There was a brand on her arm that the Roman Legion had placed there.
It was not the usual one.
Murder. Murderer. Witch.
And the cursed gold popped up around her during the trial with diamonds that sparkled like her tears but there should have been rubies, rubies for blood -
Ghost. Cursed. Cast out.
But the Oracle said she was one of the Three, so they brought her back.
The son of Neptune will wash away your curse -
There was only one of those, and he fought on the opposite side.
Frank handed her a ring with a pleading expression.
She dropped it like it burned, horrified, and wouldn't let him pick it back up.
Cursed, cursed, cursed -
She cannot use her left hand. The fire boy looks so much like Sammy, her Sammy, her wonderful Sammy.
She didn't duck fast enough. The fire burned her hand and it was so hot it almost didn't hurt but she could see bone -
Even Sammy knew now that she had to be punished.
She had given him a diamond.
Had she killed him?
She was fire and blood and curses and ghosts, and her brother came to see her with haunted eyes, and she was so glad to see him because he had saved her -
His hands around her throat, and Stygian iron bursting from the ground and mingling with bones -
Greek, they hiss, Greek. Hades, not Pluto.
They caught him, Frank tells her. They caught him and trapped him on shadowless ground, and she thinks she can hear the screams still rumbling in the earth.
Percy Jackson saved him, he tells her. The Son of Neptune came with a hurricane of water and whisked him away. He's alive, he tells her.
Her brother had said she deserved another chance to be a hero.
She does not feel like one