Silver Eyes | Nico di Angelo

Chapter 6: Late Night Conversations in the Hades Cabin

He sounded so cold all of a sudden that I probably flinched physically. My hands went up automatically in a placating gesture. "Woah, Death Boy, I'm sorry. I could just go back to the Hermes cabin now--"

"Do not call me Death Boy. And no, unless you want to get chased by the patrol harpies again, the only choice for you is to remain here, unfortunately."

I wasn't sure if he was saying unfortunately because I couldn't go back to my own cabin, or if he was the unfortunate one because he was stuck here with me. I figured the latter made more sense. More confused than before, I managed a, "Sorry...?"

Nico didn't respond, but made his way to a bunk -- the one with the covers still mussed up, probably the one he had been sleeping in -- and sat down.

Without thinking, I blurted out, "Why are you always so... cold?"

My question caught him off guard. He had the huh? look on his face for a second, before it went back to the look I was so accustomed with, the one that was on guard and showed nothing and hid everything. He tilted his head at me, as if telling me to continue, to specify what I meant. So, I continued, though I began to have a bad feeling to back down now. Stupid me, why did I have to blurt out everything I had on mind?

Apparently I did. I wetted my lips and continued. "I mean, you're always so... cold. Distant. I'm not that experienced with the demigod stuff and all... but you're... different."

As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted it. Judging by Nico's reaction and facial expression, it had been the wrong thing to say to him. His jaw tightened, and I didn't even have time to amend, Not a bad kind of different!

Through grit teeth, he ground out, "Different?"

Good job, Clara. He saved your life two times, and you interrupt his shower in return and bug him. Nicely done.

"I don't know!" I threw up my hands in a hopefully placating gesture. "I didn't mean to be rude or anything. You're just really... I don't know! It's like, all the camp rules don't apply to you or something. People... I don't know if they're scared of you or something. If it's about the godly parent thing, but as I said, I really don't kn--"

"No, you don't know." His voice was hard, colder than I had ever heard. Anger glinted in his obsidian eyes. The same scowl he had almost everyday, but this time he was so close to me. And we were also in the same cabin with nobody else in it. Talk about awkward. "And you won't. So stop asking." Something -- common sense maybe, told me to stop talking... if I still wanted my life.

So, I shut my mouth and sat wordlessly onto the floor, wondering why the hell I had to, out of all cabins, wander into Nico's.

POV: Nico di Angelo

Different. What did she mean by that? Nico wasn't sure if he himself could even figure it out. Scary? He got that a lot, so much that he had pretty much gotten used to it. But the way Clara said it, unsure, with the sentence ending off with a question (and a lot of 'I don't knows'), like she was asking him if he were scary.

Normally, he would've simply sent the person out if they had barged into his cabin at 5 AM, to the mercy of harpies --who cared? He didn't.--but Clara had looked so stricken by the patrol harpies that he couldn't bring himself to send her out. Besides, she was new. It hadn't been her fault that Daniel had been irresponsible and didn't tell her practically any of the rules. Then again, it was his either.

Out of his peripheral vision, he watched her. She was tapping some sort of pattern onto the ground, eyes glazed into somewhere in the distance. When she wasn't speaking, there was that certain calmness and familiarity around her for some reason...