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I was not careful. I was reckless, headlong. He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.
MADELINE MILLER / CIRCE
The goddess Aphrodite tells Percy Jackson once: To love is to die.
Percy is fourteen and he thinks he would die for Aileth Morgenstern if the Fates asked it of him.
Why? Aphrodite asks, and she almost looks amused.
He doesn't have an answer to give her. Why wouldn't he? Aileth is his best friend: the girl who sits by him at the beach when they're six and builds sandcastles with him because he was lonely, the girl who lends him her shoulder to cry on when his stepfather's rage gets the best of him and the boy doesn't want his mother to see him upset, the girl who holds his gaze and promises him forever when their world is falling apart and all they have is each other.
To love is to die.
Love is many things, he knows — cruel and jagged, smoky tendrils of acrimony seeping into the cracks of your soul.
Shaking hands — stained with the blood of the victims now clutching at the hollowed-out cavities of their chests, somewhere six feet underground in the visceral hell of dolor — tearing out your heart whilst you are too enamored with the honeyed words spilling off Aphrodite's silver tongue, her lips pressed in a breathtaking smile as she draws you away from the safety of whatever happy ending the Fates have carved for you and crowns you for death.
A blade that never stops cutting, because you are the one holding it to yourself in a vicelike grip; it is hurting you, but you do not know how to let it go.
. . . And Percy thinks he'd hold the blade to himself and let it tear him into slivers if it means he'll still be something to Aileth.
(I love you, he tries to tell her, but it dies in his throat; his jaw twists with all the words he's left unsaid over the years. I love you. I'm sorry. I wish you felt the same way. You deserve the world. I wish I could give it to you. I wish there wasn't a war. I wish we were still children — somewhere out there we're still young and silly, the world is still ours and we're still dancing in the rain and scared of the thunder. I wish we could still afford to be scared of the thunder. War takes so much away and it never gives.)
To love is to die. Percy is fifteen and he's holding her like water in his hands, she's slipping away and she's not something he recognizes anymore. (He still loves her; he can't remember a time where he didn't.)
The Aileth he remembers is blurring away. Gone is the child who tells him he's her best friend, her number one, and promises it'll always stay this way. Gone are the pastel hues of pale gold and brown, the gentle clouds mixing together in the night sky — the residue sharpens into harsh coloring, silver and black and the mad pursuit of an eternal hunt.
