Chapter Text
Chaos magic eats the world alive.
That’s what Gansey discovers when he makes the emergency journey to view the blight. It’s a trip that could be taken by any number of advisers, details relayed with the dryness of sandpaper, but this is the first recorded case of a chaos catastrophe in living memory. It’s the first tangible proof that an entire unexplored branch of magic exists, undeniable, irrefutable.
Gansey is the king, so making the trip is his duty; he’s a scholar of the unseen, so making the trip is his need.
The energy’s pathway is the antithesis of traditional magic. Traditional magic is a delicate weaving of surrounding threads, manipulating energy that already exists into new shapes. Chaos magic is...
It’s fields and more fields of crops charred to residue too dark and sticky for traditional ash. It’s flat ground with long spiderwebbing grooves like the raking of a god’s fingernails. It’s dead sheep and cows, a few dozen, torn through and reformed and rent until the bodies are impossible to look at.
Even Gansey, whose feelings about the phenomena edge more toward reverence than terror, can’t keep his eyes on the corpses. Only Adam studies them without flinching, his body a warm and familiar presence at Gansey’s right elbow.
“When word spreads,” Gansey says, “we’ll have a panic about apocalypse on our hands.”
Adam gives this the consideration it deserves: a derisive snort. “Magic is magic. Humanize the apocalypses and everyone relaxes.”
Gansey considers arguing. This is a different type of energy from the child mishaps and accidental fires Adam’s used to putting out. The miasma is awfully similar to dread. But then he thinks that Adam might be right. To Gansey, to any practicing magician, to anyone with a smidgen of psychic power, this is a new threat. To the average non-magic user, how should anyone differentiate between one terrible impossible thing and another?
“Humanize this one for me,” says Gansey.
“His name is Ronan Lynch,” Adam says. He’s still gazing at the bones and blood, but it’s possible he isn’t actually seeing them. “His neighbors say he doesn’t go out much since his father died and his mother took ill. He works his farm alone. There’s an older brother, Declan Lynch, who lives in the city. No one’s had any real problem with Ronan until now.”
“And what do you think caused the ‘now’?”
“You shouldn’t ask me to guess when I don’t know anything. I’ll bring it to Blue.”
“She’ll know,” Gansey agrees.
“Or at least feel more comfortable guessing when she doesn’t know anything,” Adam says wryly.
“You should also ask Ronan Lynch,” Gansey says.
This isn’t an order. It could be misconstrued as one, if the recipient wasn’t Adam, and if Adam wasn’t such a stubborn bastard. But Gansey’s true regal orders always begin with an I need. “I need you to ask Ronan Lynch” would be different from this, a friendly suggestion between companions.
Adam sighs. “I know.”
Gansey tilts his head, studying Adam’s face curiously. “That doesn’t excite you?” The prospect excites him, and he’s trying to stay out of the investigation’s way.
“No.”
“Really?” It’s not that Gansey doesn’t believe Adam - just that he likes to understand the reasoning when Adam surprises him. “The first substantiated firsthand account of the workings of chaos magic? You don’t want to be the one to record it?”
“Of course I do,” Adam says. “I would just prefer not to interrogate a terrified magic-using commoner who more than likely expects a slow death.”
Gansey shakes his head slightly, marveling. For anyone else, the camaraderie between Adam and the terrified magic-using commoner would make it easier to develop a bond and tease out information. But Adam won’t play that game.
“You don’t have to make them believe in a slow death every time,” he says. “You could just be kind.”
Adam tears his gaze from the dead livestock and studies Gansey’s face instead. There’s a long, perilous moment in which the tension might tip over into a fight.
But then Adam shrugs one shoulder.
“I don’t do your job for you, Gansey,” he says. “You be kind. I’ll be me.”
-
Ronan’s never believed the stories about the kind of cruelty the crown bestows upon criminals.
What he’s discovering now is that he should have.
He didn’t fight the arrest, either.
He should have.
Ronan does not, as a general rule, have the patience or selflessness for martyrdom. If he did, he’d have gotten himself arrested long before now. But this time was different. This time, the magic tore out of him like a feral thing, and he fell into a dizzied unconsciousness, and when he came to, everything was dead.
It’s a little hard to fight an arrest when you deserve it.
But he should have. They’re torturing him.
There’s a lot of shit he can deal with. His pain tolerance tends to be higher than people expect from the average rural farmer. He’s a fighter, a survivor, vicious and bloody and ruthless like his father taught him to be. He possesses a certain strength of will that some - most - people deem “asinine.”
He doesn’t think he can deal with this for much longer.
But he has to. He’s going to.
They’ve confined him in a spacious room five floors above the ground. One side of the area is curved since it’s situated inside a tower. The door locks, but Ronan’s not restrained by manacles or shackles. Packed bookshelves line the flat wall, the curved space piled with whimsical objects and puzzles that Ronan’s studiously ignoring, like his keepers don’t want him bored. The mattress is thicker and softer than the one in his brother’s fucking guest room, and he’s pretty sure the king himself has slept on these sheets and pillows. The accommodations border on luxurious.
His magic is missing.
Ronan’s learning a lot, now, about vitality and lack thereof. About where his energy comes from. About how the magic nestles in his marrow.
The thing is that the magic has always been with him, a growling animal tucked under his ribs, a shifting tide of skittering beetles, an ocean of pressure and release. It’s a piece of him that can, in the best of times, flex and move and reach like a well-tuned muscular system.
It also appears to be a vital organ. Ronan knows that because the magic is missing, and everything inside his body is starting to go wrong.
Each passing second leaves him sicker. He has no idea what they’ve done to him or to the room, but he knows that there’s an empty space in his chest that’s fucking with the rhythm of his heart and the pull of his lungs, and he knows that his muscles have been trembling for hours, and he knows that none of the food or water they bring him will do a damn thing about it, and he knows it’s a game.
It’s a game. They’re waiting for him to break down and beg for relief. They’ll use it as leverage to loosen his tongue, pry a lifetime of secrets from his traitorous mouth. They’ll descend on the farm and hurt Matthew and take Opal, and the thought of Opal inside this room just increases his stubborn resolve. He tilts his head toward the tiny open window and inhales fresh air through his mouth. It’s not large enough to fit through, or he might have jumped by now.
The door opens. Ronan turns to survey the newcomer. He’s been analyzing the guards, the way they move, their potential weak points in a physical fight. The fact that he’s important enough for constant guarding is information in itself. Escape is a stupid notion, but fantasies are a more comforting way to occupy his thoughts than focusing on his helplessness.
The new arrival shuts the door softly behind him, watching Ronan just as sharply as Ronan’s watching him. He’s not dressed as a guard. He’s not armored at all, actually, at least as far as Ronan can tell. Plain black shirt, pants, gloves, the tailoring screaming upper class and the style neutral enough to blend in. He’s probably Ronan’s age, judging by the youthful cast to his features, but there’s something inside his eyes that Ronan doesn’t like.
Ronan holds eye contact and says nothing. Like fuck is he going to let this stranger intimidate him.
Said stranger is the one to look away, but it’s more annoyed than discomforted. Rather than moving toward Ronan, he steps sideways and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed.
“Do you know what kind of trouble you’re in?” he asks. His voice is pleasantly neutral.
Ronan’s not a fan of pleasantly neutral conversations.
“No,” he replies, just to be shitty.
The guy’s mouth twitches. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“No.”
“Did you do it?”
Ronan pauses. “Yeah,” he says.
“Why?”
It is with a godlike effort that Ronan bites back his first retort - The sheep were getting mouthy - and levels a silent glare instead.
“Did you mean to?”
“Not that I’m not thrilled to talk about this,” Ronan says, “but who the fuck are you?”
“My name’s Adam Parrish. Did you mean to do it?”
Ronan wasn’t asking for his name. “Why are you here?”
Parrish cocks his head. “If I answer that, will you answer me?”
“Sure.”
“I’m figuring out what to do with you.”
That’s no more than Ronan really expected. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he says, and turns back to the window. “I’ll do it again, probably.”
“All right. Will you answer my questions about your magic?”
“No.”
“Then I’d prefer not to waste more time here.” He stands and walks to the door. Pauses with his hand on the knob. Without turning back, he says, “Eat something. I don’t have patience for self-destruction.”
Then he’s gone, leaving Ronan alone with the pain, and the sickness, and the thin breath of relief through the open window.
-
Blue wakes to the patter of pebbles against her window.
It’s an old and familiar sound, a relic of her early adolescence. Only one person is ever responsible. He doesn’t have any reason to sneak around these days, though, so she’s cautious as she raises the glass and pokes her head out to peer over the roof.
Sure enough, Adam Parrish peers back at her, his hair mussed from riding and his chin hooked idly on the edge of the slats. He’s balancing on the porch railing below, a stupid endeavor that’s ended in bruises and splinters more than once.
“You could knock,” Blue points out.
“And wake the whole house?”
“You could come back during daylight.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
This piques her curiosity. She leans out to the waist and outstretches a hand. He grabs it with his own gloved hand and uses the leverage to scramble onto the shingles, effective if not the least bit graceful.
“You’re heavy,” she complains as she withdraws and he drops, catlike, into the room.
“I’m not fourteen anymore.”
“I’m not either. We have a front door.”
“What do you know about chaos mages?”
She blinks. The impromptu midnight ride makes a little more sense, now, even if his particular choice of entry doesn’t. “No more than Gansey. No more than you.”
“I kinda think that’s horseshit.” His relaxed, common accent is as familiar to her as the pebbles. She’d have no idea that he uses a different voice in public if she hadn’t seen him with his students. “You see things I don’t.”
“I don’t see any chaos mages,” she points out, “on account of never meeting one.”
“You make connections I don’t.”
He’s particularly prideful about his ability to make connections. Blue bites her cheek to hold in a smile. “I want you to know,” she says, “the appeal to my ego is working, but not because you’re being subtle.”
He does smile, not bothering to bite down on it, haloed silver in the moonlight from the window. “I’ve got a problem,” he says, and explains the shape of it.
As Blue listens, she sits down on her bed and tucks her feet under herself. Adam joins her, close enough for her arm to brush against his. Closeness is allowed since his long sleeves shield him. Otherwise, she’d be more cautious. She can’t really control the amplification capabilities inside her, and it’s best not to take him off guard.
“How are you keeping him from tearing the castle apart?” she asks.
At Adam’s arched eyebrow, she adds, “Don’t give me that look. Obviously you are. Gansey might give him the benefit of the doubt, but you’re not keeping a human apocalypse under the same roof with the king if you can’t control him.”
“Same way I keep any uncontrolled magician from tearing apart the castle.” Adam shrugs one shoulder. “Warded room. I can’t keep him there indefinitely, though.”
Blue’s stomach does something unpleasant. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t care. Not that.”
“It’s not like it’s hurting him,” Adam says, a trace of defensiveness creeping into his voice. “So he can’t touch magic. I don’t like being in a place where I can’t touch magic, and I weather it just fine.”
“He’s not like you.”
“He’s not like you, either. He traveled without a problem.”
“Adam,” she says, “if his magic is on the inside, he’s more like me than you.”
Adam leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. When she looks at his face, she can’t read his expression in the dim light. Probably wouldn’t be able to read his expression in the full brightness of day.
“If you’re going to kill him,” she adds, “have the decency not to do it like this.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling sharply. “Shit.”
-
Adam catches Noah by the elbow as he’s setting his breakfast plate, glittering with sticky cinnamon crumbs, into the bin to be washed. They’re the only two in the communal dining area at this hour. The sun hasn’t yet peeked above the horizon, and the sky is barely blue. Still, Adam leans in and keeps his voice low. Most of the time, he’s perceptive enough to realize when unwanted ears are listening, but he doesn’t like to take unnecessary chances.
“I might have done something horrible,” he murmurs, “and I need you to help me fix it.”
Noah knows this body language well enough to be appropriately wary. Adam reads the flash of anxiety like a sentence. “I really hate conversations that start like this.”
It’s not a real protest, though, and they both know it. The thing is that Noah can always be relied upon to fix Adam’s worst fuckups. Which is good, because Adam’s worst fuckups tend to involve potentially lethal consequences.
Adam briefs Noah on the situation as they head for the warded tower, detouring only momentarily so Noah can grab a supply kit. There isn’t a whole lot that needs explaining. Noah’s aware of the presence of the chaos mage, if disinterested in the drama, and Noah knows what Blue looks like sick with magic deprivation. Adam doesn’t need to explain further than, “Blue thinks wards will hit him like they’d hit her.” The shared memory of her fever-ravaged body in Adam’s arms does the rest.
Noah saved Blue then. Granted, he’d also had help.
If they’re lucky, Blue will be wrong, and Adam’s thoughtlessness won’t have consequences.
They aren’t lucky.
There’s an incongruous moment in which Adam thinks that the room is empty, that the wards haven’t worked at all, and Ronan Lynch simply bided his time before escaping. Then his gaze falls on Ronan, curled on the floor between the shadow of the bed and the window.
“Shit,” Adam says.
Noah expounds upon this with a few rarely-used and choice words of his own. He kneels beside Ronan as Adam hops onto the mattress to stay out of the way without sacrificing a vantage point.
Noah swipes his finger along Ronan’s ear and raises it to the light, exposing the same sticky black not-ash that coated the blighted fields.
“Don’t touch it,” Adam hisses. For someone so invested in caution and self-proclaimed cowardice, Noah’s lack of self-preservation instinct is astounding.
As expected, Noah ignores him. Ronan, for his part, doesn’t seem conscious of them at all. There’s a ceaseless shiver running through his body, his breathing rapid and pained.
This is a complication of the kind that Adam despises. Any second now, Noah will ask to move Ronan, and his tone will be schooled and careful and remote, because Noah knows there are times when Adam loathes complication more than cruelty, and Adam hates that he knows that.
To fend off a useless bout of self hatred, Adam says, “Help me get him to the infirmary.”
Noah’s shoulders slump a little, more relief in that tiny gesture than in the loudest of sighs.
Adam grits his teeth and hands the apocalypse back his hurricane.
-
Declan Lynch does not sleep after his brother’s arrest.
There’s too much to do. He does not sleep. He’s very calm as he completes the series of necessary tasks. After being informed of the incident, and after reacting with the correct mixture of shock and bullshit to escape uninterrogated, he rides out to the farm.
He hasn’t been here in years, and he would prefer never to be here again, but he starts earnest conversations with neighbors and promises financial restitution and apologizes and swears up and down that this will never happen again. He presents a compelling case, soothes frightened feathers, and does not let the wildness show in his eyes.
He stops at the Barns, because he must, and he retrieves his mother, because he’s expected to. She’ll sleep forever, but as long as her heart beats, he has to playact the son strung out on hope and faith. It’s an excuse more than anything, though. The official census reports that a Ronan-less Barns is a deserted property, but Declan knows where the lies begin and truth ends. This tiny kingdom has a population of exactly two. Declan needs to make sure they can survive without Ronan there to provide.
By the time he’s situated Aurora in his guest room, rendering it useless for any potential guests, he has been awake for two days.
He plans to close his eyes for a half hour, but the second he tries, all he can imagine is arriving twenty-nine minutes too late to keep Ronan from a bloodless execution. He dresses for a business negotiation and goes to the palace.
He’s not expecting to be seen right away, or really to be seen at all, but it turns out that Ronan’s catastrophe is a big fucking deal.
Adam Parrish politely ushers him into an unused meeting room in one of the outer wings. It’s an understated place, a little dusty, furnished by a small wooden table bordered by four wooden chairs. It doesn’t look like a room in a royal’s dwelling. It also doesn’t look common, with the lack of cloth or decoration or wall hangings. It’s a barren landscape, a forgotten stage set.
A trickle of sweat tickles its way under Declan’s collar, down his back.
“How can I help you, Mr. Lynch?” Parrish asks, still all pleasant politeness, sitting in one of the chairs and folding his hands atop the table.
Declan says, “I want my brother released into my custody.”
Parrish tips his chin up, silently encouraging Declan to continue.
Ronan would play a game of silences and aggressive tension, but Declan can’t afford to. Not now, not about this. “I’ll take responsibility for him. Anything he does, you can charge me instead.”
Parrish’s expression doesn’t change. “You’d take the sentence if he kills somebody?”
“Yes.”
Declan’s an excellent liar, but he needs to keep this interaction as pointed and truthful as possible. He’s never spoken to Adam Parrish, but he’s acutely aware of the man’s existence. A dead-eyed mind reader manipulating possibilities like thread and pulling secrets from shadows that never should have been perceived.
Declan cannot give Adam Parrish any reason to believe he might be hiding things. If Parrish looks, he’ll find them.
“If he’s in the city with you, the family farm will go to ruin.”
There’s a sardonic note to Parrish’s voice. What he’s really saying is that Ronan can’t be left to his own devices in a city full of innocents.
Acid coats Declan’s mouth. “I’ll move back to the farm.”
“Will you?” Fascinated, lazy, catlike.
Another drip of sweat slides down Declan’s back. “Yes.”
“So, then,” Parrish says, “how long have you known what he is?”
-
Declan doesn’t breathe. Adam reads everything he can with his psychic senses, tucking away a portrait of abject terror mixed with peculiar resignation. When he’s gotten all he’s going to, though, he says, “I’m not having you arrested. There’s no law against not reporting magical capabilities.”
What’s impressive is the way Declan’s tone remains unchanged when he says, “There isn’t now.”
“I’m not arresting you for breaking an unjust law when you were a child.”
Declan shuts his eyes, a half-second show of vulnerability, and then his gaze sharpens back to steel. “Are you going to let me bring him home or not?”
“I need more information before I come to a decision.” This is Adam’s go-to line during discussions like these; it helps that it’s always true. “Have you seen him do magic before?”
Declan’s hands are in his lap, but Adam’s psychic senses are focused hard enough on his body’s positioning that it’s easy to note the involuntary twitch of his fingers. “Yes.”
“Is this the first time he’s killed anything?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not above begging,” Declan says, “if that’s what you want. I don’t care that much about my dignity.”
Adam doesn’t doubt that this, at least, is true. “I understand that you’re concerned for your brother’s wellbeing,” he says, trying the Gansey approach and pointedly not mentioning that the concern is justified. “I’m concerned for the wellbeing of the entire population. I need to understand what kind of threat his magic poses. You are the only individual I’m aware of who’s been a third party witness. Help me.”
Declan says, “I’ll tell you everything I know if you guarantee that he lives.”
That’s a hell of a promise to wring from Adam, even if Adam can agree fairly easily. Killing Ronan is not - and hasn’t been - an option on his radar. He’s gotten through life just fine without slaughtering innocent people led astray by magic, and he’s not about to start just because he doesn’t understand this particular power.
Plus, it would upset Gansey.
And Blue.
And Noah.
“I’ll guarantee he lives,” Adam says, careful, “but I won’t guarantee it’ll be with you.”
Declan isn’t mollified by this. Adam doesn’t need psychic intuition to tell him that. The promise leaves far too much potential for a fate worse than death. But Declan must decide that’s all he’s going to get, because he nods and says, “My father had it, too. This magic. That’s what killed him.”
-
Colin Greenmantle takes a luxurious sip of stupidly expensive wine, places the decanter down on the glass table, and twists his wedding band idly around his finger.
“Niall Lynch’s son is another son-of-a-bitch sorcerer,” he says.
Piper doesn’t look up from her book. “Which one?”
“Which what?”
“Which son?”
Greenmantle snorts. “Who gives a shit? It’s good news.”
“It’s useless news,” Piper replies, with all the interest of an adolescent finding out a horrifically old and barely-known relative farted to death.
“You have no imagination.”
“You have no intelligence.”
He seeks something non-glass to throw in her direction and settles for one of the silk-covered pillows on the couch. She reaches up and plucks it out of the air before it can mess up her perfectly layered hairstyle.
“Just wait,” Greenmantle says, as if Piper has ever been known for her patience. “This one’s mine.”