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“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

“Why am I a human being, with all the torments this extremely vague and horribly responsible condition entails? Why am I not, for example, the happy wardrobe in your room, which has you in full view whenever you're sitting in your chair or at your desk or when you're lying down or sleeping (all blessings upon your sleep!)? Why am I not that? Because I would break down with grief if I had seen your misery during these last days, or even if - you should leave Vienna.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“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