lie t. ✧ ೃ༄

“You’re not afraid of dying, Henry. You’re just opposed to killing. That isn’t cowardice.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Adam threw himself into the middle of the pentagram.

Curiously, there was no sound here, not in any reasonable way. The end of Blue's cry was muffled, as if it had been shoved under water. The air was still around him. It was as if time itself had become a sluggish thing, barely existing. The only true sensation he felt was that of electricity--the barely perceptible tingly of a lightning storm.

Neeve had said that it wasn't about the killing, that it was about sacrifice. It was obvious that stymied Whelk completely.

But Adam knew what sacrifice meant, more than he thought Whelk or Neeve had ever had to know. He knew it wasn't about killing someone or drawing a shape made of bird bones.

When it came down to it, Adam had been making sacrifices for a very long time, and he knew what the hardest one was.

On his terms, or not at all.

He wasn't afraid.

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.

This was the important thing.

It had always been the most important thing.

This was what it was to be Adam.

Kneeling in the middle of the pentagram, digging his fingers into the soft, mossy turf, Adam said, "I sacrifice myself."

Gansey's cry was agonized. "Adam, no! No!"

On his terms, or not at all.

I will be your hands, Adam thought. I will be your eyes.

There was a sound like a breaker being thrown. A crackle. Beneath them, the ground began to roll.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“I don't know what's going to come out of me. It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way.'
'Why?'
'To make up for it. To make up for the fact that it's me.”
― Suzanne Rivecca, Ugly, Bitter, and True

“There is nothing to be done but to go ahead with life moment by moment...try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside of me.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Letters and Journals