The Things Gods Break

“We must bind her powers. She can’t be allowed to finish what your father wanted to do to Hades.”

“I always loved being a father. I miss it. Miss my children sorely. I guess I just…wanted to give you those happy memories that you craved and remember myself what it felt like—being a father with his daughter—even for a second.”

“What I can promise is my heart, no matter where or when I am. And nothing—not time, not death, not the heavens or the hells, not even the Fates—can take it away from you.”

“Only the god who places it can see the veil, Lyra… I believe you are now the goddess of glamours, with the ability to see them, no matter the source. Probably to manipulate them at some point.”

“Satisfaction. Possessiveness. My Hades would have looked at me in the same way.”

“My son told me that some things, no matter if they are destined to face imminent doom, are too precious not to be protected.”

“Your penance is to let go of your guilt, knowing that if there had been any other way, you would have found it.”

“Because, my star… I know your taste, your feel under my hands, the sounds you make. Not even Aphrodite herself could imitate those elements that are so completely, elementally you. Not to me.”

“Fantasy is good, but staying in it to the detriment of your life in the real world is not.”

“This place is a mind fuck, and that might be the most dangerous part of it.”

“Just so long as you realize that there are things I can’t tell you and questions I can’t answer, and it’s not because I’m breaking trust.”

“Life is never without problems. Whatever trouble I get into, I promise you I can get myself out. I don’t need you for that. I just need you to wait and hold me afterward.”

“I will go with you. Because the last thing a mother would ever want is for her child to regret what they did in a moment of brokenness.”

“I know you, Hades. You can’t burn down the world, because you love me, and that would hurt me. You would never hurt me. Not if you could help it. That’s why you hate what you’re doing to…her…me…for the Crucible.”

“I’ve wanted you all my life. Loved you for I think at least half as long. I’m not even sure when the loving started. It crept up on me between your sporadic, confusing-as-fuck visits. And I think your curse doesn’t work on me, because I was already half in love with you the day you tried to throw a rock at Zeus’ temple.”

“Break my trust, even once, and I’ll throw you down here and forget where I put the key or that you even exist.”

“Don’t worry about me, Thantophile. If you burn down the world, we’ll take care of them down here. All souls come to us eventually anyway.”

“No matter when, no matter how, I love you. I love everything about you—the way you care, the way you fight, the way you make me laugh with a dark sense of humor that matches my own, your strength, the way you kiss and do a whole lot of other things, even the way you keep secrets for my own good. But especially the way you love.”