“Is it possible,” Gansey started, and then stopped, thinking. “Is it possible that you could dream some protection for Cabeswater?”

Ronan shrugged. “Black stuff in Cabeswater means black stuff in my dreams. I told you, I couldn’t even get some eyeball ChapStick out for Sargent last night, and that’s a nothing-thing. A child could manifest that. I got nothing.”

“I can try to help you,” Adam said. “I could scry while you dream. I might be able to clear the energy enough for you to get something useful.”

“That feels so insubstantial,” Gansey said. He really meant the monster feels so enormous.

Blue sat up and groaned, holding her eye. “I’m fine with insubstantial. I don’t think we should do anything substantial until we talk to Mom. I want to hear more about what Gwenllian saw. Ugh. I think you have to take me home, Gansey. My eye is driving me crazy and making me feel like I’m more tired than I am. Sorry, guys.”

But there were no more ideas to be had without more information, so the rest of them used this as excuse to get up and stretch, too. Blue headed towards the kitchen and Ronan jogged on ahead of her, jostling her intentionally with his hip. “You asshole,” she said, and he laughed merrily.

Gansey was deeply moved by the sound of that laugh, here of all places, here in the Barns, here in a room that was only fifty feet from where Ronan had found his father dead and his life in pieces. It was such a throwaway sound now, that laugh. An easy one that said it could be spent so easily because there were more where that one came from. The wound was healing against all odds; the victim would make it after all.

He and Adam remained in the living room, standing, thinking. A window looked out at the dark parking area where the BMW and Adam’s shitbox and the glorious Camaro sat. The Pig looked like a rocket ship in the porch light; Gansey’s heart still felt full with promise and magic, both dark and light.

“You know about Blue’s curse, right?” Adam asked in a low voice.

If you kiss your true love, he’ll die.

Yes, he knew. He also knew why Adam was asking, and he could feel the temptation to bluster and joke his way out of it, because it was strangely embarrassing to be talking about him and Blue. Blue and him. He had been transformed into a middle schooler again. But this was a night for truth, and Adam’s voice was serious, so he said, “I do.”

“Do you think it applies to you?” Adam asked.

Carefully, Gansey replied, “I think so.”

Adam glanced to see that Ronan and Blue were still safely in the kitchen; they were. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“The curse says you’re her true love. What about you? Do you love her?” Adam pronounced love very carefully, as if it were an unfamiliar element on the periodic table. Gansey was prepared to deflect this answer, but a glance at Adam told him both that his friend was quite invested in the answer and that the question was probably really about something else entirely.

“Yes,” Gansey answered plainly.

Now Adam turned to him, intense. “What does that mean? How did you know it was different than just being her friend?”

Now it was really obvious that Adam was thinking about something else entirely, and so Gansey wasn’t sure how to answer. It reminded him in a flash of being in the hole with Henry earlier that day, when Henry hadn’t needed anything from him but for Gansey to listen. This was not that. Adam needed something. So he tried to find a way to articulate it. “I suppose … she makes me quiet. Like Henrietta.” He had told Adam this once before; about how the moment he had found the town, something inside him had gone still – something he hadn’t even realized was always agitating inside him. Adam hadn’t understood, but then again, Henrietta had always meant something different to him.

“And that’s it? It’s that simple?”

“I don’t know, Adam! You’re asking me to define an abstract concept that no one has managed to explain since time began. You sort of sprang it on me,” Gansey said. “Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we don’t want to suffocate. Why do we eat? Because we don’t want to starve. How do I know I love her? Because I can sleep after I talk to her. Why?”

“Nothing,” said Adam, a lie so outrageous that they both looked out into the yard again in silence. He tapped the fingers of one hand on the palm of his other.

Ordinarily, Gansey would have given him room to roam; it was always dubiously productive to bully either Adam or Ronan into talking before they were ready. But in this case, it was late, and Gansey didn’t have months to wait for Adam to come round to the topic of discussion. He said, “I thought this was a night for truth.”

“Ronan kissed me,” Adam said immediately. The words had clearly been queued up. He gazed studiously into the front yard. When Gansey didn’t immediately say anything, Adam added, “I also kissed him.”

“Jesus,” Gansey said. “Christ.”

“Are you surprised?”

He was chiefly surprised Adam had told him. It had taken Gansey several furtive months of dating Blue before he’d been able to bring himself to tell the others, and then, only under extreme circumstances. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I’ve been given about one thousand surprises today and so I can’t tell any more. Were you surprised?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Now that Gansey had had more than a second to think about it, he considered all the ways such a thing might have played out. He imagined Adam, ever the scientist. Ronan, ferocious and loyal and fragile. “Don’t break him, Adam.”

Adam continued peering out the window. The only tell to the furious working of his mind was the slow twisting together of his fingers. “I’m not an idiot, Gansey.”

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

“I’m not an idiot, Gansey.”

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

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