“Let‘s keep our eyes on you. It‘s a lovely view.”
“I‘m only letting you do that because my hands are cold.”
“I answer my own prayers, Sister Beria. Nobody else ever has.”
“I don‘t know if you‘re incredibly brave or completely insane, Wollesley. But thank you.”
“You tell Stanton Walker I kept my promise, kept his daughter safe.”
“I don‘t walk the deck handing out hugs, but I‘d die for my crew, and they know it.”
There‘s a sliver in me that still hopes. That sliver lives in all of us—it‘s why we‘re fighting.
“If you want to do great things, you have to risk failing at them.”
“Better a book than a person?”
“A book rarely lets you down,” he says crisply. “You will find friends in its pages when they are nowhere else.”
“Everyone tells the same story different ways,” she says quietly […]. “And the only version we‘re the hero of is our own, Jude.”
“You can‘t fight the whole world, Jude,” she says softly, settling back against her pillows.
“Why not?” I murmur. “The world threw the first punch.”
“Have you ever killed someone?” he asks quietly.
“First time for everything.”
“There.” I lean across to tuck [the flower] behind his ear. “Everything useless around here is beautifully decorated. I wouldn‘t want you to feel left out.”
“First flowers, now you don‘t like pastries?” he asks, studying my frown. “What‘s next, kittens?”
“I…Will you just go away?”
He smirks. “I think you‘ll find I was here first. Come to that, when you arrived, you literally threw yourself into my arms.”
pickI have no words. I loved this. You can clearly see how much effort Rick Riordan and of course Mark Oshiro went through to create this real, tense, heartbreaking, believable, heartwarming, and QUEER story. The representation and their ability to bring words to emotions brought me to tears on multiple occasions. Not to mention the fact that the plot itself was wonderful and how excited I was to return to this world. A definite 5⭐️.
“We are not only one thing forever. We‘re allowed to change at any point in our lives. We don‘t have to be stuck with a label someone else assigns us. Gods, we don‘t even have to stick to a label we give ourselves. So, you can be bi or pan or a lesbian or queer, and tomorrow you may have a better sense of who you are, or tomorrow you can be a big ole queer mess and figure it out fifty years from now.”
Will had heard love described in so many dramatic, bizarre ways over the years, but no one had described it like this:
It‘s like drifting down a river of pain and knowing you are safe.
It‘s like holding a person in your arms and realizing they are an interlocking piece of a puzzle you hadn‘t known how to assemble.
Even in the darkest parts of life, there was still…light.
He was at home in darkness.
But that didn‘t mean that he couldn‘t choose the alternative.
He was the son of Apollo.
He had survived the Underworld without the sun.
He was one of only four demigods ever to travel to Tartarus.
And now here was Nico di Angelo, the boy he‘d fallen in love with, fighting to return to the mortal world.
“You have no idea who I am.”
“As long as I live,” said Bob, “I will fight for you Nico di Angelo.”
“Death isn‘t evil. It‘s just…death.”
In that moment Nico pushed aside his panic and his fear, because…
Well, Will Solace believed in him.
Three words.
A promise of hope.
The words tingled Will‘s ear.
They ignited his heart.
“I love you.”
And they fell.
“What does it mean?”
“Us,” Will said. “Together. Two sides of one coin. I gave it to Nico so if we ever got separated he would know I was thinking of him, no matter where he was.”
“There cannot be light without darkness, nor darkness without light. You must have the contrast for both to exist.”
“No matter what form love takes, no matter how much or how little you have, you must still choose to cultivate it. In friendships, in romantic relationships, in life.”
“You know love is a difficult choice, right?”
“Why? What changed?”
Nico was quiet for a moment. “I decided I could own it.”
“Homophobia? In the land of the dead?” He scoffed.
“We are all of us made of stories.”
“I‘m one demigod.”
[…]
“You are Nico di Angelo.”
“Who likes normal?” Nico said. “I much prefer the weird.”
“It is Nico di Angelo, son of Hades! I have returned with my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend, Will Solace.”
“You are a legitimate demigod Care Bear.”
“You said you were darkness. Well, I‘m the opposite.”
“The dead can dream just like everyone else.”
