And yet he’d used it. While waiting for Declan to be done with Ronan, Adam had gone to Boyd’s to get a few oil changes out of the way. He’d been there a few hours when Ronan had called. Then Ronan had texted Gansey and called Fox Way. He said the same thing to each of them: Come to the Barns, he’d said. We need to talk.
And because Ronan had never really asked them to do anything by phone, they all dropped everything to go.
By the time Adam got to the Barns, the others had already arrived – or at least the Camaro was there, and Adam assumed Gansey would have brought Blue, especially now that their secret was out. Ronan’s BMW was parked sideways with the wheels jacked in a way that suggested it had slid into its current position. And to Adam’s astonishment, Declan’s Volvo was also parked there, backed into a spot, already ready to leave.
Adam got out.
The Barns had a strange effect on Adam. He had not known how to diagnose this feeling the first few times he had visited, because he had not truly believed in the two things that the Barns was made of: magic and love. Now that he had at least a passing acquaintance with both of those things, it affected him in a different way. He used to wonder what he would have looked like if he had grown up in a place like this. Now he thought about how, if he wanted it, he could one day live in a place like this. He did not quite understand what had changed.
Inside, he found the others in various states of celebration. It took Adam a moment to realize that this was Ronan’s birthday: The grill smoked out back and there were store-bought cupcakes on the kitchen table and a few inflated balloons rolling around the corners of the room. Blue was sitting on the tiles tying strings on to balloons, her bad eye squinted shut, while Gansey and Declan stood by the counter, heads lowered, talking in low, serious voices that made them seem older than they were. Ronan and Matthew jostled into the kitchen from the backyard. They were noisy and brotherly, horsing around, impossibly physical. Was this what it was to have brothers?
Ronan looked up and caught Adam’s eye.
“Take your shoes off before you go wandering around, shit-head,” Ronan said.
Adam checked himself and leaned to untie his shoe.
“Not you – I meant Matthew.” Ronan held Adam’s gaze a moment longer and then watched Matthew chuck off his shoes. As he closely attended to Matthew skidding into the dining room on sock feet, Adam understood: This celebration was for Matthew’s benefit.
Blue clambered to her feet to join Adam. In a low voice, she explained, “Matthew is going to stay with Declan. He’s moving from Aglionby.”
The picture grew clearer: This was a going-away celebration.
Slowly, over the next hour, the story came out in fits and starts, delivered in fragments by each of the people there. The upshot was this: The Barns was changing hands by way of a bloodless revolution, the crown passing from father to middle son as the eldest son abdicated. And if Declan was to be believed, rival states slavered just on the other side of the border.
This was both a goodbye party and a war council.
Adam could not quite believe it; he didn’t know if he’d ever seen Ronan and Declan in the same space together without a fight. But it was true that these were the brothers as he hadn’t seen them before. Declan, relieved and exhausted; Ronan, intense and powerful with purpose and joy; Matthew, unchanging and ebullient like the happy dream that he was.
Something about all of this made Adam feel off-balance. He didn’t quite understand it. He would catch a whiff of boxwood from the open window in the kitchen, and it would make him think of scrying in Ronan’s car. He would catch sight of Orphan Girl hiding with Chainsaw beneath the dining room table with a box of tinker toys and once again remember the shock of discovering that Ronan dreamt Cabeswater. He had wandered into Ronan Lynch’s dream; Ronan had remade everything in this kingdom in the shape of his imagination.
“Why isn’t it in here?” Ronan’s voice came from the kitchen, exasperated.
Matthew rumbled in reply.
A moment later, Ronan hooked his fingers on the doorway of the dining room, looking out. “Parrish. Parrish. Would you see if you could find a damn roll of aluminium foil somewhere? Maybe in Matthew’s room.”
Adam didn’t quite remember where Matthew’s room was, but he was glad for the excuse to wander. As conversation continued in the kitchen, he made his way through the hallways and up hidden stairways into other half-hallways and to other half-staircases. Downstairs, Ronan said something and Matthew let out a howl of laughter so unholy that it must have been terrible. To Adam’s surprise, he heard Ronan laugh, too, a real thing, unself-conscious, kind.
He found himself in what must have been Niall and Aurora’s room. The light through the window splashed over the white bedspread, tender and drowsy. Come away o human child said a framed quote beside the bed. There was a framed photo above the dresser: Aurora, mouth open in a wide, surprised, guileless laugh, looking like Matthew. Niall grabbing her, smiling, sharp and handsome, his chin-length dark hair tucked behind his ears. His face was Ronan’s.
Adam stood looking at the photo for a long time, unsure of why it held him. It could have been surprise, he reasoned, because he had just assumed Aurora was a blank palette, mild and quiet as she was in Cabeswater. It should have occurred to him that she was capable of happiness and dynamism, for Ronan to have believed for so long that she was real, not a dream.
What was real?
But it was possible that what kept him was Niall Lynch, that older version of Ronan. The likeness was not perfect, of course, but it was close enough to see Ronan’s mannerisms in it. This ferocious, wild father; this wild, happy mother. Something inside Adam hurt.