Dead Ravens Society

Chapter 10 - Survived By His Legacy

"Listening to him tell the story now, it was clear to Adam that Glendower was more than a historical figure to Gansey. He was everything Gansey wished he could be: wise and brave, sure of his path, touched by the supernatural, respected by all, survived by his legacy."

― The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater

Gansey 

Gansey hadn't slept for twenty-four hours, but he felt more awake than he ever had before. He was listening closely as Headmaster Whelk's door closed for the night and reached out for his coat when his eyes landed on a thick leather journal on his desk. He glanced over at Adam.

"Is this yours?" He asked, picking it up.

Adam shook his head. "I've never seen the thing before."

Gansey carefully reached out towards the journal, his fingers tracing its cracked cover. It was so well used that the band tied around it barely could keep it shut.

Taking a deep breath, he opened it to the first page, a wide smile replacing his questioning frown at once when he read the text on the inside.

N. CZERNY 

Dead Ravens Society 

But then his eyes trailed further down the page and he almost felt his heart stop.

You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.

Gansey knew the words had been written by Mr Czerny at once, having gotten used to the man's handwriting in the margins of his returned history assignments, but the meaning of them was lost on him. He figured it must be another lesson their history teacher wanted him to learn, but the last few words still made his skin crawl. 

He at once had to bite down on his cheek to resist the urge to scratch at his arms. For a moment he imagined the sensation of something crawling over his tongue and inside his ears and into his nose and-

He jumped when Adam placed a bony hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?" The other boy asked with a tilt of his head.

Gansey closed the book and plastered on a smile. "Nothing." He held it up for Adam to see. "It seems Mr Czerny wanted to help us get started."

Adam narrowed his eyes at him but then shrugged his shoulders. "We're really doing this, aren't we?" He asked, brushing a strand of dust blond hair from his eyes. Although Gansey knew he wasn't as excited about the idea of the meeting as he was, Adam didn't seem as scared about sneaking out as he had seemed about falling behind on his homework the previous morning. 

When he pointed out that, while anything below a B was far from encouraged at Aglionby, what they were about to do was an almost guaranteed way to get expelled if they were found out, Adam merely turned his back to him and opened the door.

"If I didn't know how to sneak around without getting detected, I wouldn't be alive today," he said, without humour and for the first time, Gansey wondered what Adam's life before Aglionby had been like. 

He hadn't truly thought much about the way his roommate never spoke about his parents - he himself often found that particular topic to be a difficult one to broach - or the fact that Adam never talked out right about his life before Algionby. The only time he'd said anything about it was when Ronan teasing him about Blue had gotten on his nerves and he'd let it slip that he had once tutored her.