121
" I could stay here,” Gideon said thoughtfully. “In the realms?”
It would work, but not forever. “You still have a body.”
“Yes.”
“A mortal body.”
“Well, it looks like a mortal body, anyway.”
“It’s aging, isn’t it?”
“It appears to be, possibly, but—”
“We’ll figure it out someday,” Nico assured him. “Your life span and all that. Your natural diet,” he enumerated idly, “where to put the litter box, how to give you proper exercise. You know, the usual care and keeping of hybrid creatures. "
― Olivie Blake , The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)
127
" There was such a thing as asking too much, and she had known the demands of others all her life. Even, or perhaps especially, the demands of those who had not wanted her at all.
Depending on how you viewed it, Persephone had either been stolen or she had run from Demeter to avoid being used. Either way, she had made herself queen. The Forum, whatever they were, had misjudged Reina poorly for being free of principle, when in fact her principles were clear: she would not bleed out for nothing.
If this world could take from Reina, so be it. She would gladly take from it. "
― Olivie Blake , The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)
129
" Don’t worry about me, really,” Gideon said, for probably the millionth useless time. “I don’t think she’ll actually kill me. Or if she does, it’ll be an accident. She’s just very careless.”
“She nearly drowned you twice!”
“I might be misremembering that.”
“I don’t think there’s a way to misremember!”
“I’m her defense, she didn’t know I couldn’t breathe underwater. The first time, anyway.”
“That,” Nico said, aghast, “is not a defense!”
Gideon though, was laughing.
“You know, Max is perfectly unbothered by all of this,” he said. “You should consider doing what he does.”
“What, dragging my ass across the carpet?”
“No, and he’s stopped doing that,” Gideon said. “Thankfully.”
“Gideon, I just want you to be okay,” Nico told him pleadingly. “Por favor. Je t’en supplie.”
“I am, Nico. Worrying about me is just your excuse to avoid your own life—which, by the way, I know nothing about,” Gideon pointedly reminded him. “Are you planning to tell me anything, or am I just always going to be your princess in the tower?”
“You’d make a terrible princess, first of all,” Nico muttered. “You haven’t the figure for a corset at all, and as for the rest, believe me, I would if I could—”
“But you can’t,” Gideon preemptively supplied, and grimaced. "
― Olivie Blake , The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)
132
" Callum came from money, which meant he had already seen wealth in a number of its natural forms: royal, aristocratic, capitalist, corrupt… The list went on into perpetuity. This form, the Alexandrian variety, was technically academic, though academic wealth was almost always one of the aforementioned forms, if not some combination of all of them. "
― Olivie Blake , The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)
140
" From here she could taste the burning edges of his thoughts. He wasn’t just afraid of something—he was afraid of everything. He hated this house, and the memories in it. The memories themselves were knives, glinting in the light. They pricked her fingers, warning her away. Turn the gun around. Pull the trigger. There were demons in here; devils. Can’t you strike a deal with the devil if it means getting what you want? There was boyhood in here too, juvenile and furious and small. Once he had brought a dead sapling back to life, only to watch it wither away and die regardless.
The taste of him on her tongue, real and imagined was burnt sugar, wild adoration, tender rage. Poor thing, poor desperate thing. "
― Olivie Blake , The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)