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An earthquake was such a shocking thing, such a wrong thing, that it didn’t seem impossible to believe that the world had been inherently broken and that it would never be right again

As the ground shifted and groaned around theun in hand It was a blacker and uglier thing than it had seemed before, from a world where death was unfair and instant

Whelk was able to keep his footing The bucking of the rocks was beginning to slow, though everything still tilted like a fun house

"What would you knohat to do with power?" he snapped at Adaun at Adaer

Around them, the world went still The leaves quivered and the water lapped slowly at the pool’s banks, but otherwise, the ground was quiet

Blue screa in the raaze over his chest, his arms There was not a mark on him

Whelk had not missed, but Adam had also not been shot, and the tere so sadness to Gansey’s face as he looked at Ada was inherently different, irretrievably altered If not about the world, then about Cabeswater And if not about Cabeswater, then about Adam

"Why?" Gansey asked Adam "Was I so awful?"

Adam said, "It was never about you"

"But, Adam," Blue cried, "what have you done?"

"What needed to be done," Adam replied

Froled noise When his bullet had failed to wound Adaun by his side, defeated as a child in a gaive that back to , a little "I don’t think Cabeswater wants you to have it I think if you don’t give it to an to hiss as if a breeze was coh no wind touched Blue’s skin Ada shocked expressions, and a : It was voices The trees were speaking, and now she could hear them, too

"Take cover!" Ronan shouted

There was another sound like rustling, only this resolved itself very quickly into abranches and tra!"

She clutched at both Ronan and Gansey, snagging their sleeves Only a few yards behind they mouth of the hollowed-out vision tree, and it was there that she pulled theic enveloped the down on the herd of white-horned beasts, coats glinting like ice-crusted snow, snorts and cries choking the air They were shoulder to shoulder, hectic and heedless When they tossed their heads back, Blue saw that they were so sculpture she’d held, strange and sinuous The thunder of theround like another earthquake The herd, snorting, began to part around the pentagram-marked circle

Beside her, Ronan breathed a soft sord, and Gansey, pressed up against the all of the tree, turned his face away as if he could not bear to see them

The tree pulled theht s pavereen to red The Ca was soaked in the slier seat; this was Gansey He leaned across the gearshift toward her, pressing fingers to the place her collarbone was exposed His breath was hot on her neck

Gansey, she warned, but she felt unstable and dangerous

I just want to pretend, Gansey said, the wordson her skin I want to pretend that I could

The Blue in the vision closed her eyes

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if I kiss you, he said Maybe it’s only if you kissher from the vision She just had time to see Gansey -- the real Gansey -- idened eyes as he pushed past her and out of the tree

Chapter 47

Gansey only allowed hiers, so Blue’s face -- and then he threw hi the real Blue out of his way He needed to see what had happened to Adah in his heart he felt a dreadful preh, Adam still stood in the circle, unhar in one of his hands Just a few feet away, outside of the circle, Whelk lay broken His body was covered with leaf litter, as if he’d lain there for years, not minutes There was not as , but there was so broken in his appearance nonetheless A sort of ru at him His uneven hair was mussed in the back, and it was the only hint that Adam had moved at all since Gansey had last seen hiun?"

"The trees," Ada remoteness was in his voice, the sound that meant that the boy Gansey kneas pressed somewhere far down inside him

"The trees? God! Did you shoot hiround, carefully "I only used it to keep hi up inside Gansey "You let hiet trampled?"

"He killed Noah," Adam said "It’s what he deserved"

"No" Gansey pressed his hands over his face There was a body here, a body, and it used to be alive They didn’t even have the authority to choose an alcoholic beverage They couldn’t be deciding who deserved to live or die

"You really wanted me to let a in to explain the size of this awfulness He only knew that it burst inside hiain, fresh every time he considered it