Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“This is just. So. Typical. You always say, ‘We’re going to do this together, you and me,’ and then who ends up always doing it? Me, while you go start some other new project. Fine. Go on back. Don’t expect me to hurry back after you, though.”

He met the Gray Man’s eyes. The Gray Man was in the process of having his hands tied behind him by Morris. Efficiently, with a zip tie.

The Gray Man looked at Jesse Dittley’s body and closed his eyes for a second. Unbelievably, he looked angry, so he must have possessed emotions after all.

Greenmantle hesitated.

“Piss or get off the pot,” Piper snapped.

“Just go, Colin,” the Gray Man said. “You would have spared us both a lot of trouble if you’d never come.”

Greenmantle took the opportunity to go. He got lost heading back across the field — he had such a shit sense of direction — but once in the car, he knew the way. Away. All directions were away.

46

Blue Sargent was afraid.

There are many good words for the opposite of afraid. Unafraid, fearless, unfrightened.

Some might suggest courageous or brave as opposites.

But Blue Sargent was brave because she was afraid.

If Persephone could die, anyone could die. Maura could die. Gansey could die. There didn’t have to be ceremony or portent.

It could happen in a moment.

They went to Cabeswater again. Calla came with, but they were sans Malory, who was still unreachable, and sans Mr. Gray, who had vanished without explanation, and sans Noah, who had appeared only as a brief whisper in Blue’s ear that morning.

Again they were prepared with safety equipment and helmets, only this time Adam and Ronan were to lead the way into the pit. This had been Adam’s idea, quickly backed up by Ronan. Cabeswater would not let Adam die because of the bargain, and it would protect Ronan for reasons unknown.

It was dark. The headlights of Ronan’s BMW and Gansey’s Camaro made it only a few feet into the mist rising from the damp field outside of Cabeswater. It seemed impossible that it was the same day Persephone had died. How did some days have so many hours in them?

Outside of the cars, Blue begged Calla, “Please stay here and keep time with Matthew.”

“No way, chicken. I’m coming with you,” Calla said. “I’m not letting you do this by yourself.”

“Please,” Blue said again. “I’m not by myself. And I can’t take it if —”

She didn’t finish. She couldn’t say if you died, too.

Calla put her hands on either side of Blue’s head, smoothing down her unsmoothable hair. Blue knew that she was feeling everything that Blue couldn’t say, but she was okay with that. Words were impossible.

Calla studied Blue’s eyes. Her fingers studied Blue’s soul.

Please trust me please stay here please trust me please stay here please don’t die

Finally, Calla said, “Grounding. I’m good for grounding. I will stay here and ground you.”

“Thank you,” Blue whispered.

Inside Cabeswater was mist and more mist. Ronan greeted the trees as he moved in a pool of muzzy light cast from the dream light he had brought from the Barns. Adam had called it the ghost light, and it seemed appropriate.

Ronan respectfully asked for safe passage.

It reminded Blue of a prayer.

The trees rustled a response, unseen leaves moving in the night.

“What did they say?” Gansey asked suddenly. “Didn’t they just say to be careful?”

Ronan said, “The third sleeper. They warned us not to wake him.”

They went into the cave.

On the way down the tunnel toward the pit, Gwenllian sang a song about proving oneself worthy for a king.

They went in deeper.

Gwenllian was still singing, now about tasks and trials and pretender knights. Adam’s hands fisted and unfisted in the moving headlamp beams.

“Please shut up,” Blue said.

“We’re here,” Ronan said.

Gwenllian shut up.

Adam joined Ronan at the edge of the precipice, both of them peering in as if they might be able to see the bottom. The light around them was curious and golden, thrown not only by the flashlights and headlamps but by the ghost light.

Adam murmured something to Ronan. Ronan shook his head.

“Still bottomless?” Gansey’s voice came from far back.

Ronan unslung the ghost light from his shoulder, where it hung like a messenger bag, and tied it to one of the safety ropes.

Blue was more afraid than before. It was easier to be unafraid when you were the one doing the fearful things.

“Lower that in,” Ronan directed Adam. “Let’s take a look around down there, right?”

The two boys stood for several long minutes, swinging the ghost light in the pit. Swaths of light cut crazily back and forth above the pit as they did. But they seemed unsatisfied with their results. Adam leaned forward — Ronan gripped his arm tightly — and then the two of them turned back to where the others waited.

“Can’t see a thing,” Adam said. “There’s nothing to do but go in.”

“Please —” Gansey started, then stopped. “Be careful.”

Adam and Ronan regarded each other, and then the pit. They looked winsome and brave, trusting of Cabeswater or of each other. They did not look afraid, so Blue was afraid for them.

“Say it,” Ronan told Gansey.

“Say what?”

“Excelsior.”

“That’s onward and upward,” Gansey said. “It means to ascend. That’s opposite.”

“Oh, well,” Ronan said. “Squash one, squash two, squash three on and on and on —”

Then he disappeared into the hole, his voice still carrying up.

Adam said, “I’m not singing along!” but he followed Ronan in.

Ronan’s voice sang and sang and then suddenly broke off.

There was silence.

A complete silence, the sort one can only achieve in a hole in the ground.

Then there was a skittering sound, like pebbles shimmying over rock.

And more silence.

“Jesus,” Gansey said. “I can’t take this.”

“Worry is weakness, king,” Gwenllian piped up.

Silence.

Then a hoarse, cutoff shout in an unrecognizable voice. Adam, or Ronan, or something else entirely.

Gansey made a terrible sound and rested his forehead against the wall. Blue’s hand shot out to grab his, tightly. She couldn’t bear it, either, but there was nothing to do but bear it. Inside her, this new, black fear grew, the knowledge that death happened in a moment and to anyone. Ronan and Adam could be dead and there would be no earthquake. There would be no fanfare.