lie t. ✧ ೃ༄

“Let them think of us as dirt, Rin thought. She was dirt. Her army was dirt. But dirt was common, ubiquitous, patient, and necessary. The soil gave life to the country. And the earth always reclaimed what it was owed.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Still, there is this terrible desire to be loved. Still, there is this horror at being left behind.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“Put that down,” Jacks warned. “You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to be the hero, you want the happy ending— that’s why you came to me. If you do this, that will never happen. Heroes don’t get happy endings. They give them to other people. Is that what you really want?”
― Stephanie Garber, Once Upon a Broken Heart

“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