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"My stick! All e’ve been walking in the woods! That seeested "The truth is that there’s not even really a point having an EpiPen The last they toldonce, and even then, they don’t knoas four the first ti, and the reactions only got worse after that It is what it is It’s this or live in a bubble"

Blue thought about the Death card, and how her mother hadn’t actually interpreted it for Gansey It was possible, she thought, that the card hadn’t been about Gansey’s foretold tragedy at all, but rather about his life -- hoalked side by side with death everyday

With her stick, Blue thwacked the ground ahead of theo on"

Gansey sucked in his lips and then released theo, I was at a dinner party with my parents I can’t reotten the party noround beneath their feet or the air around them vibrated with thunder

"Yeah I don’t re right? Ronan says that ot to the front of the classroom with no clothes on Anyway, the party was dull -- I was nine or ten It was all little black dresses and red ties and any sort of food you wanted, as long as it was shrimp A few of us kids started to play hide-and-seek I re I was too old to play hide-and-seek, but there was nothing else to do"

Blue and he entered a narrow copse of trees, sparse enough that grass greeen the Gansey, was a different person altogether from any of the other versions of him she’d encountered She couldn’t not listen

"It was hot as Hades It was spring, but it had suddenly decided it was su You kno that is Heavy, somehow There was no shade in the backyard, but there was this great forest that bounded it Dark and green and blue Like diving into a lake In I went, and it was fantastic Only fivethe ground "Did you get lost?"

Gansey shook his head a little

"I stepped on a nest" His eyes were narrowed in that way people do when they’re trying hard to appear casual, but it was obvious this story was anything but casual to hiround I don’t have to tell you But I didn’t know back then The first thing I felt was a little prickle on ht I’d stepped on a thorn -- there were a ton of thereen, whip-shaped ones -- but then I felt another They were just such small hurts, you know?"

Blue felt a little sick

He continued, "But then I felt one on my hand, and by the time I jumped away, I saw theed to take her there, to put her in that ed down, snared with venom

"What did you do?" she asked

"I kneas dead I kneas dead before I started to feel everything start to go wrong in , and this was, like, a hundred They were in my hair They were in my ears, Blue"

She asked, "Were you scared?"

He didn’t have to answer She saw it in the hollow of his eyes

"What happened?"

"I died," he said "I felt ing h I was dead"

Gansey stopped He said, "This is the difficult part"

"Those are my favorite," Blue replied The trees were quiet around therowl of thunder After a pause, she added, a little ashamed, "Sorry I didn’t mean to be … but my whole life is the ‘difficult part’ Nobody believes in what h"

He exhaled slowly "I heard a voice It was a whisper I won’t forget what it said It said: ‘You will live because of Glendower So when they should not, and so you will live when you should not’"

Blue was very quiet The air pressed on them

"I told Helen She said it was a hallucination" Gansey brushed a hanging vine fro thicker here, the trees closer They probably needed to turn back His voice was peculiar Formal and certain "It was not a hallucination"

This was the Gansey who had written the journal The truth of it, the h tofor Glendower?"

Gansey replied, "Once Arthur knew the grail existed, how could he not look for it?"

Thunder growled beneath thery snarl of an invisible beast

Blue said, "That’s not really an answer"

He didn’t look at her He replied, voice terrible, "I need to, Blue"

Every light on the EMF reader went out

Equal parts relieved to be back on safe ground and disappointed not to pry deeper into the real Gansey, Blue touched the machine "Did we step off the line?"

They retreated several yards, but the ested

"I don’t kno to check" Gansey switched it off and then on again

Blue stretched out her hand for the reader The hts burst red Solid red, no blinking She turned froht