Percy Jackson, The Missing Hero.

13. Blackjack.

"Every single time!" Nico was angry by the time they reached his cabin. "Every single time I argue with him, he goes straight for the sensitive topics. Never anything else, it's always my family and my love life."

"That's the second time he's mentioned Bia and me." Percy pointed out. "The second time he said all of that actually, and the last time was only during the Capture the Flag match. How often do you have to deal with that?"

"Pretty much whenever I'm at camp," Nico admitted. "I used to escape to school during the week and then I kept leaving to search for you during vacation when Sally didn't insist I go home, but now that I've finished high school and haven't committed to college in New Rome yet, I'm here a lot."

"I knew that he was going to be awful from what Percy told me, but I didn't think he'd be low enough to go after your family." Luke shook his head. "I'd go ballistic if someone spoke about my mom and my siblings like that."

"He tried it with me once." Thalia pursed her lips. "He asked how I could let my brother go missing, said how my own mother didn't want me, and asked how I could let my best friend be possessed by Kronos."

"I'm going to kill him." Luke declared. Thalia might not have known, but that last comment made Luke's issue with Nathan personal.

"Heros." Percy grabbed his arm before he could exit. "I want to kill him too, but can we at least make it look like an accident?"

"Percy." Luke sighed. "Please."

"I can't protect you if you go in there and take his head off unprovoked." Percy shook his head. "You'd get hauled in front of the Council and you know what Chaos is like at the moment. He'd let them send you back to the Underworld just to separate us because he's still holding a grudge against us for that stunt we pulled on Seraph-One. You know that's why he sent Scorpio off to Aponnious-Four with half of our numbers."

"Wait, you've only got half of your team here?" Thalia asked.

"I haven't been completely truthful about why we've been sent here," Percy admitted. "Yes, we are here because of the cult. But we're also here because several missions ago, we," he gestured to himself and Luke, "along with our friends Scorpio, Invicta, and Aurum, were stuck in a sticky situation. We had a plan, it was risky, we didn't tell Chaos."

"It was a mess." Luke winced.

"I faked my death, Chaos thought I was dead, and he went ballistic." Percy bit his lip. "Screaming about ruined plans and how he couldn't trust us to work together if we didn't tell him things. This was his first opportunity to separate the five of us. He sent me and Heros with half of the group here and sent Scorpio, Invicta, and Aurum with the other half elsewhere. Split us in two."

"And he let you two stay together?" Thalia raised an eyebrow.

"He knew he couldn't split up the couple without consequences." Percy laughed.

"I didn't realise you were actually dating?" Nico looked at them, an expression of pure shock on his face.

"Why do people always think that I'm talking about us two?" Percy sighed. "Invicta and Aurum are the couple. And Chaos doesn't trust me and Scorpio together, something about two sons of Poseidon being double the trouble."

"He thinks because we used to literally be at each other's throats, we can be trusted," Luke cackled. "When really he should have stuck Aurum with Perce, kept Invicta on-planet and sent me with Scorpio. Then he would have had Aurum pining for Invicta, Percy trying to distract him, Invicta bored as Erebus and driving himself crazy, Scorpio pissed over not being able to come to Earth and me equally as pissed about not being able to punch Nathan in the face."