Ronan cannot remember the last time he was this furious.

He burns hot. The house of Lynch is not known for their even tempers. Matthew breaks that mould, maybe, but his brother is a fabricated thing, a boy born of a child's thoughts, everything Ronan wanted to be but wasn't.

Declan, the head of house Lynch now that his father is gone, hides it better than Ronan, perhaps. But he cannot fool Ronan. The temper that he berates Ronan for is in him as well, he just makes it look like pleasant smiles and charisma. The house of Lynch burns, the boys hot to the touch and likely to leave scars.

Ronan wonders if he'll ever meet his brother on the battlefield of this revolution. Last he heard, his brother was still busy enough managing their extensive holdings to opt out of the king's call to arms. He doubts that excuse will last. If his brother waits much longer to come to fight, they'll think he's thrown in his lot with the traitors.

Anyone thinking that has never seen him and Declan together. The hatred is something tangible, someone you can almost see with the naked eye. The Lynch boys are happiest when they're throwing punches at each other, whisper the servants, while Matthew frowns in disappointment at them both.

Ronan hates to disappoint Matthew. So does Declan. That's the only reason they haven't killed each other yet.

Thoughts of Matthew are the only thing holding him back from jumping on a horse and heading straight for Kavinsky's throat. Gansey doesn't know - nobody but Parrish and Declan know - that Matthew is something he made. If he dies, Matthew goes the way of their mother, left to sleep away the days. He will not be responsible for ruining his brother's life further. So he cannot throw his life away.

Knowing this does not make him any less angry. In fact, it makes it worse.

"Ronan."

"Go away," he spits. He's in his tent, trying to make himself sleep out of sheer force of will, but he's burning too hot to manage it. If he can just get to sleep, maybe there's an answer waiting for him in his dreams, in the Cabeswater in his mind. At the very least, he'll feel like he's doing something, instead of just standing here, waiting for news of Parrish's death to arrive. The forest is Parrish's church, after all. Surely there must be something in it that can somehow save him.

Noah doesn't listen to him, of course. He lets the tent flap close behind him, and perches on a tipped over trunk that Ronan had kicked a few minutes before. He watches Ronan with an understanding in his eyes that Ronan can't bare to see. He throws himself onto his bedroll, closing his eyes and trying to pretend that he didn't notice Noah come in at all.

What Ronan really wants to do is to find one of his own churches, find that calm that waits in the pews for him there. But he's tried it before, and no matter how hard he prays he never gets any answers when it comes to matters involving Adam Parrish.

"I know you're not sleeping."

"Yes, because you're still here. Why are you still here?"

Not a lie. Ronan can never sleep under Noah's gaze. For someone with so little physical presence, his eyes weigh heavy on Ronan, even with his own eyes closed he can feel them.

Noah doesn't answer him, not out loud at least. He just sighs, a strange expelling of air from lungs that don't hold any, and shifts on his trunk.

"Don't give up."

Ronan growls. "Do I look like I'm giving up?"

"They said he was bringing death. Not that he was dead."

Ronan doesn't ask how Noah knows what the trees said. Noah knows secrets, that's what he does. He deals in death and secrets, because that's what he is made up of.

"I don't want to talk about this with you."

There's no sound of Noah getting up to leave, but when he doesn't say anything as the minutes pass, Ronan risks opening his eyes. He flinches, much to his own annoyance, because instead of leaving Noah is standing right over him. In this light, his skin is more transparent than usual, the bones of his skull visible if Ronan looks right at him. Ronan is not one to back down, so of course that's what he does, even though he hates it, hates seeing the crushed cheekbone, the betrayal that it spells out.

"He is coming for you," Noah says, voice little more than a whisper. "But he will settle for Gansey, if he has to. Be careful, Ronan."

He fades out of sight completely before Ronan has a chance to respond. "Coward," he spits, but the insult feels too much like a lie on his tongue. He doesn't want to dissect Noah's words, or the trees and their warning. Instead, he closes his eyes again, and finally succeeds in falling away into unconsciousness.

He opens his eyes to a forest he hardly recognizes.

He knows that he only sees a very small part of the sacred forest. Parrish had explained to him that a mortal cannot comprehend Cabeswater in its entirety, that all of the dreaming by people like Ronan and Kavinsky take place in very small pockets of the woods. It was comforting and terrifying all at once, because Ronan has walked for what felt like days and never reached the edge of the woods, and for the woods to be that vast, that was something that felt terrifying somewhere deep inside Ronan, nestled between his bones. Here, he could create and destroy, he could have the world bend to his whim, and this was just a drop in the sea compared to the true expanse of Cabeswater. Cabeswater, and by extension Parrish, who is too mortal to see the whole picture but still not quite human enough to see more than Ronan could ever hope to. The comfort came in knowing that no matter how many nightmares caught up to him here, no matter how much destruction Kavinsky dreamed up, they would never make a true dent in these trees.

The same rule does not apply to Parrish.

The first thing he hears is the buzzing. Unmistakable, because he is always in some way listening for this sound. Bees, whole hosts of them, making the air seem thick. Ronan takes a shaky breath and imagines himself a net, one that is suspended above him, because he cannot risk touching these bees, cannot risk accidentally bringing them back when he wakes up.

He notices that some trees seem to be oozing sap, but as he approaches he realizes it's tears. The trees are crying,

"What is he doing to you, Parrish," he asks, but nothing answers. Aside from the buzzing, the forest is silent. Usually there's rustles in the underbrush, creatures Ronan dreamed up or will dream up one day. Sometimes he was greeted by the strange faun girl who lived here, the one who called herself a priestess and liked to follow him on her little hoofed feet. Sometimes he heard scratching and clicking and knew his nightmares had found him.

But today, there is none of that. Just the buzzing.

He had a half-formed plan as he fell asleep, but that falls away in the face of this, and for a while all he can do is wander, exploring the woods surrounding him, seeing if anything else has changed. He avoids the crying trees, and the bees fly around his net without seeming to be bothered by it. He walks until the trees start to thin out, not naturally but because there are scars in the ground, some starting to heal and fill with flowers again, some new and still nothing but scorched earth. This is a part of the forest he remembers well, where him and Kavinsky explored the extent of what they could do, where they played at being gods until the world around them was exhausted and had nothing else to give them. It's nice to see the forest starting to come back here, but Ronan has little time to dwell on sentiment right now.

He had outgrown the games they played here, had moved on, had stopped pretending to be godly. Kavinsky, for all that he claimed to go to war to protect the new religion, did not believe in it. He didn't believe in the old religion either, even as he drew his dreams into reality from its hallowed halls. Kavinsky believed only in himself, and his fake divinity.

Ronan should have known he was no good much earlier than he did.

Ronan should have known many things.

But there's no point in getting pulled into what ifs and past regrets. Not now, when Parrish was in Kavinsky's power hungry hands. Not here, where wishes and questions have a habit of manifesting in ways he doesn't want.

He doesn't have to walk much further before he comes across a figure. As soon as he sees him, his hands ball into fists. Maybe that's what he came here to find. Maybe that's what he's been hoping for since the moment he fell asleep.

"Kavinsky," he

The man turns around, and he looks just like Ronan remembers. Self assured, skeletal, dangerous sharp edges that used to entrance Ronan. They no longer hold any draw for him, not since he saw those edges cut his brother's legs to pieces.

"Lynch!" Kavinsky calls, and his face splits into a grin. This is not a pleasant grin. This is a devil's grin, this is a grin that will swallow Ronan whole, if he gets too close.

Once upon a time, Ronan met another boy who burned, and for a while they lit fires together. But that was a long time ago, and those fires are all out, and Ronan only lets himself burn, now. Kavinsky still spills power. A wildfire, aching to consume everything in its wake.

"Where's Parrish?"

Kavinsky laughs, and in Cabeswater it sounds like metal clashing, or maybe screaming. "He's safe with me, don't worry. I'm surprised your tether reaches this far. I thought that fake king of yours didn't like letting his bitch out of his sight."

Ronan thinks about Noah's warning and lets the insult slide, makes himself stop a safe distance from Kavinsky, when all he wants to do is rush him, feel his life slip away under his own hands.

While Ronan works to control himself, Kavinsky turns his back on him. A cocky move, as harsh an insult as his verbal one. He's saying he knows he has nothing to fear from Ronan, and Ronan grits his teeth and doesn't rise to the bait.

"He might put in an appearance here, though. He's been flickering in and out of here for the last little while, actually. I told Skov not to let him sleep, but I think I left some of his brains behind, last time I remade him."

Ronan's eyes scour the clearing around Kavinsky, and Kavinsky turns back around just in time to see something on Ronan's face he likes. His smile grows even wider, threatening to cut his face in half.

"Don't let him catch you looking at him like that, Lynch. You look more pathetic than usual. Although I doubt he'll be in the right state of mind for noticing how sick you are, even if he does appear. Kavinsky laughs again, and points off to his left. "There he is now."

It takes Ronan a moment to notice he's not laughing. This time it is screaming, a screaming that melts away into a keening sound that cuts him right down to the bone. He has seen Adam beaten to the point of being almost unrecognizable. He has watched the boy cut his own soul from his body. And he has never heard him make a sound like the one he is now.

Ronan is running towards the sound before he even registers making the decision. He runs past Kavinsky and the other man lets him, although Ronan feels something bite deep into his side as he passes him. A blade is in Kavinsky's hand, dripping blood. Whether it was hidden or it didn't exist until Ronan began to run, he's not sure. It's not a deep enough wound to kill him, so he doesn't bother with it.

He sees Parrish after only a few more steps, and his head is starting to spin from the pain of the wound, which means he's probably going to have to wake up soon, but maybe he can make it to Parrish first.

He does, barely, vision already narrowing. Adam is tied to a chair, slumped over, but when he reaches out to untie him (or maybe to catch himself on the chair, he's not sure), Parrish jerks up again.

"Don't... touch it." His voice is hoarse, and his eyes are unfocused as he looks up at Ronan. It seems to take him a moment to recognize him, and when he does his mouth folds into a frown. "You shouldn't be here."

"Parrish," he greets him, like they're just friends who have happened to meet each other while walking, not two dreamers who are both bleeding out on sacred forest floor. "We're going to come get you. Hold on."

"No!" He's entirely more present now, or maybe he just seems that way because Ronan is less and less so. "You can't, you have to leave me."

"So sick of your self sacrificing bullshit," Ronan mutters. He should probably sit down.

"Ronan?" Adam's voice sounds strained, and his whole body is shaking. "Listen, you can't. You can't come get me, you have to keep me far away from Gansey, you have to-"

He is there and then he is not, pulled out of the dream as suddenly as he arrived. Ronan collapses on the ground, and he's ready to wake up now, thanks.

He can hear Kavinsky walking over towards him, and he imagines the grass around him like needles. He's not sure if he's too far gone to make it happen, or if Kavinsky just doesn't care about the pain, but he doesn't slow until he's standing above Ronan. In Ronan's fading eyesight, Kavinsky's form blurs, and it's too close to what he saw before he fell asleep, another skeleton standing above him.

Kavinsky lifts his foot and presses down on Ronan's side, right where his knife cut into him. Ronan bites his tongue hard enough to bleed, but does not make a sound. He won't give Kavinsky the satisfaction.

"Tell Dick I'm coming for his head," Kavinsky says, all steel and smiles. "And that he'll get to watch all of you die slow before it leaves his body. And then," he shifts, leaning into Ronan, and Ronan feels blood in his mouth and soaking his side. "I'm going to burn this whole forest down."

Ronan wakes up gasping, a hand going to his side to stop the blood he's sure will be there.

His hand meets bandages instead, and when he looks around, he realizes he's in a tent with white walls, meaning that he's in the med tent. Noah must have watched him, and gone for help when he saw the blood.

"You are an idiot," says Blue matter of factly, as she washes her hands in a basin off to the side.

Ronan doesn't dignify her with an answer. Instead, he opens his clenched fist, the one that isn't tracing the bandage, the one that reached for Parrish. In it is a battered little thing, a compass at first glance. But there is more than one hand, and instead of directions around the edge of it, there are letters.

He hasn't taken something out of a dream by accident for a long time. He has to believe this is something that will help. He has to.