Francesca R

“Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

Be good, but not too good. Be pretty, but not too pretty. Be honest, but not too honest. Maybe no one got lucky. Maybe it was too hard.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“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

“Faeries despise humans as liars, but there are different kinds of lying. Since you and I first came to Faerie, Jude, we've lied to each other plenty. We've pretended to be fine, pretended the possibility of being fine into existence. And when pretending seemed like it might be too hard, we just didn't ask each other the questions that would require it. We smiled and forced laughter and rolled our eyes at the Folk, as though we weren't afraid, when we were both scared all the time.

And if there were hairline cracks in all that pretending, we pretended those away, too.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“Samantha has no needs or wants. She exists to serve someone else's.”
― Tess Sharpe, The Girls I've Been