The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(50)

That, of course, was met with a growl of frustration. “Haven’t you figured out by now that I want your problems?” Nico demanded, half-shouting it, and thankfully, Gideon’s mouth snapped shut. “Your pain is my problem, you idiot prince. You little motherfuck.” Nico rubbed his temple wearily as Gideon’s lips twisted up, half-laughing. “Don’t laugh. Don’t… don’t look at me, stop it. Stop it—”

“What are these pet names, Nicky?”

“Shut up. I’m angry.”

“Why are you angry?”

“Because you seem to think for some stupid reason that you should be handling everything on your own—”

“—when really you should be handling it on your own, is that it?”

Touché. The bastard.

“Gideon, for fuck’s sake, I’m rich and extremely handsome,” Nico growled. “Do you think I have my own problems? No, I do not, so let me have yours. Put me to use, I beg you.”

Gideon rolled his eyes. “You are,” he said, and exhaled, “unbearable.”

“Yes. And you are safely hidden from your mother right now, so hush. But she is definitely looking for you,” Nico conceded, which had been the primary warning he’d intended to pass along. “The ward will hold for a while yet, but it’s only a matter of time before she breaks it. Or pays someone else to break it.” Eilif was unfortunately much worse than the usual finfolk; largely in that she had friends in low places, most of them possessing uncompromised access that many people and governmental organizations wished they didn’t.

“I could stay here,” Gideon said thoughtfully. “In the realms?”

It would work, but not forever. “You still have a body.”

“Yes.”

“A mortal body—”

“Well, it looks like a mortal body, anyway.”

“It’s aging, isn’t it?”

“It appears to be, possibly, but—”

“We’ll figure it out someday,” Nico assured him. “Your lifespan and all that. Your natural diet,” he enumerated idly, “where to put the litter box, how to give you proper exercise. You know, the usual care and keeping of hybrid creatures—”

“Though I suppose none of it will matter if my mother kills me first,” Gideon remarked.

Nico sighed, stepping back from the bars for a quick count of three, and then stepped back.

“Do not,” he said with a long-suffering scowl, “say things like that.”

But Gideon, who customarily looked amused by everything Nico did, only smiled.

“Don’t worry about me, really,” he said, for probably the millionth useless time. “I don’t think she’ll actually kill me. Or if she does, it’ll be an accident. She’s just very careless.”

“She nearly drowned you twice!”

“I might be misremembering that.”

“I don’t think there’s a way to misremember!”

“In her defense, she didn’t know I couldn’t breathe underwater. The first time, anyway.”

“That,” Nico said, aghast, “is not a defense!”

Gideon, though, was laughing.

“You know, Max is perfectly unbothered by all of this,” he said. “You should consider doing what he does.”

“What, dragging my ass across the carpet?”

“No, and he’s stopped doing that,” Gideon said. “Thankfully.”

“Gideon, I just want you to be okay,” Nico told him pleadingly. “Por favor. Je t’en supplie.”

“I am, Nico. Worrying about me is just your excuse to avoid your own life—which, by the way, I know nothing about,” Gideon pointedly reminded him. “Are you planning to tell me anything, or am I just always going to be your princess in the tower?”

“You’d make a terrible princess, first of all,” Nico muttered. “You haven’t the figure for a corset at all, and as for the rest, believe me, I would if I could—”

“But you can’t,” Gideon preemptively supplied, and grimaced. He glanced away before looking back, adding, “You know, I do worry about you, too. Your vanity aside, I do think you have plenty of problems without fixating on mine.”

“Like what?” Nico scoffed, emphatically gesturing to his full head of hair.

“I… never mind.” Gideon shrugged. “I’m just saying, this is a two-way street.”

“Well, I know that, don’t I? I would never devote myself so magnanimously to someone who failed to notice how interesting I am.”

“And you are very devoted.”

“As devoted as I am interesting,” Nico confirmed, “so you see how we’ve reached a détente.”

Gideon gave him a look like he’d swat him on the nose with a newspaper.

So, the usual.

“Estás bien?” Gideon asked.

Yes, strangely, Nico was doing quite well indeed. He and Libby were very nearly getting on, arguing only about academic things (“It’s one thing to stop time and another to try to move it around” was his take on the subject of her latest theory, but of course she’d had Arguments) and he and Reina were doing fine, and in general Nico ate well and didn’t want to murder the people around him. (He could do without Callum and Tristan, but he’d suffered more distressing opposition before.) Sure, he missed normal things, like the freedom to go places that weren’t this house and also, sex—but he had a feeling it was best that he didn’t sleep with anyone here. He’d probably let Parisa do whatever she wanted to him, and that was just not a good look for anyone.