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The Gray Man didn’t reply Greenmantle had lasted five years without his name; he could last another five without it Eventually, the Gray Man thought, if he resisted using it for long enough, he hiet his own name, and become someone else entirely

"Did you find it?" Greenmantle asked

"I’ve just arrived," the Gray Man reminded him

"You could have just answered the question You could have just said no"

"No isn’t the same as not yet"

Now Greenround just outside the tinyFinally, he said, "I want you totis that couldn’t be found, couldn’t be bought, couldn’t be acquired, and his instincts were telling hi to come quickly He reminded Greenmantle that it had already been five years since they’d first begun looking for it

"Irrelevant"

"Why the sudden hurry?"

"There are other people looking for it"

The Gray Man cast his eyes to the instruer to allow Greenmantle to ruin his leisurely exploration of Henrietta

He said what Declan Lynch had already known "There have always been other people looking for it"

"They haven’t always been in Henrietta"

5

Later that night, back in Mon, Ronan woke up He woke like a sailor scuttles a ship on rocks, plunging, heedless, with as much speed as he could

muster, braced for the impact

Ronan had dreahtbulb’s filah broken terrain These were not Gansey’s taer’s Falls were hasty green folds, sudden rises and precipitous hatchet marks in the rock-strewn forests Mist rose froht, when it came to the Barns, was several shades darker than it was in Henrietta

Ronan had dreaain, more times than he’d ever driven it in real life The pitch-black roads, the old farht in the room with his silent mother But in his sleep he never made it ho he wanted to bring back

In his bed, he struggled to ed to no one He looked at it from above, like aRonan didn’t look at all like how he felt on the inside Anything that didn’t i boy’s cruel led in the merciless hooks of his tattoo, pulled beneath his skin to drown

So outside his body

When he ake, Ronan was not pero to the Barns When Niall Lynch had died -- been killed, not died, beaten to death with a tire iron that was still lying beside him when Ronan had found him, a weapon still coated in his blood and his brains and the better part of his face, a face that had been alive maybe only an hour before, two hours before, while Ronan was dreaain to be performed -- a lawyer had explained the details of their father’s will to theinia, but they were exiles All of the money was theirs, but on one condition: The boys were never to set foot on the property again They were to disturb neither the house nor its contents

Including their mother

It will never stand up in court, Ronan had said We should fight it

Declan had said, It doesn’t o

We have to fight, Ronan had insisted

Declan had already turned away She’s not fighting

Ronan could ain He felt the cool wooden surface of the box in his hands, his everpresent leather wristbands sliding toward his pales and valleys of the letters carved into the box The crevices of the drawers and ed in hi fro fro to take only one thing fro even a pencil back was a shtmares -- no one but Ronan knew the terrors that lived in his ues and devils, conquerors and beasts

Ronan had no secret ht churned inside hi ahold of his thoughts again Noas beginning to shake a little He remembered what Gansey had said: