Project Demigod (a Percico fanfic)

Chapter 6: Busting Out Nico

The moment Percy's touch left his arms, Nico backed into the door with a shaky breath through his nose.

From the vent in the door above him, he watched how the blue light from outside shined through onto one of Percy's green eyes. Percy's iris lit to a bright aqua and his pupil dilated from the shadows around them. But he didn't do anything for a long while as he stared at Nico. His body was eerily calm and steady until he clenched a fist.

"You're the angel."

"Stop calling me the angel! My name's Nico!"

Percy took a step beside him and towered over him again. When Nico froze and stared at him wide-eyed, Percy turned his head down to look at him.

He narrowed his eyes.

"Prove to me you're a prince."

Nico's mouth made an 'O' shape.

"Wh...H-How!?"

Percy put his ungloved hand on the door and listened with his acute hearing for any sounds from outside, but his glare was still on Nico.

"Unless you can, I can't trust you, now can I?"

This kid might be a lure Kronos left to distract any person who broke in for the same reasons Percy did. Or he might say anything Kronos wanted him to just to stay alive.

Percy couldn't risk it.

"Well?"

Nico licked his cracked lips. His heart beat loudly through his ears as he looked at the shapes in the closet.

"I'll just leave you," Percy threatened.

"No!" Nico whispered and spun to face him fully but his back hit a metal shelf behind him and it rattled. Percy's gloved hand shot out to hold it steady so no sound was made.

He trapped Nico between him and the wall and clenched his jaw sternly, but Nico couldn't see it.

"Wait! I can I...just let me..." he stuttered shakily. This was the only chance for him to get out!

He feared Percy almost as much as Kronos or any of his hired assassins, but he'd seen what Percy was capable of. He'd killed several of them, for him, and he knew how to get into the warehouse.

Which meant he also knew how to get out.

Percy spoke again.

"I know Elysium-Asphodel," he recited under his breath. "It's a tiny island nation floating in the Mediterranean Sea, and has a population of under 110, 000 people. It's official language is English/Italian, the locals call themselves 'spirits', and it's main export is peppermint."

Nico's mouth fell open.

"I also know they have a royal family but that's where my knowledge stops," and Percy leaned in dangerously close. "So unless you can prove to me right now that you're at least from there, then your story won't have an happy ending."

Nico's lips quivered, terrified that Percy knew so much about his virutally invisible country but more so that he was seriously considering just leaving him.

His hands shot up around his shirt, patting it absentmindedly as his thoughts raced.

What did he have? What could he do? Did he even want to trust someone as deadly as–

His palm froze against his chest. He felt his ring.

Nico scrambled desperately for the band and pulled it off. He lifted it to the light through the door vent and let the blue light shine on the ruby eyes.