The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5)

by Rick Riordan

What was it about kindness? In my time as Lester Papadopoulos, I had learned to stand up under horrendous verbal abuse and constant life-threatening violence, but the smallest act of generosity could ninja-kick me right in the heart and break me into a blubbering mess of emotions.

IN NO CONTEXT CAN THE COWS ARE ATTACKING be considered good news.

To be human is to move forward, to adapt, to believe in your ability to make things better. That is the only way to make the pain and sacrifice mean something.

In fact, there wasn’t a single mortal I considered expendable. Not one deserved to be snuffed out by Nero’s cruelty. The revelation stunned me. I had become a human-life hoarder!

The similarities between Nero’s household and my family on Mount Olympus made me increasingly uneasy. The idea that we gods were just as manipulative, just as abusive as the worst Roman emperor … Surely that couldn’t be true.

considered that perhaps courage was a self-perpetuating cycle, like abuse. Nero had hoped to create miniature, tortured versions of himself because that made him feel stronger. Meg had found the strength to oppose him because she saw how much her foster siblings needed her to succeed, to show them another way.

All any of us could do was try, and hope that, in the end, the virtuous cycle would break the vicious one.

weight of prophecy, but it was true nonetheless. At the moment, I wasn’t sure what I was. I certainly wasn’t my old godly self. I wasn’t exactly Lester Papadopoulos, either.

I was no god. I would never be the same old Apollo again. But, in this moment, I had the chance to decide what I would become, even if that new existence only lasted a few seconds.

Zeus didn’t work that way. He would not save me any more than Nero had saved Meg. I had to let go of that fantasy. I had to save myself.

By that point, I was no longer Lester Papadopoulos. I was not Apollo. I’m not sure who or what I was.

Perhaps that was what Styx had been trying to teach me: it wasn’t about how loudly you swore your oath, or what sacred words you used. It was about whether or not you meant it. And whether your promise was worth making.

Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let’s be honest: some fathers don’t deserve that. Some aren’t capable of it.

You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him. Meg could never have changed Nero, any more than I could change Zeus. I could only try to be different from him. Better. More … human.