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Gansey chest rises with breath.
Gansey’s eyelids flutter.
Ronan, still reeling from the sudden absence of the forest in his heart, watches with disbelief and hope, so furious that his blood ignites, spark to gasoline.
Gansey’s eyes open, and extraordinarily, Gansey is there behind them.
His gaze tracks over Blue, Ronan, Adam, Henry. His eyes tell them that unbelievably, he still hadn’t understood just how ferociously they all loved him until this moment.
Gansey’s throat works, and then he murmurs, “You marvelous creatures,” and Ronan slumps forward onto his chest in tremulous, exhausted relief. Blue makes a creaking sort of sound in her throat and is right next to him, her shoulder pressed to his, her hand to Gansey’s cheek, and Adam – just Adam, no one’s servant, no one’s captive – lets out a breath that contains a multitude of joy and sorrow.
“Abracadabra,” Henry says, something of a hysterical giggle in his voice, and the minute hand on Henry’s watch finally ticks forward. “God. I told you. Magicians .”
---
It’s a long time before they make it back it back to the BMW. Things have to be rearranged in all of their heads and hearts; for a while they just have to touch. Henry stays a little back from all of them, watching with furious light in his eyes. His hair is a bit dented, which seems fitting. Orphan Girl eventually curls up next to where he's sitting in the grass and falls fast asleep.
“You bastard,” Ronan keeps muttering, almost prayer-like. His face still feels twisted with agony and wet with tears, even through the all-consuming relief; Gansey holds tightly to his shoulder, cups the back of his neck, reminding them both that he’s still here.
Ronan had tasted his own death and then been forced to swallow Gansey’s. The sun breaking through the clouds bakes his back and nothing feels real but at the same time everything is so vivid that Ronan knows every sleepless, hateful night was the tradeoff for this: this wholeness.
Even with the wrenching ache of his mother’s loss. Even with the sudden silence of Cabeswater, which rings deep in his bones like the sound after a drumbeat dies away. Even with all the fresh, awful memories, the nightmares, the hopelessness that had, just moments ago, cut so deeply that Ronan thought it would be endless.
This wholeness. Adam takes Gansey’s hand and brings it to his mouth, his lips touching Gansey’s knuckles. Blue presses her forehead to Gansey’s, her mouth set in a trembling line. Ronan scrubs at his face and then leans against Adam’s shoulder, heart explosive in his chest. Gansey sits up slowly and they take a breath, all together.
This wholeness.
– – –
Ronan’s phone displays 27 missed calls and a single text message:
Please God just tell me that you’re alive.
Ronan closes his eyes and rests his head against the steering wheel for one more second of formless silence before he replies.
I'm alive.
– – –
At 300 Fox Way, Maura scoops Blue into her arms and doesn’t seem likely to let go of her any time soon. Calla takes charge, delivering blankets and warm towels and first aid, her hands firm but infinitely gentle as she turns Ronan’s head from side to side, examining his eyes and ears, which are still caked with the black blood. He allows it, because every second spent here is a second he didn’t think he would have an hour ago.
Eventually, though, he slips away, taking one more look back at his family clustered around the small round table in the kitchen. He makes his way upstairs – how he detested this house, once, and now it’s growing as familiar as the Barns – finds his way outside, to a slanted edge of the roof. He needs to see the sky while he does this.
The phone only rings one and a half times before Declan picks up. “Ronan, Jesus.”
First things first. “Is Matthew okay?” Ronan knows he is, with a certainty that can only come from having woven him from the threads of his own dreams, but he still needs to ask.
“Yeah, he – ” Declan’s voice is undone. Ronan hasn’t heard it this way since the morning after Niall’s death. “He – something was happening to him. He was – ”
Being unmade , Ronan fills in for him. “I know. And now?”
“He’s sleeping,” Declan says forcefully, possibly to make up for the waver in his voice. “Regular sleep, not that other – ” They both think of Aurora, and Ronan presses a clenched fist to his mouth for a moment. “I think he’s fine.”
“He’s fine,” Ronan agrees. There’s a scrambling, hoofy noise from the window behind him, and he's not surprised to find Orphan Girl clambering onto the roof next to him, her small body hunched and wary. She stays about a foot away and watches the birds wheel overhead. Ronan’s also not surprised to find that one of them is Chainsaw. She calls, kerah! , and Orphan Girl kerah! s back at her.
“Ronan.” Ronan’s been quiet too long. Declan knows that there’s more. He doesn’t ask for it, just waits in silence on the line.
There’s no preamble for this. Ronan curls around his knees and lays his head on them and closes his eyes. “Mom’s dead.”
Declan takes a breath, and then another. “No.” Ronan recognizes the terror behind the anger in his tone; it’s mirror-like in its familiarity. He waits.
Declan is not expressive in his grief the way Ronan has to be. When Niall had been murdered, Ronan had punched several holes in the wall of his bedroom and broken a mirror and stolen the BMW. Declan had collected all the papers from his father’s desk into a brown box and methodically sorted through them, looking for some kind of explanation.
Ronan doesn’t have to wait long. “How?”
“Something evil killed her. In the forest.” Chainsaw lands on the roof beside him and pecks at the laces of his boot. Orphan Girl makes a chittering noise and he feels her shift a little closer to him. “It’s dead now.”
Declan breathes a quiet curse, and then a quiet prayer. There is silence on the line for a few moments, brothers united in grief instead of divided. It would be a startling realization if Ronan had room left to feel anything else. “Are you alright?” Declan finally asks.
Ronan swallows away bile and looks up at the endlessly blue sky, scraped clear of the clouds from the morning. He’s not entirely sure how to answer, so he just speaks the first words that come to mind. “Come back to Henrietta.”
– – –
Adam keeps looking at his hands, at first with lingering fear, the memory of uncontrolled destruction. Now, he examines them quietly, with acceptance.
He'd lost everything, and nothing at all.
He’s no longer an instrument, but he’s still a magician.
That night at Monmouth, Ronan kisses each of his fingertips, his palms, his knuckles. He holds Adam’s hands with gentle reverence, the way Adam knows he’s been waiting to do for months. Gansey is slumped on the couch above them, sleeping the sleep of exhausted kings and the recently dead. Improbably, Henry is there too, every now and then looking down at Gansey’s head leaning on his shoulder with vague surprise and something like joy. Blue’s stroking complex patterns over Gansey’s chest, watching it rise and fall. Occasionally, she reaches down to where Adam and Ronan are sitting together on the floor, her fingers running over the crown of Ronan’s head or touching Adam’s temple.
This wholeness.
Time stretches out before them in a way Adam hadn’t dared to consider before. Gansey, alive and marvelous, on track with a new quest – one where he finds his own meaning outside of sleeping kings and the memory of his heartbeat slowing to a stop. Blue, vibrant and voracious, saving the world, probably, or at the very least some species of Peruvian caecilian from extinction. Ronan, breathing color and creation and light everywhere he goes, thriving and effervescent, forging a haven for himself out of pieces he thought he’d destroyed. Adam, prosperous not because of any number of degrees or the amount of money in his bank account, but because of this quiet acceptance. This knowing. This wholeness.
He closes his eyes and rests.