me to do?”
Declan exchanged a look with Ronan behind Matthew’s head. Ronan’s look said, What the hell do you want me to do? and Declan’s look back meant, This is far more your territory than mine.
Ronan said, “Mom would’ve wanted you to do a good job.”
For a brief moment a cloud passed over Matthew’s expression. Ronan was allowed to invoke Aurora because they all knew Ronan loved her as much as Matthew had. Declan, whose skeptical love was imperfect, could not.
“I’m not untrying,” Matthew said.
Ronan’s phone buzzed. He swept it up at once, which meant it could be only one person: Adam Parrish. For a few minutes, he listened to it very hard, and then, in a very quiet, very small, very un-Ronan voice, he said, “Alter idem” and hung up.
Declan found it all worrisome, but Matthew just asked with breezy curiosity, “Why don’t you just say ‘I love you’?”
Ronan snarled, “Why do you wear your burrito on your shirt instead of in your mouth?”
Matthew, unbothered by his tone, flapped some of the lettuce from his clothing with a hand.
Declan had complicated feelings on the topic of Adam Parrish. There was no way Declan would ever tell a significant other the truth of the Lynch family; it was too dangerous for someone disposable to know. But Adam knew everything, both because he’d been there when certain things had gone down, and because Ronan shared everything with him. So theoretically the relationship was a weak link.
But Adam Parrish was also cautious, calculating, ambitious, intensely focused on the long game, so therefore a good influence. And one only had to spend a minute with the two of them to see that he was deeply invested in Ronan. So theoretically Adam was more positive than negative in the safety department.
Unless he left Ronan.
Declan didn’t know how much complication was too much complication for Adam Parrish.
It wasn’t like Adam was the most straightforward of people, either, even if he was pretending he was at the moment.
The Lynch brothers had reached Matthew’s favorite vantage point, Overlook 1. The sturdy, complex decking jutted out toward the falls, cleverly fit around boulders larger than men. If one was less nimble, one could observe from the railing. If one was more nimble, one could scramble up the boulders for a higher view. Matthew always preferred scrambling.
Today was the same as all the others. Matthew pressed his burrito wrapper into Declan’s hands. His ugly hat tumbled from his head, but he didn’t seem to notice it as he clambered across the rocks, getting as high as he could get, as close as he could get.
He was transfixed.
The Potomac was unsettled and fast and wide through here as it clawed over the rocks. Leaning on the railing, Matthew closed his eyes and sucked in huge breaths of air, as if he’d been suffocating until now. His brows released until-then-unnoticed tension. His Adonis locks lifted in the wind off the river, revealing not a kid’s profile, but a young man’s.
“Matthew—” Declan began, but stopped. Matthew had not heard him. The falls had him in their grip.
After many minutes, Ronan simply breathed fuck.
It was true that it was eerie—their normally ebullient brother transformed into this enchanted prince. Matthew was not prone to introspection; it was bizarre to see his eyes closed and his mind elsewhere. And it got worse the longer the minutes dragged on. Five minutes, ten, fifteen—that felt long to stand around waiting for him, but not uncanny. One hour, two, three—that was something else. That raised the hairs on the back of your neck. It was, Declan thought, becoming more obvious what he truly was, his existence reliant on Ronan and perhaps on something beyond even that. What powered Ronan? What had powered Niall? Something related to this surging water.
It seemed like only a matter of time before Matthew figured it out.
Ronan sucked air in through his mouth and released it slowly out his nose, such a familiar Ronan gesture that Declan could have identified him just by the sound of it. Then Ronan asked, “What’s the Fairy Market?”
Declan’s stomach heard the question before his brain did. It seized up in hot anxiety.
Damn it.
His thoughts rapidly followed the flowchart of secrets, of lies. How did Ronan even know to ask that question? Had he found something of Niall’s at the Barns; had someone approached him; was their secrecy in question; what had Declan triggered when he made that phone call, when he picked up that key, when he went