” he shouts. Ronan unties the knife from his waist, leather sheath and all, and tosses it across the deck.

Adam snatches it out of the air and pulls the blade free. He stabs for the creature, but instead of going for the face or heart as the other men around him are, he drives the knife directly into the hand coming toward his face. The blade pierces the pale skin and comes out the other side.

The siren lets out a piercing scream like the banshees of Ronan’s childhood and everything stops. The other sirens still as if a spell has been cast. The crew look around and stumble a bit at the pause in the onslaught. Everyone turns to look at Adam and the damage he’s inflicted.

Another siren slides up behind him and places its hand on Adam’s neck, shocking him too into stillness. It rests there, gentle and familiar in a way that makes Ronan’s stomach twist. The siren leans forward, concave chest brushing Adam’s back, and whispers into Adam’s ear. Its eyes, however, are trained on Ronan, pinning him in place somehow. He struggles to move forward through the clutch of bodies between them and can’t move his feet. As everyone watches, the siren places his other hand to Adam’s temple and starts to pull Adam apart.

Instead of memories or bravery like they are stealing from the other men, the pieces this ghost pries from Adam are his newly achieved humanity. Or at least the artifice of it. Ronan is not naive enough to think that legs alone make a human or that Adam would want to be anything but what he is, regardless of his form. Ronan is fine with this, but the rest of these men didn’t know. He’d been worried about their reaction before, but he’s flat out frightened now.

The siren runs a hand down Adam’s neck and along his arm to take the knife from his grasp. Adam’s eyes go black the way Ronan’s seen them go when he dips into himself. The ruddy color of Adam’s skin pales. Scales raise up, luminescent in the moonlight and sharp against the skin of his naked forearms and calves. Deep lines etch themselves into the small bit of visible the skin above his collar bones, thickening into gills.

It’s almost like there are two of him, the new human Adam laid over the merman he is beneath. The longer the siren holds him, the longer the two of them look like they’ve been pulled from the same trench. A murmur sweeps across the deck as this horror unfolds. No one dares look away.

Ronan feels like he’s been rooted in his spot for a hundred years, but it’s not even a full minute before Adam rams his elbow into the siren’s rib cage and drops his head back swiftly onto its broad, flat nose. Startled, the siren’s hand falls away from Adam’s head and in one fluid motion Adam turns and grabs onto the wrist of the hand holding Ronan’s knife. Then he twists the creature’s arm down and up again, sinking the blade into the siren’s chest while its fingers are still wrapped around it, making it an accomplice in its own defeat. This one too lets out a scream that hurricane winds would envy and draws away from Adam, tail lashing on the deck.

If the first scream stopped time, this second resets it. Ronan trips forward and runs to Adam’s side as the other men turn back to the frenzy, driving the creatures toward the rails with newfound ferocity. Ronan slides across the wood so that he’s between Adam and the siren. He wrenches his knife from between the siren’s ribs as it claws at him weakly. He can feel memories going off like spore puffs with each of its touches, but the creature’s hands aren’t steady enough to truly strip him of anything important.

The siren hisses and spits. It pivots on its tail, dropping to the deck and slithering up onto the railing. It plunges head first overboard. Ronan hopes it snaps its neck. The other sirens follow suit, diving back into the waves. The men rush to the rails to lean over and shout after them. Some of them spit into the water out of spite.

“Ronan,” Adam says, voice low and tight.

Ronan whips around and places a hand against Adam’s cheek, his neck, his shoulders, his chest. Adam looks human again, though his skin is still paler than it should be. The half transformation seems to have washed away any of his usual color.

“Jesus,” Ronan says, through a shaky exhale. He wipes the siren blood from the knife onto his trouser leg and pulls the sheath from Adam’s hand. “Are you okay? What did he take?”

“Nothing, I don’t think. Their power doesn’t work on us like it works on you.”

“You looked…” Ronan’s mind stumbles, because Adam looked breathtaking in his form and his fury, but that’s not a sentiment he thinks the rest of the men will share.

Adam grips Ronan’s wrist. “I was afraid of that. We should go back to the room. Now.”

Ronan lets Adam pull him, but they don’t even make it to the trapdoor over the stairwell before they’re stopped by another member of the crew. He’s speaking fast and Ronan only understands some of the words. Adam is shaking his head, reply coming out quiet and vehement.

“No,” he’s saying. “No, no.” He tries to push forward, but the man steps to the side and continues to block their way. There’s another rapid exchange of words.

The man moves closer. Ronan pulls Adam back and steps between them. He’s taller, but the man is broader and more muscular. Ronan’s already calculating how best to bring him down.

“Un tritón,” the man says with a sneer, tilting his head at Adam. “Eres peligroso.”

“No,” Ronan says. “He’s not a danger. We just want the passage I paid for. That’s it. We don’t want anything from you. Nada”

“They think I called the sirens here,” Adam whispers.

“That’s stupid, you’re not a siren.”

“And it took you a while to realize the difference too. Humans are historically bad at subtle differences between things that aren’t like them.” He raises his voice to talk over Ronan’s shoulder and gestures to himself and his legs, “Tritón, como una sirena, sino tambien humano.” Then he points out over the edge of the boat. “Demonio.”

The man in front of Ronan nods like he’s gotten what he wants and points at Adam. “Tritón, sirena, demonio del mar. Es lo mismo.”

“No, it’s not the same.” He sends another rapid volley of words at the man. He grabs Ronan’s wrist again and tugs as he moves forward. “Come on. I told him I’d lock myself up.”

Ronan shakes Adam’s hand off and glares at the man as he steps around him. He looks up at the faces staring at them from around the deck. Some of them are angry, but a fair few look shocked or hurt. Adam’s betrayal seems to have hit home for some of them. Ronan thinks that can probably be used to their advantage in the long run, but even he, whose first instinct is always to fight, knows he has to give it the night to sink in. If the fight comes to them in the morning he’ll be ready, but for the first time in his life he’s hoping cooler heads prevail.

Once they’re holed back up in their small, makeshift quarters, Adam drops onto the bed and curls up with his back to the room. Ronan kicks off his boots and sits down behind Adam. He looks down at his hands and patiently waits for Adam to say something. There’s no window in their room, so the only light comes from a lamp hanging off a hook on the wall. Ronan watches the yellow slant of it rock with the ship, throwing shadows across the bare walls and floor.

When Adam finally rolls onto his back Ronan’s heart has had enough time to slow. The protective anger has mostly drained out of him. When he looks Adam over it’s mainly with concern. Adam’s face is wet and his mouth is set in a thin, miserable line.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“What the fuck do you have to be sorry for? You saved their miserable lives and they treated you like shit.”

“I’m not saying I was in the wrong. I’m sorry my place here has made things difficult for you.”

Ronan laughs, low and mirthless. “You are the least difficult thing about my whole life right now.”

Startled, Adam furrows his brow and looks up at Ronan, wary. “I—”

Ronan cuts him off with a shake of his head. He reaches down for the hem of Adam’s shirt and tugs at it. Adam sits up and pulls it over his head. Ronan places his hand over Adam’s cheek the way he’d wanted to before the attack. It does nothing to smooth out the lines of him, but Ronan’s no longer sure he wants to.

He runs his hand down Adam’s chin and neck. He lets himself linger over Adam’s collar bones, running his fingers along the fine ridge of them, looking for some evidence that the gills had ever been there. There’s nothing. Just smooth, unmarked skin. In the lamplight it looks like some of Adam’s color is returning. Ronan runs his hand down Adam’s chest, pushing lightly at his ribs and his abdomen. Adam gives him no indication that he’s injured.

“You’re not hurt. That’s all I needed to know.”

“There’s probably a little more you should know.” Adam places a hand over Ronan’s and pulls it away from his stomach. He settles their hands in his lap and turns Ronan’s over, rubbing his thumbs lightly across the skin.

“You don’t owe me anything,” Ronan says.

Adam gives him a look that conveys quite clearly how much he disagrees with that sentiment. “I’m not a siren,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not a danger.”

“Who the hell isn’t?” Ronan asks.

“You.”

Ronan laughs again, just as bitter as before. “I know you don’t know me that well, but—”

“No, listen. You’re not a danger because you don’t want to hurt people. You will hurt people. You have hurt people. But it’s not what drives you.”

“Tell me then, Aristotle. What is it that drives me?”

“Loyalty. Family, love. You care about things and people very deeply, even though you pretend you don’t. I, I’m not driven by those things.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t care about your sea rat. She wouldn’t have been so protective of you if you weren’t something to each other. If it wasn’t deep, whatever it is.” Ronan thinks about Blue’s lips on Adam’s lips, on his skin. Of the easy way they touched each other and the fierce way Blue dealt with outsiders.

“No, you’re right. I love Blue very much,” Adam says. Ronan tenses as jealousy snaps at his heart, teeth sharp and breath hot. Adam squeezes his hand tight. “But that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, love isn’t what drives me. It’s a relatively new thing for me.”

“What then?” Ronan asks. His voice feels rough in his throat.

“Survival. Life. To leave a mark. Ronan, I’m not a siren, but that doesn’t mean I can’t become one. We’re not the same, sirens and merpeople, but it’s not a distinction that comes from birth. It’s in our upbringing. My father was a siren. My mother was, well, she left very little of a mark on who I am. I could be that. It would be easier to be that. I’ve been tempted.”

“Why aren’t you?”

It doesn’t make sense to Ronan, a son not wanting to be like his father. He’s seen Declan struggle with it their whole lives, but he’s thought that was a failing in Declan. He’s never once considered that there might be a fundamental failing in some fathers and the ways they see their sons.

“They take,” Adam says. “They take memories and souls from humans. They take life from other merpeople. Up there they almost ripped the humanity from me. I spent so many years watching them rip things from people, letting my father take things from me. It’s disgusting. It’s not how things are supposed to be. Family should be loyal. The touches from family should be soft and reassuring. Family should lift you up. At least, that’s what Blue tells me. All I know is that she felt more right to me than my own family ever did. And now, you do too.”

“You can just be one? Like that?” Ronan asks, snapping his fingers. Adam nods. Ronan closes his hand over Adam’s and holds it between them. “You could take everything you want to know from me and you haven’t. Why?”

“I just told you why. I can fill myself to the gills by taking. I could have every secret thing about you that is prickling in my thoughts at night, but in the end I’d be just as empty as I always was. In the end, I wouldn’t have you anymore. I’d know everything about you, but the experience of you would be lost. Experiences are why I’m here.”

Ronan places Adam’s hand against his temple and flattens Adam’s fingers with his own. It feels dangerous, like putting a gun to his head and letting someone else have control of the trigger. It shouldn’t feel dangerous. That’s Adam’s whole point. He isn’t going to take what he could. Not from Ronan, not from the men on the deck, not from anyone.

No, the danger in Adam isn’t in what Adam is. It’s in who Adam chooses to be. Adam chooses to be someone Ronan will never live up to, and the sooner he realizes that the sooner Ronan will be alone.

Ronan takes a shaky breath. “What if I ask you to?”

Adam grimaces. “You won’t. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I won’t,” Ronan agrees. “Because I know what it would mean to you.”

Adam reaches up and cups Ronan’s cheek with his other hand. “I don’t need you to protect me, is the point. You don’t need to put yourself between me and them or me and my past or me and the future. Stop treating me like I’ll break. I survived all this time without you. What I want from you is so much more than survival.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You,” Adam says. “Just what you want to give me. Your eyes, your hands, your world, your...heart. Wherever you want to stop giving is where I’ll stop taking. And in return you can have everything you want.”

“I can’t take things from you. Not when you just said—”

“The difference here is that I’m giving it to you. Take whatever you want from me, Ronan. Just don’t take care.” Adam slides his hands down Ronan’s face and his throat and looks at him, waiting for some acknowledgment that he understands.

They’ve kissed many times since Adam’s transformation, but Adam is always the instigator. They haven’t done much more, in spite of being so close and in spite of the way Ronan feels like he’s burning away with Adam pressed against him. When they do, Adam is always the instigator there too. Ronan feels as lost with respect to what Adam wants as he is with respect to what Adam is. He doesn’t know how to navigate any of it and he’s been holding himself away from it, trying not to bear down and become a thing that happens to Adam like he often feels he is for Gansey and his brothers.

He’s been waiting for Adam to decide he wants to leave and giving him the space to do it, but Adam doesn’t want to leave. Adam only wants him. Adam wants to see the world, but it’s Ronan’s world he wants to see. Adam wants to feel a pulse beneath his fingertips and he wants it to be Ronan’s pulse. Adam knows what he wants, for better or worse, and Ronan has been keeping it from him. He doesn’t want to do that anymore.

Ronan leans forward and kisses Adam roughly. He pushes back until Adam is half-reclined and caught between him and the wall. Adam gives back as good as he gets and opens his lips to let Ronan in. Ronan climbs up onto his knees and crawls over Adam’s legs until he’s hovering above him with Adam’s face caught in his hands and Adam’s knees pulled up and pressing into the backs of Ronan’s thighs, forcing his legs apart. Adam runs his hands up under Ronan’s shirt and pulls until Ronan tugs it over his head and throws it on the floor. Adam spreads his fingers across Ronan’s back and pulls him closer. Ronan leans into him and settles in his lap.

He breaks away from Adam’s mouth. His breath is coming harsh and quick and the familiar want is curling warm in his gut. The knowledge that he can give in to it makes it flare white hot within him. He doesn’t break their eye contact as he reaches back and wraps his fingers around Adam’s wrists. He pulls them away from him and pushes them up against the wall over Adam’s head.

Adam doesn’t fight it. He doesn’t move at all. He sits eerily still as Ronan pitches with the motion of the ship and shivers into his desire. Ronan leans down to experimentally lick across the pale skin where Adam’s gills had been. Adam lets out a low keening noise and exhales like the air has been punched out of him. He tilts his hips.

Ronan gasps into Adam’s shoulder at the sudden friction. He pulls back again and studies Adam’s face. There’s no hesitation in it. Ronan stares Adam down in challenge, one final opportunity for Adam to back out of his before he’s stuck in the shit with Ronan for good.

Adam stands his ground like no one ever has. He rocks his hips again and Ronan sucks a breath in through his teeth. He lets go of Adam’s wrists so he can touch every part of him that he can, exploring his body in the foolhardy way all men explore the sea. Adam returns the favor and soon they’ve entirely lost themselves in each other. There is no creaking ship and no calm night sea. There are no fathers or suspicious men. There is not death coming for either of them. There is only blood and breath and tongues and skin. There is only this new and growing feeling of belonging.

Ronan has been dreading going home because he’s not the boy who left it. He’s not the unsure, exiled, and destructive youth that showed up on the Ganseys’ doorstep when Declan refused to put up with him anymore. But he’s been living his life this whole time like he was. He’s been living a life that wasn’t supposed to change him, but did anyway just by virtue of having been lived . He doesn’t know who he is anymore. What if his home no longer recognizes him? Or worse, what if he no longer recognizes it?

With Adam’s hands running down his back he feels like he knows. He feels like he might be home already and there’s nothing left to fear in the discovery. There’s a golden glimmer of a thought sparking in the back of his mind and following the trail the forest had first forged along his spine. It’s galvanizing. It just might, after all this time, be acceptance.

When they dock in Seville and part with the ship, there is no love lost between them and the crew. From there it’s easy for Ronan to find them passage up into France and back across to Ireland. The entire way he throws himself into Adam and doesn’t stop to think about the problem at hand until his feet are on home soil.

They arrive at The Barns unannounced as day breaks over the fields. Ronan asks the coachman to stop away from the house. As he pulls off and leaves them next to the dirt track up to the homestead, Ronan closes his eyes and takes several deep breaths. Adam wanted to see his world and this is it, where it starts and ends, where he was born and where he saw his father’s corpse, where he learned about love and hate and everything in between. He can’t even begin to imagine what it looks like to an outsider.

“What do you see?” he asks.

“Green,” Adam says. “I’ve never seen any place look so alive.”

“It used to be more alive. No, awake. It used to be more awake, before my father died.”

“So we’ll wake it,” Adam says, as if it’s that easy. Then when Ronan doesn’t answer, he says, “If you want to, that is.”

Ronan laughs and opens his eyes. “It’s all I want, but it’s an impossible problem. That’s just what happens when a dreamer dies. His life leaches out of the things he created.” He reaches up and runs a finger across the tips Chainsaw’s tail feathers without thinking about it.

Adam watches him for a moment, then he looks back to the house and around to the west, toward the low, tangled forest where many of Ronan’s childhood adventures had taken place. Back before Declan hated him. Back before he forgot what the invincibility of childhood really felt like.

“You didn’t tell me you left your own forest behind.”

“I didn’t leave it behind,” Ronan says, but doesn’t provide further explanation. He doesn’t know how to say that he brought it with him. He doesn’t know what to say about any of it.

They stand in the same spot as the sun rises and the fog burns away from the fields. “Do you want to go in?” Adam says.

“Yes.”

“But you’re afraid to.”

“Yes.”

“Ronan, this is your home. It will welcome you back.”

Ronan shakes his head. He reaches out and puts two fingers on Adam’s elbow, grounding himself. “This was my father’s home and I’m not going to be welcomed back without a fight. The Gansey estate is my home now, more or less.”

Adam gives him a searching look. “Gansey is your home,” he says. There’s no jealousy or judgment in it. It’s just a statement like any other, like Adam is trying to put together the pieces and figure out how humans fit together.

“Yeah,” Ronan says. “Yeah, he is.”

“Then he should be here, not me.”

“No.” Ronan slides his hand down Adam’s arm and links their hands together. “I want you here. I want you with me.” Adam smiles up at him. Ronan can’t return it. He tugs Adam forward and then drops his hand. They walk side by side up to the main house.

They’re halfway across the yard when the front door opens and Matthew comes barreling out at them, barefoot and still in his sleep clothes. He’s taller and broader than when Ronan last saw him, but his unruly golden curls are the same. The collision of their bodies almost knocks Ronan off his feet. Matthew wraps his arms around Ronan’s neck like he did when they were boys and squeezes him tight.

“Brother,” he says, the word muffled by the cloth of Ronan’s jacket.

Ronan squeezes him back and tries to make up for seven years of lost time. “Hey pal. Hey. Did you turn into a bear while I was away? If you don’t stop squeezing you’re going to kill me.”

Matthew laughs and pulls back. He notices Adam for the first time and gives him a wide smile, holding his hand out. “Matthew,” he says. “You don’t look like anyone I know.” Adam takes his hand and tries to return his smile, but it’s not nearly as blinding.

“This is Adam. I met him along the way.” Ronan leans forward and places his hand to the side of his mouth like he’s got a treasured secret. “He’s a merman,” he says.

Adam looks surprised that Ronan would out him so soon, but he relaxes when Matthew laughs, loud and jubilant. “Liar,” he says. “There’s no such thing.”

Ronan winks at Adam. “I never lie.”

Behind Matthew the door opens and Declan comes out onto the front step. He grimaces when he sees Ronan. “Matthew, I still need your help out with the sleepers. Come inside and put on proper clothes.”

“Sure!” Matthew calls. He rolls his eyes and punches Ronan’s arm. “You’re staying, right? We can have lunch.”

“We can have anything Declan will let us have.”

“Good,” Matthew says. He turns and gives Declan a pointed look. “Because Declan would never deny me things I want, would he?”

“Just get dressed,” Declan says. He comes down the steps as Matthew goes up them, not taking his eyes off Ronan.

Just seeing Declan washes Ronan in old hurts and past blame. He’s viciously angry at the smug quirk of Declan’s mouth and the way he wears their father’s proud jaw like it’s a role he can slip into, even though he hated the man. He’s beyond angry at how this was supposed to be his home and Declan pulled it right out from under him as executor of the will. Everything in him tenses for a fight.

Adam reaches out and lightly brushes his fingers against Ronan’s wrist. Declan follows the movement with his eyes and frowns. “It’s about damned time you showed up.”

“What? You’re the one who kicked me out in the first place. You don’t get to come down here like you own the place and act like you can command my presence in it.”

“For the time being, I do own the place, and I’ve been trying to find your worthless carcass for months.” Declan crosses his arms, fists clenched. “While you’ve been off dallying with Gansey and taking up with strange men, I’ve been trying to clean up your mess.”

“He’s not strange,” Ronan says quietly, because he can’t quite process the rest of it.

Ronan hadn’t left behind any messes. He took all of his messiness with him when he was shipped off to England. Which means that Greenmantle has already been here. Which means that he’s too late. But that can’t be right, because Matthew seems fine. Everything seems to be as he left it.

Declan is eyeing Adam up, the tilt of his lips becoming crueler by the second. “Do you have a name?” he asks rudely.

Ronan grits his teeth. “This is Adam. He saved my life, and he deserves your respect.”

“Why does that deserve my respect?” Declan snorts. “Your life wouldn’t need saving if you didn’t insist on trying to throw it away at every turn.”

The front door opens and Matthew comes out dressed for farm work in tired old slacks and an unstarched shirt. He’s rolling his sleeves up as he comes to a stop between his brothers. “You’re staying, right?” he says to Ronan. “We can find room for your friend.”

“If he needs a separate room,” Declan mutters.

Ronan bites back his retort for Matthew and Adam’s sakes. “Yes, we’re staying.”

“Good.” Matthew gives him another quick hug and does the same to a startled Adam. Then he pulls on Declan’s arm and gets them headed off toward the back field. “Your room is as you left it!” he calls over his shoulder.

Ronan can hear Matthew chastising Declan for the way he treated them as they go, but he knows it won’t make a difference. Declan humors Matthew, they both do, neither of them willing to squash the kindness that keeps him from being like them, but Declan’s decisions don’t always come down to Matthew’s feelings. There’s gonna be hell to pay later.

Still, he’s home. He recognizes it and it recognizes him. Ronan knows when to take small victories.

Adam nudges him with his elbow. “Do I get to see your childhood room?”

“Not much to see, but yes.” He starts up the yard, resuming their walk to the house. “I don’t guess you had many stuffed animals under the ocean.”

“No one wants a waterlogged teddy bear,” Adam says, feigning seriousness.

“I’m surprised you even know what a teddy bear is.”

“I am a merman, not an idiot.” Adam bumps Ronan’s hip with his own and it turns into a short tussle. They trip up the steps laughing and Ronan opens the door. He pauses at the threshold. Adam stops behind him and waits.

“It’s been so long,” Ronan says.

“Then why wait any longer?”

Ronan turns back to look at him. “Do you know how infuriating it is that you always say things like saying them makes them true?”

“Sometimes it does.” Adam shrugs. “Hey, you’re not alone, you know. You brought me with you. Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out.”

“You and me, huh?” Ronan asks.

He doesn’t give Adam time to answer before he places a hand on his hip and pulls him through the door. They move over the threshold together as Ronan presses his lips to Adam’s and leaves the thank yous he knows he’ll never find words for. They will do this together. They’ll send Noah for Blue and Gansey. They’ll work it out with Declan. They’ll find Greenmantle and take him down. They’ll wake up his father’s domain and Ronan will find out where his father ends and he begins.

Together, because they have the power. Together, because they’re stronger for having each other. And even though it feels like tempting fate to even think it, Ronan feels that now that they’re together, there’s nothing that can take them apart.