sometimes there's no proof. you just know.

the climax isn’t Gen’s kidnapping scheme and it’s not even Irene’s betrayal of the Medes, it’s the forced grappling with how you can be loved and protected by the gods even when they allow you to suffer horribly

Gen’s plan had worked! he succeeded in stealing the queen! she’d agreed to his marriage proposal! but the gods intervene and leave the plot in shambles—all for everything to turn out more or less identically anyway, except that Irene was able to choose Gen from a place of relative freedom. the gift of the gods is Irene wearing Gen’s earrings.

we all got that one homie whose every plan leads to ruin because he’s been betrayed by the gods

Eddis guesses that Eugenides was betrayed by his gods (probably after the kidnapping scheme inexplicably fails) and commits herself to the military clash with the Mede anyway, without knowing whether she has the gods on her side, because she trusts Gen

nobody has the guts to release their “Ours”-equivalents anymore. not self-aware, not tongue-in-cheek, the only foreshadowing is stuff she won’t see until much later because she’s resolutely refusing to see it now. just a weird snapshot of everything good about something that was mostly bad.

I think maybe The Secret of Us accomplishes what you look pretty sad for a girl so in love sets out to do waaaay more effectively.