They discussed whether they felt they had a responsibility to protect Cabeswater and the ley line – they all did. Whether they thought Artemus knew more than he was saying – they all did. Whether they thought he would ever talk freely about it – they were all unconvinced.

Partway through this, Ronan got up to pace. Adam went to the kitchen and returned with a coffee for himself. Blue made herself a nest of sofa cushions beside Gansey and put her head in his lap.

This was not allowed.

But it was. The truth was sliding into the light.

They also talked about the town. Whether or not it was wiser to hide from or to fight with outsiders coming to Henrietta to dig for supernatural relics. As they threw around ideas for dreamt defences and dangerous allies, weaponized monsters and acid moats, Gansey gently touched the hair above Blue’s ear, careful not to brush the skin near her eyebrow because of her wound, careful not to meet Ronan’s or Adam’s eyes because of self-consciousness.

It was allowed. He was allowed to want this.

They talked about Henry. Gansey was mindful that he was telling Henry’s closely guarded secrets, but he had also decided by the end of the school day that to tell Gansey something was to tell Adam and Ronan and Blue. They were a package deal; Gansey could not be expected to be won without winning them as well. Adam and Ronan made puerile jokes at Henry’s expense (“He’s half Chinese” “Which half?”) and sniggered clannishly; Blue called them on it (“Jealous, much?”); Gansey told them to put aside their preconceptions and think about him.

No one had yet said the word demon.

It hung there, unspoken, defined by the shape of the conversation around it. The thing Adam and Ronan had driven in pursuit of, the thing that had inhabited Noah, the thing that was possibly attacking Cabeswater. It was quite possible that they might have gone the entire evening not addressing it if Maura had not called from 300 Fox Way. Gwenllian had seen something in the attic mirrors, she said. It had taken this long to work out what she had really seen, but it seemed like it had been Neeve with a warning.

Demon.

Unmaker.

Unmaking the forest and everything attached to it.

This revelation made Ronan stop in his pacing and Adam go completely silent. Neither Blue nor Gansey interrupted this curious silence, and then, at the end of it, Adam said, “Ronan, I think you need to tell them, too.”

Ronan’s expression, if anything, was betrayed. This was wearying; Gansey could see precisely the argument that it was heaving towards. Adam would shoot something cool and truthful over the bow, Ronan would fire back a profanity cannon, Adam would drip gasoline in the path of the projectile, and then everything would be on fire for hours.

But Adam merely said, in an earnest tone, “It’s not gonna change anything, Ronan. We’re sitting here with dream lights around us, and I can see a hooved girl you dreamt up eating Styrofoam in the hall. We ride around in a car you pulled out of your dreams. It’s surprising, but it’s not going to change the way they see you.”

And Ronan retorted, “You didn’t handle the revelation well.”

In his hurt tone, Gansey thought that he suddenly understood something about Ronan.

“I had other things going on,” Adam replied. “That made it a little hard to take on.”

Gansey definitely felt like he understood something about Ronan.

Blue and Gansey exchanged looks. Blue had an eyebrow raised into her bangs; her other eye was still squinted shut. It made her appear even more curious than she would have normally looked.

Ronan plucked at his leather wristbands. “Whatever. I dreamt Cabeswater.”

It was once more absolutely quiet in the room.

On a certain level, Gansey realized why Ronan had been hesitant to tell them: The ability to pull a magical forest out of your head added an otherworldly cast to your persona. But on every other level, Gansey was slightly confused. He felt as if he was being told a secret that he’d already been told before. He couldn’t tell if this was because Cabeswater itself had possibly already whispered this truth to them on one of their walks there, or if it was merely that the weight of evidence was already so conclusive that his subconscious had accepted ownership of the secret before the parcel had been officially delivered.

“To think you could have been dreaming the cure for cancer,” Blue said.

“Look, Sargent,” Ronan retorted. “I was gonna dream you some eye cream last night since clearly modern medicine’s doing jack shit for you, but I nearly had my ass handed to me by a death snake from the fourth circle of dream hell, so you’re welcome.”

Blue looked appropriately touched. “Ah, thanks, man.”

“No problem, bro.”

Gansey tapped his pen on his journal. “While we’re being forthright, have you dreamt any other geographical locations that you should tell us about? Mountains? Water features?”

“No,” Ronan said. “But I did dream Matthew.”

“For God’s sake,” Gansey said. He lived in a continuous state of impossibility, occasionally agitating to a higher state of even more impossibility. All of this was hard to believe, but things had been hard to believe for months. He had already drawn the conclusion that Ronan was unlike anyone else; this was only another piece of supporting evidence. “Does that mean you know what the visions in that tree mean?”

He meant the hollowed-out tree that delivered visions to whomever was standing in it; they had discovered it the first time they explored Cabeswater. Gansey had seen two visions in it: one where he seemed quite on the verge of kissing Blue Sargent, and one where he seemed quite on the verge of finding Owen Glendower. He had a keen interest in both of these things. Both had felt very real.

“Nightmares,” Ronan replied dismissively.

Both Blue and Adam blinked. Blue echoed, “Nightmares? Is that all? Not visions of the future?”

Ronan said, “When I dreamt that tree, that’s what it did. Worst-case scenarios. Whatever mindfuckery it thought would be most likely to mess you up the next day.”

Gansey was not certain that he would have classified either of his visions as worst-case scenarios, but it was true that they had both provided a certain measure of mindfuckery. Blue’s bemused expression suggested she agreed. Adam, on the other hand, let out a breath so enormous that it seemed he’d been holding it for months. This was not surprising. Adam’s real life had already been a nightmare when he’d stepped into that tree. Mindfuckery above and beyond the truth must have been truly terrible.