The Circle

18 | Training

When I stepped out of my car at school the next morning I couldn't help staring at the students surrounding me. I looked at their faces, at the people that have lived in Carlisle their whole lives, wondering how they hadn't discovered the generations of demigods living amongst them.

There were physical evidences of our kind spread everywhere. There's Olympus for starters, the beautiful, gigantic historic house right in the middle of the woods. Then there are the stones leading there, imprinted with omegas to mark the way to the demigod house.

The clearings are clear give-aways as well. They told me that there are twelve clearings spread around the forest, and they serve as places of worship for the Gods. I'd stumbled into Zeus' clearing that day, and I wasn't ready for the energy yet. Maybe the clearing even triggered my claiming.

It wasn't an accident that Kit found me, either. Yesterday, as the sun was setting over the trees in the forest, Nicolas pulled me aside to talk.

"Our Circle has a lot of power, Lux. Demigods' powers increase every generation. That makes us stronger than our parents and grandparents, and so on. Before you arrived, Kit was the strongest out of all of us by a long shot. Honestly, I thought it would be impossible to surpass him," he laughed.

"I can't be stronger than him. Have you seen him? Nope. Not possible."

"That'll change when you start training," he replied and I adverted my gaze, unable to meet his blue eyes. "Kit found you in the woods because of the necklace around your neck. He tracked you, a needle in a haystack, and arrived in ten minutes. We were looking for about an hour before that."

My hand instinctively reached towards the tiny diamond pendant lodged at the base of my throat. I'd had it since I was born and never took it off. I forgot that I was wearing it most of the time.

I looked at Kit at the other side of the room. He sat on top of one of the tables, legs propped on a chair below. The last sunrays graced sections of his angular profile and illuminated his eyes, which were focused on a book in his hands.

Sensing my gaze on him, Kit turned his face and stared straight at me. His eyes flickered to Nick by my side and his face hardened. He wordlessly returned to his book and I sighed.

It wasn't my fault that I was standing next to Nick, and God, they're friends. Kit never said or showed that he cared for me apart from that moment of kindness in New York. His mood swings were giving me whiplash.

I looked out of one of the the large windows at the library, "It's getting late."

"Yeah. Let me drive you home," Nick smiled warmly at me.

"Thanks," I returned the gesture. Trekking through the dark woods didn't sound very pleasant.

"I'm taking Lux home," Nick shouted and we received 'okays' and thumbs up in response.

Kit snapped his head up from the book once more, but his eyes were ablaze. His knuckles had turned white from holding the pages so tightly. I wasn't having it.

"Something wrong?" I called across the room.

"You tell me."

"My God Kit, why don't you go--"

"Okay! That's enough," Nick let out a nervous laugh. Kit's eyes were burning a hole on my face.

"No, let her finish."

"Stop it, you two. I swear that you act like children around each other," Nicolas said, his voice firmer than before.

"She deserves to be put in time-out then," Kit said and the most annoying, satisfied smirk spread over his face.