He asked, “Why do you want me to do this? Rogo aliquem aliquid.”
He didn’t really expect an answer, but he heard a babble of speech, incomprehensible but for one word: Greywaren.
Ronan, who effortlessly spoke Cabeswater’s language. Not Adam, who struggled.
But not in the Aglionby courtyard. He hadn’t struggled then. There hadn’t been a language. Just him and Cabeswater.
“Not Ronan,” Adam said. “Me. I’m the one who’s doing this for you. Tell me. Show me.”
Images barraged him. Connections darted electric. Veins. Roots. Forked lightning. Tributaries. Branches. Vines snaked around trees, herds of animals, drops of water running together.
I don’t understand.
Fingers twined together. Shoulder leaned on shoulder. Fist bumping fist. Hand dragging Adam up from the dirt.
Cabeswater rifled madly through Adam’s own memories and flashed them through his mind. It hurled images of Gansey, Ronan, Noah, and Blue so fast that Adam couldn’t keep up with all of them.
Then the grid of lightning blasted across the world, an illuminated grid of energy.
Adam still did not understand, and then he did.
There was more than one Cabeswater. Or more of whatever it was.
How many? He didn’t know. How alive was it? He didn’t know that, either. Did it think, was it an alien, did it die, was it good, was it right? He didn’t know. But he knew there was more than one, and this one stretched its fingers out as hard as it could to reach the other.
The enormity of the world grew and grew inside Adam, and he didn’t know if he could hold it. He was just a boy. Was he meant to know this?
They had transformed Henrietta already by waking this ley line and strengthening Cabeswater. What would a world look like with more forests woken all over it? Would it tear itself apart with crackling electricity and magic, or was this a pendulum swing, a result of hundreds of years of sleep?
How many kings slept?
I can’t do this. This is too big. I was not made for this.
Doubt suddenly tore blackly through him. It was a thing, this doubt, it had weight, and body, and legs —
What? Adam thought he said it out loud, but he couldn’t quite remember how doing was different than imagining. He’d wandered too far from his own body.
Again, he felt that doubtful thing reaching at him, speaking to him. It didn’t believe in his power here. It knew he was a pretender.
Adam dragged at words. Are you Cabeswater? Are you Glendower? But words seemed like the wrong medium for this place. Words were for mouths, and he didn’t have one anymore. He stretched through the world; he couldn’t seem to find his way back to the cave. He was in an ocean, sinking, darkly.
He was alone except for this thing, and he thought it hated him, or wanted him, or both. He longed to see it; seeing it would be the worst thing.
Adam flailed in the black. All directions looked the same. Something was crawling on his skin.
He was in a cavern. Crouched. The ceiling was low and the stalactites touched his back. When he reached to touch the wall, it felt real under his fingers. Or like it was real and he wasn’t.
Adam
He turned to the voice, and it was a woman he recognized but couldn’t name. He was too far from his thoughts.
Even though he was certain it had been her voice, she didn’t look at him. She was crouched in the cavern beside him, eyebrows knitted in concentration, a fist pressed to her lips. A man knelt adjacent to her, but everything about his folded-over, lanky body suggested that he wasn’t in communication with the woman. They were both motionless as they faced a door set into the stone.
Adam, go
The door told him to touch it. It described the satisfaction of the handle turning beneath his hand. It promised an understanding of the blackness inside him if he pushed it open. It pulsed in him, the hunger, the ascending desire.
He had never wanted anything so badly.
He was in front of it. He didn’t remember crossing the distance, but somehow he had. The door was dark red and carved with roots and knots and crowns. The handle was oily black.
He had come so far from his body that he couldn’t imagine how to even begin going back.
The door needs three to open
Go
Adam crouched motionless, fingers braced against the stone, afraid and desirous.
Somewhere far away, he felt his body getting older.
Adam, go
I can’t, he thought. I’m lost.
“Adam! Adam. Adam Parrish.”
He came to in a fury of pain. His face felt wet; his hand felt wet; his veins felt too full of blood.
Noah’s voice rose. “Why did you cut him so deep!”
“I didn’t measure!” Blue said. “Adam, you jerk, say something.”
Pain made every possible response meaner than it would have been otherwise. Instead, he hissed and rocked himself upright, gripping one hand with the other. His surroundings were slowly representing themselves to him; he’d forgotten that they’d crawled in between these boulders. Noah crouched an inch away, eyes on Adam’s. Blue stood a little bit behind him.
Things were starting to come together. He was very aware of his fingers and mouth and skin and eyes and himself. He couldn’t remember ever being so glad to be Adam Parrish.
His eyes focused on the pink switchblade knife in Blue’s hand.
“You cut me?” he said.
Noah’s shoulders slumped in relief at his voice.
Adam studied his hand. A clean slice marred the back of it. It was bleeding like nobody’s business, but it didn’t hurt badly unless he moved it. The knife must’ve been very sharp.
Noah touched the edge of the wound with his freezing fingers, and Adam slapped him away. He struggled to remember everything the voice had just said, but already it was sliding out of his head like a dream.
Had there even been words? Why did he think there had been words?
“I didn’t know what else to try to get you back,” Blue admitted. “Noah said to cut you.”
He was confused by the switchblade. It seemed to represent a different side of her; a side that he had not thought existed. His brain wearied when he tried to fit it in with the rest of her. “Why did you stop me? What was I doing?”
She said “nothing” at the same time that Noah said “dying.”
“Your face went sort of empty,” she went on. “And then your eyes just … stopped. Blinking? Moving? I tried to get you back.”
“And then you stopped breathing,” Noah said. He slunk to his feet. “I told you. I told you it was a bad idea, and nobody ever listens to me. ‘Oh, we’ll be fine, Noah, you’re such a worrywart’ and next thing you know you’re in some kind of death thrall. Nobody ever says, ‘Noah, you know what you were right thanks for saving my life because being dead would suck.’ They just always —”
“Stop,” Adam interrupted. “I’m trying to remember everything that happened.”
There had been someone important — three — a door — a woman he recognized —
It was fading. Everything except for the terror.
“Next time I’ll let you die,” Blue said. “You forget, Adam, when you’re pulling your special snowflake act, where I grew up. Do you know what the phrase is for when someone helps you during a ritual or a reading? It’s thank you. You shouldn’t have brought us if you wanted to do it alone.”