10
519 Words
Lio
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Lex was changing.
Not just stronger—different.
It started during training. Hades had begun teaching her death magic, and gods, she was good. Too good. She wove silence like thread. Could rot a blade to dust with just a touch. Once, she made the shadows scream.
But then… something slipped.
Half the spells danced for her. The other half? They turned liquid. Slippery. Wrong. They didn’t obey. They rushed. Like tides trying to drag her under.
Hades noticed. Of course he did. His face didn’t change, but I felt it in the room. His stillness. The way he watched her like a puzzle only the dead could solve.
Lex didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she was pretending. She did that when she was scared.
I tried to help. To spar with her. To steady the magic in her hands. But the more I touched it—the more she touched it—the more it felt like she was drifting. Pulled between two worlds.
We argued.
“I’m fine,” she snapped, storming off the training field.
“You’re lying,” I followed, furious and terrified and exhausted. “You nearly drowned in your own spell, Lex.”
“I handled it.”
“You coughed up water that didn’t exist.”
She spun. “So what? I’m supposed to be afraid of myself now?”
“No. But you can’t fight it alone.”
Her eyes softened then. Just a flicker. “I’m trying.”
“Let me try with you.”
She didn’t answer. Just turned away. Again.
That night, I found her sitting alone on the balcony, legs curled under her, hair whipping in the breeze that wasn’t really a breeze—just the way shadows moved here.
Cas and Calypso noticed it too. They didn’t say anything at first, but Cas caught me after breakfast, his usual smirk gone.
“She’s pulling water out of death spells, Lio.”
“I know.”
“Your girl’s half storm, half graveyard. That’s not normal.”
Calypso joined us later, quiet, thoughtful. “I don’t think all her power belongs to the Underworld.”
Neither did I.
But it was Brian who said what none of us dared to.
He flopped onto the couch beside me during our lunch break, sipping something that smelled expensive and alcoholic. “So,” he said, far too casually, “Who else did Aphrodite bang that night?”
I stared at him.
He raised a brow. “What? Someone gave our girl that rogue tsunami magic.”
That evening, Lex overheard Hades speaking to a Fury.
“She’s strong,” Hades said, voice low and edged in worry. “But her magic… it’s fractured. Doesn’t all belong to this realm.”
The Fury hummed. “Then perhaps she belongs to more than one.”
Lex didn’t say a word about it. But she didn’t sleep that night either.
And I—
I laid awake beside her, holding a girl stitched together by fire and secrets.
Praying to gods I hated that I wouldn’t lose her again.
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- Writer
