Lore

I was born knowing how to do three things - how to breathe, how to dream, and how to love you.

Sometimes the braver thing is to accept help when you've been made to believe you shouldn't need it.

Power does not transform you, he’d said. It only reveals you.

Scars are tallies of the battles you’ve survived.

It’s not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie. They smooth over imperfections to tell a good tale, or to instruct us how we should behave, or to assign glory to victors and shame those who falter. Perhaps there were some in Sparta who embodied those myths. Perhaps. But how we are remembered is less important than what we do now.

A person alone could be controlled, but a person loved by others would always be under their protection.

Fear is a foreign land I shall never visit and a language that will never cross my tongue.

When we can't change the past, the only thing left is to move forward.

A feather fallen from a wing is not lost, Gil had told her, but free.

Some people get so used to looking out at life from the edge of their cage that they stop seeing the bars.

Monsters had fangs, but that was why lionesses were given claws.

It wasn't that anger was inherently good or bad. It could lend power and drive and focus, but the longer it lived inside you unchecked, the more poisonous it became.

Sometimes you just have to survive to fight another day.

You are the strongest person I’ve ever known, Castor Achilleos, and it wasn’t because of how fast you ran or how hard you hit. It was because even when you got knocked flat on your back, you fought your way back up. You have to do it again now. Whatever you’re feeling, you have to leave it on the mat and get back up.

Monsters lived in the shadows. To hunt them, you couldn’t be afraid to follow. And the only way to destroy them was to have the sharper teeth and the darker heart.

Bind your fate to mine.

But you were like this invincible force to me, even then. You were a safe place to hide my hopes.

Pain is the essence of life,

Lore wondered where one might procure a poisoned shirt in this day and age, and how well it would hold up in its gift wrapping when she mailed it directly to Philip Achilleos.

Your ancestors carried the shield that bore her head,” Athena said. “They wielded her power until they lost her. If the shield should be carried by anyone, it should be you—you, the one who knows the darkness of men yet refuses to be afraid.

Anger was like a disease to the soul, and no aspect of it was more contagious than violence.

It is acceptable, even preferable, to be alone,” Athena told her, “when those around you would hold you back or deceive you. The exceptional among mortals will always stand alone, for no one in the world was made for their task. Take confidence in that, and let it be a poison to your fear.

This vessel requires sustenance." "You want... breakfast?" Lore guessed.

Athena wasn’t at her most terrifying when her skin was flushed with fury, or she was snarling deadly promises. It was in moments like this one, when her eyes cooled and her body went still with a predator’s confidence that nothing would escape it.

I love you more with every sunrise.

An oath was, after all, a curse you placed on yourself

Apodidraskinda. A child's game. Hide-and-seek. A challenge. Come find me.

I've got another ancient proverb for you," Lore said, sliding her arm out from the interior straps of aegis. "Go fuck yourself.

When we can’t change the past, the only thing left is to move forward.