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"Hold on," Gansey told Adam Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?"

"No reason Just no reason" Ronan slammed his door

Gansey asked Adam, "Sorry You still have that suit for the party?"

Adam’s response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open Noah slouched in In a wounded tone, he said, "He threwout from behind his closed door "You’re already dead!"

"What’s happening over there?" Adam asked

Gansey eyed Noah He didn’t look any worse for wear "I have no idea You should co hiht that by staying away from the forest, he’d keep the old Adam -- put off the consequences of whatever had happened that night when everything started to go awry But ardless

Gansey said, "Well Just ht, Ronan dreamt of trees

It was a h the cold mountain soil Leaves skittered in the breeze Ronan could feel the size of the mountain under his feet The oldness of it Far below there was a heartbeat that wrapped around the world, slower and stronger and more inexorable than Ronan’s own

He had been here before, lots of ti drealed in his veins

The air moved around him, and in it, and he heard his name

Ronan Lynch Ronan Lynch Ronan Lynch

There was no one there but Ronan, the trees, and the things the trees dreae between awareness and sleep When he drea The world was his to bend His to burn

Ronan Lynch, Greywaren, tu es Greywaren

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere The word Greywaren made his skin prickle

"Girl?" he said

And there she was, peering cautiously from behind a tree When Ronan had first drea, honeyblond hair, but after a few years it changed to a close-cropped pixie cut, ed, she had not For some reason she reminded Ronan of the old black-and-white photos of laborers in New York City She had the same sort of forlorn, orphan look Her presence s from his dreams

He reached a hand toward her, but she didn’t ie She peered around fearfully Ronan couldn’t fault her There were terrifying things in his head

"Come on" He didn’t yet knohat he wanted to take from this dream, but he knew that he was so alive and aware in it that it would be easy But Orphan Girl re to the bark

"Ronan, manus vestras!" she said Ronan, your hands!

His skin shivered and crawled, and he realized it was crawling with hornets, the ones that had killed Gansey all those years ago There weren’t many this time, only a few hundred Sometimes he dreamt cars full of them, houses full of them, worlds full of them Sometimes these hornets killed Ronan, too, in his dreaht Not when he was thein these trees Not when his sleep was clay in his fingers

They aren’t hornets, he thought

And they weren’t When he lifted his hands, his fingers were coated with cris, each as vivid as a blood drop They whirled into the air with their acrid sue

Orphan Girl, ever a coward, eone She and Ronan moved from one part of the forest to the next She huain as the trees murmured overhead

Ronan Lynch, loquere pro nobis

Speak for us

Suddenly, he faced a striated rock nearly as tall as he was Thorns and berries grew at its base It was familiar in a way that was too solid to be a dream, and Ronan felt a ripple of uncertainty Was this a drea?

"You’re sleeping," the girl reain Facing the rock, he knehat he was meant to do -- what he had already done He kneould hurt

The girl turned her narrow face away as Ronan seized the thorns and the berries Every thorn prick was a hornet sting, threatening to wake hiers were dark with juice and blood, dark as the ink on his back He slowly traced words on the rock:

Arbores loqui latineThe trees speak Latin

"You’ve done this before," she said