At nine and a half, Adam began to scream.
It was the sound of something that knew it was dying.
The dim walls of the room felt like they absorbed it. Somehow this scream would always be embedded in the plaster, needled into the supports of the house, gasping in the places no one ever saw. Somehow there would always be a thing that would never be happy and whole again.
Chapter 39, Call Down the Hawk
"Parrish, that was fucked up," Ronan said. He laid a palm on Adam's pale cheek. It, too, was frigid. Adam turned his face into Ronan's hand, his eyes shuttered.
"It saw me," Adam said. "Oh God."
"What is it?"
Adam didn't answer.
Ronan bundled him close and for seceral minutes, the two of them stayed like that, tightly wound together, lit by the abandoned dreamt sun, Adam's skin cold as the moon.
"It's not Bryde," Adam said finally. "The something, it's not Bryde."
"How do you know?"
Adam said, "Because whatever it is, it's afraid of him."