The gods weren’t going to spare Earth. It was their gateway into this new universe they’d found, and the world that had blocked them from it. They wanted it subjugated, especially the magical community, which had been fueling Artemis’s spell since her death. No way were any magical humans surviving their return, and I doubted that the non-magical world would do much better.

It was said about the Romans that they created a wasteland and called it peace.

I had a feeling that I knew where they got that tactic.

As for me, my mother had been the goddess who’d kicked the rest of the pantheon off Earth in the first place. I had afterward personally fought against and helped to kill two gods. If they ever returned, I was most definitely on their shit list, and I’d have to be a fool not to know it.

Of course, maybe Zeus thought I was a fool. The gods had never had much regard for humans, and I was underestimated a lot. It came with the territory when you looked like a Kewpie doll and frequently stumbled over your own two feet.

“But?” Gertie prompted, picking up on the disbelief in my tone.

“Why would Zeus care if I fought or not?” I asked. “I’m nothing to him. I’m… I’m like that beetle over there—”

“Where?”

“Right there, by your shoe—”

I broke off because Gertie took that moment to strike. She stabbed down with a cane I hadn’t noticed her carrying, right on top of the poor beetle. Gertie liked things tidy, and I guessed it had offended her, trundling across her picturesque courtyard.

I heard the shell crack, and watched it squirm for a second. It stopped and I pushed the remains of pastry number two away in sympathy—and an odd feeling of solidarity. I’d felt like that, these last six months, more times than I could count. Like a tiny thing just bumbling through life, trying to get more stuff right than wrong, when suddenly—crack.

“You were saying?” Gertie prompted, while scraping the remains of Mr. Beetle onto the stones.

I looked away. “He’s king of the gods. He shouldn’t have bothered with me at all.”

“Apollo bothered with you.”

“Apollo knew I was a brand-new Pythia with no idea what I was doing. He thought he could manipulate me into helping him get past Artemis’s spell before I figured it out. But I’m not brand-new anymore.”

“You’ve been at this for six months,” Gertie said dryly. “You’re new.”