𝗪𝗔𝗜𝗧 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗠𝗘 ━━ l. valdez

iv ━━ i felt aglow, like this (never before, and never since)

05. chapter four

━━━━━━━━ ( 💫 ) ━━━━━━━━

I DREAMED OF EXPLOSIONS. Everything else was a haze, except the giant blast of orange and smoke electrifying the clear blue sky.

I remembered being in the sky, flying high above a hill where over a hundred kids and teenagers were engrossed in absolute chaos.

I was sleepy. It was a strange sensation to be asleep while feeling tired in my dream. I wasn't sure what was happening. The voices were garbled, like they were underwater. I couldn't even see anything clearly. It looked like a piece of scotch tape was placed over a camera.

That was until the explosion cleared my vision with an earth shattering BOOM! I saw a burst of orange and yellow in my face before I startled awake, gasping for air.

I was gripping onto my sheets like my life depended on it as I regained steady breathing. I wasn't sure why the dream had made me so uneasy, but I had trouble slowing my heartbeat to regular.

Then, of course, there had to be a knock on my cabin door.

"Come in," I said. My voice came out shaky and weak.

There was a pause before the door opened and Leo walked in, a hand covering his eyes, but much like every other time he entered my room, he was peeking through his fingers.

When he saw that I was decent, he dropped his hand from his face and inspected me. He grinned. "Your hair looks like—" He stopped. "Are you good?"

"Fine," I strained.

He raised his eyebrows and looked at me like he was trying to see through me. "Are you sure? 'Cause you're—"

"I'm okay, Leo." I held out a hand. "Just come here."

He took my hand and sat down by the foot of my bed. I leaned forward and tried for a smile, but it probably came out as a grimace because Leo's brows furrowed.

"Let's talk about something else," I suggested. I looked around the room trying to think of something to say.

Leo was always better at that than I was. "How do you like having your crazy godly sister around?" he asked with a grin.

After defeating Nike in Olympia, we had tied her up and left her in the stables on our ship.

"It's... um—great." My eye twitched. "She's very sisterly, you know? All that screaming about victory and how she's the best daughter of Styx—she's really warming up to me."

"Think she'll invite you to Thanksgiving?"

"No doubt." A smile crept onto my face.

"You should smile more," Leo said fondly.

I chucked my pillow at him.

He caught it and laughed. "I'm being serious. Turn that frown upside down, zombie girl."

I made a spectacle of frowning especially hard. He leaned over and used his hands to literally turn my frown upside down. I probably blushed—a horrible habit.