"Hadrian must've truly lost his mind," Mira muttered as she straightened, "to let a goddess like Persephone go and crown a piece of trash—-"
I tried snarling against my gag, but Hadrian's cousin didn't even seem to notice, lost as she was in a rage of imagined injustices.
"Persephone warned me about you. That it was very suspicious, how you always seemed to survive even the worst predicaments, like a dirty little rat."
I couldn't help tensing at the way Mira kept mentioning Hadrian's ex, and I was forced to pay the price as the veins around my wrists and ankles tightened.
"Deus ex machina," my boyfriend's cousin suddenly spat at me, and I nearly rolled my eyes. For eff's sake. There was that phrase again! Persephone recently filed a case against me in the Olympian High Court, and the goddess had used those exact words to question my right to the throne.
"I didn't believe in such a thing," Mira was saying. "But then yesterday..."
I stared up at her incredulously. We just met yesterday!
"I almost got away!" The other woman's voice shook with rage. "I could've gotten away. I should've gotten away with it if not for you!"
All of a sudden, I remembered the look on Mira's face when we bumped into her in the In Between.
Shock.
Because she had not expected to run into us.
Fear.
Because she wasn't where she was supposed to be.
Frustration.
Because like she said, she had been so close, so close to getting away—-
And then nothing.
Because Mira was just like how she described me: a dirty little rat who would do everything to survive. And at that moment she had realized her only hope...
Was to make us think she was running towards us, I realized numbly, instead of running away.
"And I could've gotten away with it..." We were on the move again, Mira still dragging me by the hair, and the abrasive ground scratching and scraping against my skin.
"If not for you and your cursed deus ex machina..."
Mira gave my hair a hard, sharp yank, and all I could do was wince against the burning pain in my scalp. You'd think being a goddess would make me immune to pain, but nope. The deification process was the basic equivalent of being able to eat whatever you wanted without dying...but it wouldn't save you from gaining weight.
"And then there's your blood."
Mira was muttering and laughing at the same time, and my heart sank.
"Your blood..."
And now Mira was repeating herself, which made my heart sink even lower. That made things official then: girl's lost it, totally.
"I made it all up," Mira said feverishly. "Your blood wasn't supposed to be anything, but instead...we couldn't believe it was your blood of all things that would change the game!"
Did Mira just say we? Didn't that mean she had an accomplice, and who else could it be...
"Once we realized what kind of power we had in our hands, we started planning..."
And that plan, I realized all too late, was my quest.
I was indeed as stupid as Mira and Sssusssan liked to call me, just a fool a thousand times over, when I thought of how blind I had been.
So stupidly blind.
I wouldn't be surprised if Mira or her accomplice was the one behind all the unfavorable news the Underworld Times published about me, wouldn't be surprised at all if they had been banking on how "desperate" and "predictable" I was when they sprang their trap open-—
And I had fallen for it.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
Practically threw myself in it, actually.
A classic case of jumping out of the frying pan and straight into the fire, like the worst LOTUS ever.
"It was supposed to be a rather long and merry chase..." Mira was talking again, and it almost hurt hearing her speak, with every word a stinging reminder of my stupidity.
"We wanted you to feel like the next great detective..."
And it did make me feel that way, dammit.
"I even had Susan kill that priestess to make things more exciting..."
I was drowning in despair when I realized what she was saying.
"But then that stupid Gorgon..."
And I found myself start to shake.
The vines, sensing my rising anger, wrapped itself around my entire body.
"That wasn't part of the plan at all..."
I could barely hear a word Mira was saying, could only see the priestess' lifeless body on the ground—-
"And then you completely ruined it!"
My ribs started to hurt as the vines continued squeezing the life out of me.
"That partridge was designed to follow one clue at a time, but you—-"
I knew I should be afraid, knew that there might still be more human than goddess in me that I could still get myself killed.
"You just had to have that stupid piece of metal gorging on your blood!"
I knew the risks, but I no longer cared.
I just wanted her to pay.
The words were all I needed to think of, the vines falling limply into the ground as I turned myself into a ghost—-