They were playing with fire.

It wasn’t a metaphor — not really. Not when the gods were real and vengeful and always watching. Not when half the camp already looked at her like she was one step away from ruining Luke Castellan’s perfectly constructed image.

And maybe she was.

But that didn’t stop her from showing up.

Not when he whispered her name like a prayer through the shadows of the Hermes cabin. Not when his hands pulled her into the corner of the woods just past the archery field, where no one looked and no one cared, and kissed her like he’d been waiting all day for a reason to breathe.

Not when the only time she felt something real — raw — was with him.

“You know this can’t last,” she murmured once, her forehead pressed against his collarbone, the two of them tangled in a moment they shouldn’t have had.

“I know,” he said, but he kissed her anyway.

They had different paths. Different burdens. She knew it. He knew it. Luke didn’t belong to anyone — he never had — and she wasn’t naïve enough to think he ever would.

But still. Still.

He looked at her like she was the only altar left in a world full of broken gods.

They didn’t talk about it. Not when they sat next to each other at dinner, acting like they weren’t aching to touch. Not when they trained side by side, sparring like they weren’t lovers slipping out of their cabins every other night.

It was easier that way.

Easier to pretend it was just lust. That it wasn’t soft and sacred. That it didn’t hurt when he walked away after kissing her like a man starved.

But she could feel it in the way he lingered.

How his hand would trail just a little too long down her arm. How he would look at her like she might be the only thing he still believed in.

They built their love on something fragile. Secret.

Something that didn’t belong to them, not really.

But gods, did it feel holy.

“We might be crossing lines,” she said one night, breathless against his neck, hands tangled in his shirt.

Luke looked down at her — calm, half-lit by starlight, and something so tired in his eyes she wanted to cradle it like a wound.

“We crossed them a long time ago.”

She kissed him before he could say more.

Because maybe they didn’t have forever.

But they had this.

They had now.

And if loving him was a sin, she’d go down worshiping at the altar.