One more hour.

“I thought I was hallucinating,” Adam said, next to the lockers, an announcement droning on over the hall speakers. “Ronan Lynch in the halls of Aglionby.”

Ronan slammed his locker. He had not put anything in it and had no reason to open or close it, but he liked the satisfying bang of the metal down the hall, the way it drowned out the announcements. He did it again for good measure. “Is this a real conversation, Parrish?”

Adam didn’t bother to reply. He merely exchanged three textbooks for his gym hoodie.

Ronan wrenched his tie loose. “You working after school?”

“With a dreamer.”

He held Ronan’s gaze over his locker door.

School had improved.

Adam gently closed his locker. “I’m done at four thirty. If you’re up for brainstorming some repair of your dream forest. Unless you have homework.”

“Asshole,” Ronan said.

Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.

Ronan’s good mood lasted only as long as the hallway and the set of stairs at the end of it, because outside, Declan’s sleek Volvo was parked on the kerb. Declan himself stood next to it, talking to Gansey. Gansey had dirt on the elbows of his uniform shirt – how he’d managed to get them so dirty during the course of the school day was mystifying to Ronan. Declan was dressed in a suit, but it never seemed like a special occasion when he did. He wore a suit the way other people wore pyjama bottoms.

They did not make words to measure Ronan’s hatred for his older brother, or vice versa. There was no unit of measurement for an emotion that was equal parts hatred and betrayal, judgement and habit.

Ronan pressed his hands into fists.

One of the back windows rolled down, revealing Matthew’s golden curls and pathologically sunny smile. He windmilled a single wave at Ronan.

It had been months since the three of them had been in the same place outside of a church.

“Ronan,” said Declan. The word was loaded with additional meaning: I see you’ve only just come out of school and already your uniform looks like hell; nothing is shocking here. He gestured to the Volvo. “Join me in my office.”

Ronan did not want to join him in his office. Ronan wanted to stop feeling like he had drunk battery acid.

“What do you need with Ronan?” Gansey asked. His “Ronan” was loaded with additional meaning, too: Was this prearranged and tell me what is happening and do you need me to intervene?

“Just a little family chat,” Declan said.

Ronan looked at Gansey entreatingly.

“Is it a family chat that could happen on the way to Fox Way?” Gansey asked, all polite power. “Because he and I were just headed over there.”

Ordinarily, Declan would have stepped off at the slightest pressure from Gansey, but he said, “Oh, I can drop him off there after we’re done. Just a few minutes.”

“Ronan!” Matthew reached his hand out the window towards Ronan. His ebullient “Ronan” was another version of please.

Trapped.

“Miseria fortes viros, Ronan,” Adam said.

When he said “Ronan,” it meant: Ronan.

“Asshole,” Ronan said again, but he felt a little better. He got in.

Once they were both in the car, Declan didn’t drive far, just to the other side of the parking lot, out of the way of departing cars and buses. He leaned back in his seat, eyes on Aglionby, looking nothing like their mother, only a little like their father. His eyes were pouched with fatigue.

Matthew had resumed playing a game on his phone, his mouth curved into an inattentive smile.

Declan started: “We need to talk about your future.”

“No,” Ronan said. “No, no, we don’t.”

He was already most of the way out of the car, leaves snapping dead under his shoes.

“Ronan, wait!”

Ronan did not wait.

“Ronan! Before he died, when he and I were out together, Dad told me a story about you.”

It was wickedly unfair.

It was wickedly unfair because there was nothing else that would have stopped Ronan from walking away.

It was wickedly unfair because Declan knew it, and he’d known Ronan would try to walk away, and he’d had it at the ready, a rare meal from a diminishing pantry.

Ronan’s feet were burned on to the asphalt. The electricity in the atmosphere crackled beneath his skin. He didn’t know if he was more furious with his brother, for knowing precisely how to loop the wire around his neck, or with himself, for his inability to duck out of the noose.

“About me,” Ronan echoed finally, his voice as dead as he could manage.

His brother didn’t reply. He just waited.

Ronan got back inside the car. He slammed the door. He opened it and slammed it again. He opened it a third time and slammed it another time before hurling the knob of his skull against the headrest and staring through the windshield at the turbulent clouds.

“All done?” Declan asked. He glanced back at Matthew, but the youngest Lynch was still playing pleasantly on his phone.

“I was done months ago,” Ronan replied. “If this is a lie …”

“I was too angry to tell you before.” In an entirely different tone, Declan added, “Are you going to be quiet?”

This, too, was an unfair shot, because it was what their father used to say when he was about to tell them a story. Ronan was already going to listen; this made him lay his head against the window and close his eyes.

Declan was unlike his father in many ways, but, like Niall Lynch, he could tell a story. A story, after all, is a lot like a lie, and Declan was an excellent liar. He began:

“There was an old Irish hero once, long ago, back when Ireland was not so much about men and towns and was instead mostly island and magic. The hero had a name, but I’m not telling it to you until the end. He was a god-hero, terrifying and wise and impetuous. He came to have a spear – the story is about the spear – that was thirsty for blood and nothing else. Whoever had this spear would rule the battlefield, because there was nothing that could stand against its killing magic. It was so voraciously bloodthirsty that it had to be covered to hide its eyes and stop the killing. Only blind would it rest.”

Declan paused then, sighing, as if the weight of the story was a tangible thing, and he needed to take a moment to regain his strength. It was true that the memory of the ritual was heavy enough. Ronan was all tangled up in half-formed images of his father sitting on the end of Matthew’s bed, the brothers tumbled together at its head, his mother perched on that tatty desk chair no one else would sit at. She loved these stories, too, especially the ones about her.