The Things Gods Break

“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.”

“Lyra and Boone are bound by a fated line.”

“Don’t use me to poke at a god’s facsimile.”

“You, Lyra Keres…are prophesied to be our savior someday. Personally, I’d like for that to be sooner rather than later.”

“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.”

“When you find yourself questioning anything in there, especially what you have to do, hold on to this. It will feel the same no matter what is happening. It will ground you to reality. And when you get out, I’ll put the pieces back together.”

“You didn’t say anything about zombies, asshole!”

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

“My judgment is that you were the only god protecting humanity when the rest of your siblings would have trampled over humans like giants clomping through anthills.”

“What you’re seeing—the veils over their faces—means someone very powerful must have glamoured our children.”

“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.”

“Perhaps the Fates have bound us together, and even separated by time and a corporeal form, I can feel that.”

“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.”

“Stubborn is kind of adorable on you.”

“You know, I always imagined doing those things—the sea lions, the ice cream at the wharf—with my father. I never in a million years would have imagined that it would eventually be with you.”

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

“Tell Rhea that I will love her even in the ether. Tell my children that their faces are the images I held on to when I died. That I always loved them.”

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