"She," I snarled, whirling on him. "She was a witch―and a person. Her name was Estelle, and we burned her."
"Witches aren't people," he said impatiently. "That's a child's fantasy. They aren't little fairy creatures who wear flowers and dance under the full moon, either. They're demons. You've seen the infirmary. They're malevolent. They'll hurt you if given the chance." He raked an agitated hand thorough his hair, glaring at me. "They deserve the stake."
I clenched my hands on the tub to prevent myself from doing something I'd regret. I wanted―no, needed―to rage at him. I needed to wrap my hands around his throat and shake him―to make him see sense. I was half tempted to slit my arm open again, so he could see the blood that flowed there. The blood that was the same colour as his own.
"What if I were a witch, Reid?" I asked softly. "Would the stake be what I deserve?"
I turned off the tap, and absolute silence filled the chamber. I could feel his eyes on my back . . . wary, assessing. "Yes," he said carefully, "If you were a witch."
...
And my wife―the fucking love of my life―was the daughter of La Dame des Sorcières. The heiress of Chateau le Blanc. The goddamned princess of the witches.
...
"It doesn't matter you're a witch. [...] I never want to be parted from you again."
A little narcism to start us off.
My name, Louise, is one I rarely see used in fiction, in any form.
Tv, movies, literature, poetry, music.
Forget it, those six letters will not appear, and if they do, it's usually for someone who's frankly a bit shit.
A fair number of Louisas but rarely a Louise.
I've always found this to be incredibly disappointing.
Again, solely for narcissistic reasons.
Who doesn't want their name bestowed on a vampire fighting heroine (yes, I realise Louise the Vampire Slayer doesn't have quite the same ring to it but tell that to my Summers-loving heart).
Howlin' Wolf's, Louise? Yeah, I'll admit that's beyond fucking cool; cooler than I deserve.
And there's Louise from Attack on Titan, which I haven't seen but she sounds kind of badass? I don't know, someone tell me whether this fucked up my list or not.
...
Anyway.
There, proof that there are some awesome fictional Louises, but still few enough to piss me off.
So, imagine my absolute fucking delight to read the blurb for Serpent & Doveand discover the heroine's called Louise le Blanc.
And to then begin reading the damn story and that delight go from somewhat to stratospheric.
Because guess what?
She's amazing.
I was in love with her from her very first flip of the bird:
A familiar mustachioed face appeared over the roof's edge. Blue-green eyes. Freckled nose. The girl from the patisserie.
"Shit," said said. Then she ducked out of sight.
I concentrated on the spot where she disappeared. My body moved with renewed purpose. Within second, I hauled myself over the ledge, but she was already leaping to the next rooftop. She clutched her hat with one hand and raised her middle finger with the other. I scowled. The little heathen...
...
Kink. Activated.
Quick-witted, sharp-tongued, antagonistic, handy with a blade (and her fists; any available object, really), funny, loyal and a total opportunistic street rat.
She isn't afraid to abandon her morals to survive but she wouldn't purposefully hurt anybody.
She enjoys every single thing to the fullest extent; sticky buns, a shared joke, sex, snowfall - I don't know why these are all s things but I wouldn't put it past Lou doing that on purpose.
She's one of these infuriatingly lovable characters that you can't help but want to be around, even when she's making your blood pressure reach inhuman heights.
And her internal monologue is littered with gems like this:
I sighed ruefully at the memory. He had the most beautiful amber skin. And such a tight little ass.
...
I've come across these type of characters multiple times in various forms of media, the characters who need a good flick on the nose for their recalcitrance and then off for a beer or two to debauch the night away.
I don't know why they're so attractive because 80% of the time they're driving everybody in their general vicinity around the bend, but they just are.
Full of life and resolutely unapologetic for it.
Perhaps because I'm of the introspective sort, I'm drawn to this persona because they aren't hindered by their own existence.
I'm dogged by my own brain every waking second - and sometimes un-waking; stress dreams can suck the big hairy one - and it's exhausting to never be sure of yourself, but in fiction I can step into someone else's thoughts, be someone else for however many pages and experience the unbound existence someone like Lou gets to live even when they're hunted and equally despised and worshipped for merely being born.
I think that's my favourite thing about her: she doesn't let anybody stop her from being herself.
Loud and brash and joyful.
Not many chosen ones are given licence to be so full of wonder; often brooding and understandably put upon, they forget to enjoy the little things but Louise le Blanc never forgets and better yet, she reminds others to do the same.
Like the hero, Reid Diggory.
Ah, Reid, what to say about stick up his arse Reid.
He's your classic stern male protagonist: devout, repressed beyond belief (I've never seen someone blush so much in my life - except maybe me, but I think I just have weird, over-reactive blood ← I'm making this a thing, don't fuss), prudish but not puritanical, loyal to a fault - much to his detriment at times, and blinded by authority.
They aren't the greatest qualities, especially when you pair them with a salty siren like our heroine.
But they're only one part of who he is, or who he is to begin with, before Louise.
Reid isn't a hero for the ages, he won't stand out amongst the Darcys and the Cassians and the Aragorns, but he does stand out as someone who is irrevocably changed for the better by the person they love.
When Reid and Lou are thrown together and forced into marital cohabitation (hello, tropes I love, and good day to you only one bed, you're always a welcome sight), their instant loathing of one another is palpable.
Star-crossed couldn't be a more appropriate term for these two chumps.
One a witch, the other a witch-hunter.
Classic.
And inevitably going to end in love.
My little heathen.
That's no spoiler, if you're alive then you know how this goes.
But it's not in the knowing that makes their foretold coupling so satisfying, it's watching it happen.
These two idiots go from nearly throttling each other on a minute-to-minute basis, to falling into the habit of teasing in lieu of yelling, causing provocative discomfort in place of threatening bodily harm, providing comfort when it's needed and eventually sharing that single bed.
And it's so damn satisfying.
They have some of the best banter I've encountered in this genre, any genre, really, largely due to the great lengths Lou will go to rile Reid up.
His eyes blazed. "You're my wife now, whether we like it or not. No man will ever touch that way again."
Tension―taut and heavy―settled between us at this words. I tilted my head and stalked toward him, a slow smile spreading across my face. He glared at me, but his breathing hitched when I leaned over him. His eyes flicked to my mouth. Even sitting, he was nearly taller than me.
"Good." I curled my hand around one of the knives in his bandolier. Flicking it to his throat before he could react, I dug the tip in hard enough to draw blood. His hand came down on my wrist―crushing it―but he didn't force me away. "But you should know," I breathed, "that if a man touched me in any way without my permission, I'll cut him open." I paused for effect, dragging the knife from his throat to his navel and beyond. He swallowed hard. "Even if that man is my husband."
It's not just antagonistic, it's downright gleefully vicious and his responses are nothing short of blushingly beautiful.
"Wait." His heavy footsteps halted just behind me. "We have things to discuss."
Things. The word had never sounded so tedious. I didn't turn around. "Such as?"
"Your new arrangements."
"Arrangement?" Now I did turn, stomach sinking. "You mean my new warden."
He inclined his head. "If you'd like. You disobeyed me this morning. I told you not to leave the Tower."
[...]
"Go ahead, then." I smiled pleasantly. "Bring him in. For your sake, he'd better be handsome."
His eyes hardened, and he walked around me to turn off the tap. "Why would he need to be handsome?"
I strolled to the bed and fell back, rolling to my stomach and propping a pillow beneath my chin. I batted my lashes at him. "Well, we are going to be spending quite a bit of time together . . . unchaperoned."
He clenched his jaw so tight it looked likely to snap in two. "He is your chaperone."
"Right, right." I waved a hand. "Do continue."
"His name is Ansel. He's sixteen―"
"Oooh." I waggled my brows, grinning. "A bit young, isn't he?"
"He's perfectly capable―"
"I like them young, though." I ignored his flushing face and tapped my lip thoughtfully. "Easier to train that way."
"―and he shows great promise as a potential―"
"Perhaps I'll give him his first kiss," I mused. "No, I'll do him one better―I'll give him his first fuck."
My articulate husband choked on the rest of his words, eyes boggling. "Wh―what did you just say?"
Hearing impairment. It was getting alarming.
"Oh, don't be so priggish, Chass." I leapt up and crossed the room, flinging the desk drawer open and snatching the leather notebook I'd found―a journal, stuffed full of love letters [...] His eyes grew impossibly wider, and he lunged for the journal. I dodged―cackling―and ran into the washroom, locking the door behind me. His fists pounded against the wood. "Give me that!"
[...]
"Take it." I nearly cracked a rib from trying not to laugh. "I've already read enough. Quite touching stuff, really. If possible, her letters were even worse.
He snarled and advanced on me. "You―you read my personal―my private―"
"How else could I get to know you?" I asked sweetly, dancing around the tub as he approached. His nostrils flared, and he looked closer to breathing fire than anyone I'd ever known. And I'd known quite a few dragonesque characters.
"You―you―"
Words seemed to be failing him. I braced myself, waiting for the inevitable.
"―you devil."
And there it was. The worst someone like my upstanding husband could invent. The devil. I failed to hide my grin.
This, this right here, is why I despise the insta-love trope, because you miss out on all of this banter-y, "innocent" touching, getting to know each other goodness.
(Especially when it's laced with such gleeful bad behaviour)
You miss out on the changes each of the characters go through simply by having their eyes opened to a perspective they were purposefully barred from before.
In the case of Lou and Reid, I'd say Reid is the one who has the most profound transformation.
Yes, Lou actively dislikes the religious order Reid is dedicated to, they kill her kind after all but there's an openness the her personality that Reid doesn't have at the start of the book.
She's witnessed first and bloody handed how nothing and no one are what they may seem. Reid hasn't experienced this yet. Not 'til Lou.
Watching him struggle with his faith is one part of why his undoing is so interesting but more involving is his slow openness to joy.
His life has been cold walls, death, policed brotherly camaraderie and structure for as long as he can remember, nothing else, no celebrating, no taking the day off, no time for himself.
The satisfaction in seeing him become a person capable of feeling more than he's allowed himself before is beautiful, even if he won't give in to Lou's curse-happy habit of swearing like a sailor - often in French, which was delightful.
He may not be the most profound of heroes but his metamorphosis from prejudiced to welcoming makes him a far more compelling hero than any perfect specimen I've come across.
This is perhaps what I liked most about the story, that Mahurin wrote characters who aren't strictly one thing or another.
She allows them to change and be changed, discover things for themselves and do whatever they want with that knowledge.
And she gives this to all of her characters, not just the leads.
Ansel, a younger recruit to Reid's Order is the most innocent of the group; sixteen, wide-eyed and not broken yet.
He's perhaps not the most fleshed out of characters - I'm hoping that changes in next book - and as far as we know he doesn't have a dark backstory, so his purpose in the book could be consider superfluous but I actually greatly appreciated someone like him being there. Someone not weighed down by other people's beliefs and capable of making his own decisions. Someone to provide a degree of light in a deceptively dark story.
In a cast of people so sure of themselves, Ansel's presence is probably the most honest and genuine; when it comes to experiencing life he might be the most important character in the book simply because he isn't sure of anything.
On the opposite side, there's Lou's best friend, Coco, a blood witch.
Hated by Lou's breed of sorceress but beloved by Lou, herself. They're loyalty to each other is the epitome of chosen family, where one goes, the other follows, they don't leave each other behind.
Where Lou's a poster child for hedonism, Coco's the more controlled of the two, she tempers her friend's impulsive side but doesn't hold her back, or herself.
Unlike Ansel, Coco is full of experience but isn't jaded by it; she knows what she likes and she'll take it but won't let it own her.
Plus her humour is of the caustic kind and my weakness for for this borders on the ridiculous.
Give me the leading ladies with acerbic wit and glares Medusa would be jealous of.
If she can stop a man dead in his tracks with a dismissive eyebrow, she's my kind of heroine.
She's another character I'm hoping is more fleshed out in the next story - I'd love a series just for her - because there's a ridiculous amount of potential there, she's not merely Lou's sidekick, she's a character all of her own.
Ansel and her both are.
Even if the world-building hadn't been interesting - it absolutely was, I'm getting there - the characters could have carried this story.
But luckily they didn't have to because the landscape and lore of Mahurin's world of witches is languorously seductive.
Set in an analogous Renaissance-type Paris where women are freely burnt at the stake and the men of the church are held up as the pinnacle of purity and righteousness, it's easy to be intoxicated by the harsh magic of it all.
As you're manhandled through the story by a frantic, hysterical Lou and a conflicted and increasingly frustrated Reid, the oppressive beauty of this version of Paris wraps around you and keeps you close, whispers frightful, stroking things to make you stay awhile.
And it's not as if any of it is exactly glamorous.
Gothic churches, theatre attics, brothels and wards for the mentally deranged are the setting for this story in a place named Cesarine.
A much more glamorous name than the city in question deserves but if it had been gilded and untouchable, it wouldn't have served the story the same way.
We need the griminess and coldness of this place to provide the necessary amount of intrigue and fear.
We needed dark alleyways with death on our heels and snowy afternoons with blood-stained cloaks and unbridled laughter.
This contrast of light and dark, poverty and privilege, credence and impiety, all played their part in the unfolding of Lou and Reid's story.
But there's a part of me that hopes we don't stay.
By the end of the book we're in a completely different landscape, on our way to somewhere possibly more treacherous than before and it's exciting to know how Lou's magic will be received there, if her and Reid's relationship will continue to defy the odds or if it will all fall to pieces.
Because with this story, there's always a cost.
With Lou's continue existence there's a cost: her heritage, herself, her people.
With her surrender to Reid, there's a cost: her trust, her respect, her love; gone it a minute if he decides.
With magic, there's a cost: physical and painful.
The last is a cost I'd be willing to put Lou through to learn more.
I'm a sucker for any kind of magic; elemental, spell-casting, necromancy, etc.
I love it, I love it all but most of the time this magic is something either learned or inherited but rarely comes at a price.
Every time Lou does magic there must be balance.
To break someone else, she must break herself.
To make someone forget, a memory of her own is sacrificed.
To take a life her magic demands she take another.
I find this a far more interesting concept than simply being able to do magic; it outwardly reflects what kind of person you are, what you're willing to sacrifice to survive, to gain power, knowledge, defeat a greater evil etc.
Because instance of magic you perform, you lose something, and the more you lose, the less you have to keep you human.
To me, that's fascinating and worrisome because if I didn't make it clear before, I deeply love and adore our heroine.
Louise le Blanc is up there in my mind palace of epic fictional women.
I don't want her to change or sacrifice the things that are so vital to she is, or even worse, the people who keep her grounded and able to revel in the joy of being alive.
I couldn't bear her snark being taken from her or memories of Reid, or Coco, or Ansel.
I couldn't bear it.
But there's two more books, a villain more powerful than she, and nowhere to go but on.
...
Please don't break my heart, Mahurin.
Please.
"'Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from you.
[...]
Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay.'"
They lure me in with their pithy, self-aware jokes and then clobber me with real life existential shit.
And I fall for it every time.
Why?
Because it's always so fucking good, and Mae Martin's crack at it might be the most brutal yet.
Totally unapologetic in its irrational complexity.
Endearing and rib-achiningly funny when it needs to be.
And consistently fucking devastating.
It's the curse and the cure all bundled into one chaotic, vitriolic, softer than soft Mae Martin package, who's anime beta-hero face I'm mildly obsessed with.
Just look at those deceptively innocent Sweaterboy eyes.
I read the book when I was in my early twenties and I remember feeling everything I was supposed to:
Disgust.
Awe.
Fear.
Kinship.
Hope.
Despair.
But at the time they were all very distant feelings specifically for the book.
My awareness was, to say the least, poor.
But thinking of it now, knowing what I do, having my own experiences of misogyny - present and reconsidered from the past - watching this unfold on screen is horrifying.
All I can feel is how real Margaret Atwood's version of the future could be.
Is.
How easy it would be for us to end up just like Offred/June.
Stripped down to nothing more than a body to breed and punish.
Because it's happening now, in small and large ways, and it's been happening since humanity knew the "difference" between each other.
There's a whole religious belief system that dominates our society, set up from the very beginning to blame women for the downfall of man.
Man.
See that word.
It's fucking terrifying
Being a woman is fucking terrifying.
An example?
Whilst I was watching the show, this was issued by WHO:
Hey WHO, just wondering which page of the report mentions that men should be prevented from drinking alcohol to ensure they don’t engage in violence against their partners? pic.twitter.com/1nwChq9eGN
It suggests all women want children and even if they don't, they still shouldn't have autonomy over their own body.
It puts all the focus on women and none on men.
It's controlling and disgusting and frankly disturbing coming from an organisation built on the ideal of protecting human welfare.
But it's nothing new.
Women deal with micro-aggressions and aggression-aggressions against them every second of the day.
Being told we can't do something with our own bodies is par the course of existing.
So starkly shown in Britney Spears' current battle for the right to her own body:
Britney Spears said on Wednesday that the people who control her affairs had refused to allow her to get her IUD removed so that she could try to have a third child.
“I want to be able to get married and have a baby,” Spears said at a court hearing.https://t.co/mQ7p0afDQh
And these are just two things in an insanely long list of crimes against women.
Which is why watching The Handmaid's Tale is so incredibly hard, because it's so, so real.
Acted with breathtaking nuance (Elisabeth Moss is a gift and the perfect Offred), shot with more originality and beauty than I could've imagined in my head, and unafraid to really get into the horror of it all.
It's a wonderful piece of television and a brilliant adaptation.
But it's horrifying to watch.
And to be honest, there's a part of me that feels something like it is coming.
There are many good words for the opposite for afraid. Unafraid, fearless, unfrightened.
Some might suggest courageous or brave as opposites.
But Blue Sargent was brave because she was afraid.
I fucking love spelunking.
...
Fictitiously, that is.
The mere thought of descending into the murky depths of some unlit, bat-infested (love bats, so you know I'm serious), stygian cavity in the ground gives me the ghost-just-tickled-my-liver shivers.
No way, no how am I willingly entering a palace of rock just to be eaten by some eldritch horror, or artfully speared by stalactites to create a Hellraiser-type murder tableau, or trapped forever as the bride of the above-mentioned eldritch horror that's trying to eat me.
Nuh uh.
Caves can fuck right off.
My imagination is waaaaay too vivid for that shit.
But in fiction?
Fuck. Yeah.
Bring on all that creepy, Hadean goodness.
...
The reason for that verbal diatribe?
There's a cave in this story and I'm unreasonably excited about it.
Deeper.
The sun vanished. Roots gave way to stalactites. The air smelled damp and familiar. The walls shimmered like something living. From time to time, Blue and the others had to shuffle through pools and steams – the narrow, uneven path had been carved by water, and the water was still doing that work.
Every ten times around Ronan's reel, Blue deposited a marker. As the stack in her hand diminished, she wondered how far they would go, how they would know if they were even getting close. It seemed difficult to believe that a king might be hidden away down here. Harder still to imagine that her mother might. This was not a place to inhabit.
[...]
They had found a valley of skeletons.
The pit was not bottomless, although it was vast and deep. The bottom had slanted and narrowed, shuttling them away from Gansey and the others, sliding them surprisingly and abruptly away from the surface. Under the diffuse gaze of the ghost light, Adam caught a glimpse of strange nests clinging to the wall. He flung his hands out, trying to slow himself. The holes of the nests heaved with something black and restless, but Adam couldn't see what. They might have been insect nests, but then he heard Ronan, skittering ahead of him, speaking rapidly in Latin, and even as Adam skidded by them, he saw them transmuting to twiggy birds' nests.
This was their job, Adam realized. This was what they had to offer: making it safe for the others. That was what they had promised: to be Gansey's magicians.
...
I think, as TheRaven Cycle series progressed, I forgot the very reason for these Raven Boys and Blue's endeavour:
To find a king, who's gone to ground.
Buried beneath the earth, waiting to be awoken.
Rex Corvus, parate Regis Corvi.
The Raven King, make way for the Raven King.
This is what the series is about, it's what drives Gansey, it's what gives Adam hope, it's an answer to a question for Ronan, it's the possibility of Noah's rebirth, and something not yet known for Blue.
It's at the centre of everything.
And that's inescapable true of the first book, where you're introduced to this set of unspeakably loveable characters, and the newness of the magic is intense and blanketing, but as it goes on, it's easy to forget their quest, even when it's all they speak of.
Because it isn't really about their slumbering king anymore, it's about them, how they're being changed and how they're changing each other.
Quietly and nervously and irrevocably.
None of them are how they were at the beginning; they couldn't be after everything they've been through together.
And some of that change is good and some of it devastating.
There is in fact, a fair amount of devastation in this story.
Unfortunately, almost solely for my dear, lovely, irascible Blue.
...Blue's sensible, pleasant expression was at odds with the fire the burned furiously inside. School was imminent, love was in the air and Blue's mother had vanished on some mysterious personal quest more than a month before, leaving behind her newly acquired assassin beau. Blue was a hurricane lurking just offshore.
As is usual for the books in this series, they're set out as one for each character (bar Noah, which irks me but I understand it): book one, Adam, book two, Ronan, book three, Blue, and book three I imagine will be Gansey's.
But unlike most series set out this way, Maggie Stiefvater isn't so strict in her narration; what should be a single character's voice in the series is instead a muted cacophony of all five.
A very welcome cacophony. If it was solely one voice, we'd miss out on the way the story unfolding affect each of the main players' psyche.
In this this addition to the series, Blue's voice does, however, ascend above the others.
My sharp-tongued girl hasn't had a moments rest since the very first page of book one:
Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she'd been told that she would kill her true love.
Prophesied to end the life of Gansey if she ever dared to kiss him, witness to his death before it even occurs, she's had a stranglehold on herself for as long as we've known her.
Constantly holding herself back, unsure of where she fits within the group but unquestionably sure it's where she belongs, agonising over her failed relationship with Adam, and just generally trying to figure out who the hell she's supposed to be within all this madness.
I thought this book would provide some clarity on all of the above but if anything, it only dredged up newer and more complicated questions.
Her heritage.
Her powers.
Her position in the group.
The above because out of everyone, Blue might just be the most integral part of the mystery of The Raven King.
The photo showed a badly degraded textile painted with three women, each in simple robes from a time well before Glendower. They stood in identical poses, hands lifted on either side of their heads, palms bloody red, heralding the Mab Darogan.
They each wore Blue Sargent's face.
Something I was entirely not expecting.
I always knew her part to play in unearthing Gansey's missing a monarch would be essential and significant but for her to be perhaps a part of the history of said monarch's interminable internment is both surprising and thrilling.
But as I said, we're still no closer to truly knowing anything.
Is she the reborn soul of someone from the past?
Is she the descendant of a sorceress?
Were her powers planted or birthed, and why do they keep her separate from those around her?
Is she the daughter of an immortal man and a doting spaewife, or is her origin something far more mysterious? Perhaps even sinister?
Could she be the daughter of The Raven King?
I don't have an answer for any of these questions, simply because Maggie Stiefvater did not provide them.
I can imagine for some Blue Lily, Lily Blue is a rather frustrating book in the series; it doesn't really do anything.
There are grand discoveries, painful losses and thrilling additions to the cast, secrets laid bare and the dénouement of their quest closer than ever but somehow the story meanders along, sleepily, lazily.
Not without intention but certainly lacking urgency.
The only thing I can compare it to is the slow easy walk of a cat. Long, lithe limbs gliding along, a destination in mind but open to change at any moment with barely a flicker of an eyelid.
We all know where Blue's going, we've known from the very start, even before we met her Raven Boys and this book doesn't alter that.
We're still going, we still know what we're searching for but this story offers a chance to discover instead of purely charging onwards.
A little less Excelsior! and little more 300 Fox Way.
And for me, I needed this moment of quiet; especially after Ronan's book, filled with imagined mechanical dragons and ligneous whispers, nightmares come to clawing life and a family imagined, the calm that comes with Blue's entry provided a chance to breathe before the climax of the story plays out.
And more importantly, a chance to both break and bond our beloved quintet of magic touched players.
I think Stiefvater was trying to kill me with lines like these:
"I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," Ronan Lynch said. If everything around Gansey was soft-edged and organic, faded and homogenous, Ronan was sharp and dark and dissonant, standing out in stark relief from the woods.
Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, "Do you?"
Ronan made an ugly sound of scorn or mirth. He was like Cabeswater: a maker of dreams. If he didn't know the difference between waking and sleeping, it was because the difference didn't matter to him.
"Maybe I dreamt you," he said.
"Thanks for the straight teeth, then," Adam replied.
...
Casually, out of view of Ronan, making sure Adam was still sleeping, Gansey dangled his hand between the driver's seat and the door. Palm up, fingers stretched back to Blue.
This was not allowed.
He knew it was not allowed, by rules he himself had set. He would not permit himself to play favourites between Adam and Ronan; he and Blue couldn't play favourites in this way, either. She would not see the gesture, anyway. She would ignore it if she did. His heart hummed.
Blue touched his fingertips.
Just this―
He pinched her fingers lightly, just for a moment, and then he withdrew his hand and put it back on the wheel. His hand felt warm.
This was not allowed.
...
As he sank into the driver's seat, he found something already sitting on the seat.
[Adam] retrieved the object and head it up under the feeble interior cab light. It was a small white plastic container. Adam twisted the lid. Inside was a colourless lotion that smelled of mint and moss. Replaced the lid with a frown, he turned the contained over, looking for more identifying features. On the bottom, Ronan's handwriting labelled it merely: manibus.
For your hands.
...
The door cracked open. Adam didn't want to look, it he did anyway.
In the hall stood Richard Campbell Gansey III in his school uniform and overcoat and scarf and gloves, looking like someone from another world. Behind him was Ronan Lynch, his damn tie knotted right for once and his shirt tucked in.
Humiliation and joy warred furiously inside Adam.
Gansey strode between the pews as Adam's father stared at him. He went directly to the bench, straight up to the judge. Now that he stood directly beside Adam, not looking at him, Adam could see that he was a little out of breath. Ronan, behind him, was as well. They had run.
For him.
...
As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan's eye glance off him and away, his disinterest practised but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes.
...
Voice toneless, Ronan said, "Sometimes, I dream of wasps."
Adam imagined it then: Ronan waking in Monmouth Manufacturing, a dream object clutched in his hands, wasps crawling in his bedsheets, Gansey unaware in the other room.
[...]
"I've dreamt him a box of EpiPens. I dream cures for stings all the time. I carry one. I put them in the Pig. I have them all over Monmouth."
Adam felt a ferocious and cruel hope. "Do they work?"
"I don't know. And there's no way to find out before it actually happens. There won't be a rematch."
...
"Squash one, squash two―"
Adam pawed for the radio at the same time as Blue. The tape ejected with enough force that Noah stretched a hand to catch it.
"That song. What are you doing with that in your player?" demanded Blue. "Do you listen to that recreationally? How did that song escape from the Internet?"
Noah cackled and showed them the cassette. It boasted a handmade label marked with Ronan's handwriting: PARRISH'S HONDAYOTA ALONE TIME. The other side was A SHITBOX SING-ALONG.
...
"You can be just friends with people, you know," Orla said. "I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys."
Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analysing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another of thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just act now that she'd had this king, she didn't want the other.
And by introducing terrible, lovable characters:
Gwenllian
Gwenllian, who was examine the roaring vacuum cleans but not vacuuming with it, spotted [the Gray Man], too. "Hello handsome sword! Have you killed anyone today?"
"One sword knows another," he told her mildly, placing his car keys in his pocket. "Have you killed anyone?"
She was so delighted that she turned off the vacuum cleaner so that her insane smile could be the loudest thing in the hall.
"Mr Gray, leave her alone and come get a cup of tea," Blue called from the kitchen table. "You'll make her start singing again."
[...]
Gwenllian instantly manifested in the kitchen, dragging the vacuum cleaner behind her like a reluctantly walked dog. "What about the curse, lily?"
"I thought you were the curse," Blue replied.
"Probably," Gwenllian said carelessly. "What else is there but I? I'm known to Welshmen free, lovely Gwen, lovely Gwen, from Gower to Anglesey, lovely Gwen, oh Gwen the dead!"
Blue said, "I told you she would start singing."
But the Gray Man just raised his eyebrows. "Weapons and poetry go hand in hand."
Gwenllian drew herself up. "What a cunning weapon you are. A poet is how I ended up in that cave."
"Is it a good story?" the Gray Man asked.
"Oh, it is the finest."
Blue watched the exchange with a bit of awe. Somewhere there was a lesson in this.
The Gray Man took a sip of his tea. "You should sing it for us."
And unbelievably, she did.
She sang a furious little song about Glendower's poet Iolo Goch, and how he whispered war in her father's ear (she whispered this part into Blue's ear) and so, as blood soaked into the ground of Wales, Gwenllian did her level best to stab him to death.
"Was he sleeping?" the Gray Man asked with professional interest.
Gwenllian laughed for about a minute. Then she said, "It was at dinner. What a lovely meal he would've been!"
Then she spit in the Gray Man's tea, but it seemed to have more to do with Iolo Goch than Mr Gray.
He sighed and pushed the cup away. "So they sentenced you to that cave."
"It was that or hanging! And I chose hanging, so they gave me the false grave instead."
Blue squinted at Gwenllian, trying to imagine her as she had been six centuries before. A young woman, Orla's age, the daughter of a nobleman, a witch in an age when witches were not always the best thing to be. Surrounded by war, and doing her best to stop it.
Blue wondered if she would have the courage to stab someone if she thought it would save lives.
Gwenllian dragged the vacuum cleaner back into the hall without any sort of goodbye.
"Gwenllian and vacuum, exit stage right," Blue said.
Colin and Piper
The very first supernatural thing Greenmantle had acquired had been a haunted doll. He'd bought it on eBay for $500 (the price included two-day shipping).
[...]
Piper – his girlfriend at the time – and he had spent the evening eating take-out sushi and throwing edamame beans at the doll in an attempt to provoke some demonic activity.
Aftwewards, Piper said, "If we had a puppy, it could pick up those beans for us."
Greenmantle had replied, "And then we could sacrifice it and use its blood to activate the doll."
"Will you marry me?" she asked.
He thought about it. "I love myself the most, though. Are you OK always coming second?"
"Samesies," she replied. Then she cut herself and smeared her blood on the doll's forehead, a level of personal involvement that Greenmantle had yet to achieve.
The Gray Man
"I wouldn't have pegged you for a fan of normal," the Gray man said. He slowed slightly as the headlights illuminated the eyes of three deer standing by the side of the road.
It was warming to be so known. She said, "I'm not, really, but I was used to it, I guess. It's boring, but at least it's not scary. Do you ever get scared? Or are you too badass for that?"
He looked amused, but also like a badass, sitting quietly and efficiently behind the wheel of the car.
"In my experience," the Gray man said, "the badasses are the most scared. I just avoid being inappropriately frightened."
Blue thought this seemed like a reasonable goal. After a pause, she said, "You know, I like you."
He glanced over at her. "I do, too."
"Like me or like you? The grammar was unspecific."
The two of them enjoyed another laugh and the presence of someone else with their precise sense of humour.
And breaking my heart by snatching one away:
[Blue] took Persephone's hand. It was as cold as the cave walls. Adam stood with his arms wrapped around himself, a question in his eyes.
Blue already know the answer, but she couldn't say it.
I don't think can ever forgive this last one and in my eternal naivety, there's hope that it isn't the end.
What use is there in being a conduit for the supernatural if you can't perform the impossible?
Which in essence sums up my entire feeling for this series.
It seems so unlikely that this particular group of people, remarkable or not, could be the ones to find a misplaced monarch and have him grant them a favour.
But it is them and it is impossible and there's no way they won't do it.
It's inevitable and I couldn't love watching it unfold more.
There's a special part of my brain that can't remember if I posted this Pynch art last month and another special section that can't be bothered checking, so...:
Don't know how many times I'll say it in my lifetime but thank fuck for fanart and the artists who realise the things the authors make me see in my head and more.
![Death Guard + Nurgle Daemons [News: Dec 30 - Jan 2018 WD with the new models] - Forum - DakkaDakka | Roll the dice to see if I'm getting drunk.](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2kh5-UTlmHE/UYsk96rLaHI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/hcFRomUR1Eg/w500-h202-p/NES03_small.gif)
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