"You aren't that bad at the basics," commented Kai, as she finally slumped down on the hard ground and breathed in as much oxygen as she could before the next exercise.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she questioned, her chest rising up and down rapidly as she tried to stable her breathing.
Kai chuckled, offering his calloused hand for her to take. Eva took it and stood up, letting out a small groan in the process. Her bones were probably planning on how to murder her before tomorrow so that they wouldn't have to train.
"I'll say it again. You are a massive surprise to all of us."
Eva furrowed her brows, a question mark hovering above her head. What did he mean by that?
"But you knew about me." Right?
Kai backed up to grab the bundle of white bandages from the nearby table. They were currently standing on the roof of the house, in the open air with the clouds looking nearer than ever. But they weren't alone and for some reason, Eva knew that she was the cause.
Theo and Sebastian were training just a few paces away in a shaded corner and both of them had their shirts on though the top few buttons of Theo's shirt were undone. She tried her best not to let her eyes wander and instead focused them on the man standing before her.
"We only knew what we were told through rumors. All we were aware of was that you were a weak, innocent little lamb who was rescued by the Devil himself." he glanced toward Theodore and returned his gaze to her a second later.
Eva couldn't blame him. She was everything that they had thought of her before she was kidnapped by her very own aunt. Her life was a plot twist over and over again.
"Why do you— why does everybody call him a devil?" she questioned, as she took the bandages from him with a small smile and started wrapping them around her right hand.
Looking up, she saw Kai look conflicted. Was he questioning if he should tell her about his childhood friend or not?
"Have you ever heard about the beings that roamed this Earth ages ago before any one of us was born? Creatures who had powers that were unheard of in those times and each one of them ruled a part of the world known as their territory. Hades, for example?"
Eva narrowed her brows, searching through her memory for the tales that her father had told her. Nothing surfaced so she shook her head in reply.
"I'll explain while I teach you the simple moves on how to harm your opponent. The best escape methods to gain time to run away or catch your breath. Watch me."
Eva nodded. She watched as he slid his foot back in a defensive posture and raised his leg to hit the invisible air around them. It was a sharp kick, a calculated move to hit the attacker directly in his weak spot. Eva had a slight inclining that she knew what the weak spot was.
"As you might know, the man's weak spot is always in the same exact place," he told with amusement glittering in his eyes and Eva rolled her eyes. Kai, Theo, and Sebastian were similar in a few things but mostly different in their other attributes.
While Kai was easygoing in a few things, Sebastian seemed the silent type and Theo...
Well, he seemed to be a mixture of the two.
"I bet my future non-existent mate that you're thinking about him right now," Kai spoke approaching her with a mischievous grin on his face while Eva struggled to keep her expression as bored and neutral as she could.
Apparently, the three of them had the same mind-reading abilities too.
"What's a mate?" she asked instead, copying the move that he had just shown her while Kai observed and corrected her motions. The name 'Hades' hadn't escaped her mind but the word 'mate' felt more significant for some reason.
"Try to hit with as much force as you can gather," he instructed. "Mates are common amongst us Faes' and demons. I don't know about the witches but I'm pretty sure shapeshifters and werewolves have them too. They're our life-long partners. Soulmates you can say but some lucky bastards in the world receive the most special kind of soulmates too."
Eva pursed her lips, thinking hard about what he just said. Theo was a fae demon, then did he have a selected mate too? A faint ache in her chest distracted her but she shoved it away. What did she have to do with his mate anyway?
"What are the special types?" she questioned and saw Kai exit the weapon room with a punching bag hanging off his shoulders as if it was a lightweight sack of potatoes. She was certain that it weighed at least a tree at most considering its massive size.
"We demons call them Twin Flames," he explained and held the punching bag in his hands facing her direction. "Go ahead. Hit it as hard as you can."
Approaching her nonliving opponent, she cracked her fingers and fisted her hands as tightly as she could. Before her exercises, Kai had taught her how to make a perfect punch in extreme detail. He fussed over her like an older brother, correcting her posture and encouraging her to try harder, and do better than she was already doing.
"What's the difference between mates and twin flames?" she asked and threw her fist toward the punching bag with all the strength she could muster up. The bag barely even shook.
"Keep on hitting it, don't stop. Picture your worst enemy standing in front of you and continue punching as hard as you can." Kai coached from behind the huge shield he was using. Eva stuffed her fist inside the bag again as a reply. Her worst enemy? Oh, she could do that easily enough.
She had many now.
"A twin flame," he spoke as she punched again. "Is more emotionally close to you? They're seen as a soul that's been split into two. No matter where in the world you are, in the end, you are meant to meet each other at least once in life. You can be subconsciously connected or linked in some way and the love or understanding you share is unmatchable with anyone else. Neither of us has found our mate yet so hoping for a twin flame is a bit... too hopeful?"
"How does a person know when they have found their mate?"
It took Kai a few seconds to respond to this. "There are many signs. Different for each type of Fae I think. We demons realize it the minute we mark our partner. A sort of unique symbol forms itself on one of our body parts and that's how we know that it's the one."
Eva considered his reply for a whole minute as she threw a few more punches. "Is— is it possible for someone to have no mate?"