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Lukas was alive. Lukas was alive. Lukas wasalive.

If I wasn’t already aware of how much I loved him, I was now. And that scared the shit out of me. Because Icravedhim.

And he’d all but told me he didn’t feel the same.

Nervous energy flowed through my limbs and my chest went tight with remaining panic. I cracked my eyes open and looked around my room. When my gaze landed on my curtains, blowing with a soft sea breeze from the push of the water against the protective barrier. I knew what I needed to do.

Like a mad woman, I changed my clothes and fled the scene. Not before checking to see if Lukas was still standing in the space between our bedrooms.

It had felt so good to touch him. To hold him and feel him holding me. Dangerous, dangerous feelings.

The second I was out of dodge, I jumped right through the barrier and into the sea, feeling the water slip over my limbs. Lukas had taught me how to do this, to feel the effects of water but keep myself dry.

And the water was the one thing that could calm me right now. I swam through a portal to the coastline outside of Sounion. It was always my favorite place to swim, a calm stretch of clear ocean.

“I looked for you,” Lukas said, running a towel over his head, his long hair wet from his post-boat shower.

“I stopped along the peninsula to do some diving,” I explained, adjusting my position on his bed so that I sat cross legged.

“Damnit.” Lukas chucked his towel at me and a mass of damp cotton whacked me in the face. “I thought I timed it perfectly.”

The memory brought the threat of tears with it. I shook it off, taking off into a slow swim to warm up my still-jittery limbs. Within minutes, the steady pace of my feet kicking through the water lulled me into a focused state where I could begin to process what happened.

Not that there was much to process. The situation was black and white, cut and dry. I was in love with Lukas, I thought he died, I freaked out.

Just at the thought, tears started building in the corners of my eyes. How I’d managed not to cry when Lukas hugged me was a miracle.

Everything seemed so simple in those few moments when I realized he was fine. It seemed easy to ignore everything that had transpired and just go back to the way we once were.

But it wasn’t that simple. Few things in my life had ever been. My family was a tangled web that I hardly dared to enter. My relationship with my power was influenced by other people since before I knew how to control it.

And Lukas…he’d made it clear that my presence in his life was a consolation prize at best. A nuisance at worst.

The only simple thing that could come to mind was my friendship with Rose. And I’d gone and fucked that up by breaking her trust.

My next stroke through the water felt heavier, my feet more sluggish. I opened my eyes and shrieked, scrambling away.

Gray and white souls swam under me, swirling through the water. My head broke the surface a second later, revealing the dark landscape of the Underworld.

I looked up and saw Dominic’s house in the distance, which looked like it had expanded and morphed since I’d last seen it. I figured it had melded with Rose’s, a byproduct of their powerlines coming together.

I swam toward the shore as fast as I could, desperate to get away from the souls brushing against my feet.

I was so disturbed, I couldn’t even fully process that my power had just malfunctioned again until I was crawling up the rocky beach of the bay.

The only thing I could do was fall to my knees and try to catch my breaths. Eventually, I looked up and took in my surroundings. My eyes landed on their back porch, decorated with dark wood and even darker fabrics.

Rose was definitely making good use of it. I bet she got amazing sunsets on that porch.

Right as I tried to stand, I felt the tip of a blade poke into my shoulder. I lifted my hands slowly in surrender.

“It’s Daphne.”

Little droplets of water started gathering over my fingertips and my mind started fielding attack options. I forced both away. Raiden posed no threat to me.

“Hi, Raiden,” I said, right as he stepped around to my front and sheathed his knife.

“Daphne.” Raiden inclined his head at me. He was always business first, with a kind interior hidden under that perfect, battle-ready exterior. “Sorry for the greeting, but we don’t let just anyone near the house anymore.”