The boy with the seaweed brain {Pernico}

Part 32

[I have risen from my coffin, I live motherfuckers]
{Omg we're at part 32 already???}

Percy's POV:

We ended up sat on the beach, watching the waves lap in and out upon the shore. Nico was half asleep and I was messing with my water power, testing it on a few stray crabs that went passed, making their blue blood twirl and swoop through the air. I sneeze while holding the blood mid air. I look back up too see the liquid now solidified. That was new... I take another crab's blood after liquifying the hardened blood and clasp it on the palm of my free hand. I imitate the jolt my body does when I sneeze and when I open my hand, sat on my palm was a perfect, blue, pearl of crab blood. I focus on another crab, a beached sea cucumber and on a pile of bristle worms nearby. I try to mix their blood colours which, miraculously, works in making black.

"Put your hand out please hon."

Without asking, Nico puts his hand up, eyes closed. I command the black blood to wrap around the same finger as his skull ring. I press the pearl to the top after moving the extra blood aside. I then repeat the same jerking action, causing the loop of blood to form into a ring just big enough to take off but small enough it wouldn't fall off randomly. Nico opened his eyes at my action as I moved my hands away.

"Woah..."

"Pretty cool huh?" I ask, proud of myself.

"How did you get black blood?"

"Don't ask. Hey...Do you think I could control Ichor?"

"Probably..." Nico says, eyes not moving from the new ring.

I bring the floating black blood into my palm and make another pearl. I command a clean hole to be made through it before threading it onto my necklace. I had bought a replacement for my yearly after it broke but I never actually rethreaded the beads onto it. All that was on it was a marble ball Annabeth had sculpted from some extra marble, a hellhound tooth which Leo drilled a hole in for me and now the black pearl. I smile before checking the time. 

"We should head back or Annabeth will think you've stood her up."

"Ugh...Fine." Nico says, standing up and stretching before helping me up.

We walk back to the cabin, hand in hand.

My jaw drops. Hazel and Annabeth were talking to someone. Someone who was acting as if they weren't going to take 'no' for an answer. I close my eyes and swallow hard before looking over at Nico. He had frozen. I look back. The man looked familiar. No... I look from the man to Nico then back again. It was the man Nico had fought outside the diner. The man who had made his life hell. There was a crowd forming around the girls and man. I could hear him from here, his voice flickering between English, Greek and Italian. Those who understood Greek gasped every-so-often, the small few who knew Italian gasped at other parts and we all gasped at the other parts. I grabbed Nico's wrist and dragged him closer to the man.

"Ah. Mio fiore! Vieni a vedermi at last?" The man said, arms open in greeting.

"Ciao Zio." Nico says, snapped back awake.

It was then I realised I understood some of the Italian and that there were fewer English speaking gasps thank I had thought.

"Perché sei qui?" Nico continues, standing defiantly between me and the man.

"Oh mio fiore. You don't know how hard it's been since you left. I'm stanco di reprimere la mia fame di te."

I swallow. I regret knowing what was being said. At least this meant Nico wouldn't have to explain later.