Kiss of Death Chapter 1: Blue

Nico

Before I start this story, I need to set a something straight.

My dad is Lord of the Underworld and he deals with death. He's not the best person—er, god—to be around. I'm a lot like him in some ways, but that does not mean that I'm incapable of being in a relationship.

Do we understand each other?

And this isn't just a story about how I fell in love.

This is a story of how I nearly died.

My name is Nico di Angelo. I'm seventeen years old, and, like I said, my father is one of the creepiest gods out there. But before you demand that I be a safe distance away from you, I can promise that I won't shank you or anything.

Maybe.

As of right now, I'm staying at Camp Half-Blood. I can't exactly leave because apparently, I can't even go get a fucking Happy Meal without getting attacked by monsters that want to use me as their personal punching bag.

Due to recent events, I've been confined to the infirmary. I'm lying in a cot with an Ace bandage wrapped around my leg and a sleeping Lynn by my side. Gods, she's beautiful. Plenty of blonde hair I can tangle my fingers in, pink lips that have just the right amount of pout to them, and curves in all the right places. If she wasn't asleep I'd demand that she look at me just so I could see her green eyes, but alas! My fair lady needs her rest.

How did we wind up like this, you ask? I guess it all started last summer…

I had just gotten back to camp from the Underworld (worst game of Uno I have ever played) and I don't think that I had ever been more excited. (Well, I may have been this excited when the newest version of Mythomagic was released, but that's irrelevant.)

It was my sixteenth birthday. I wasn't supposed to know about it, but I'd overheard that Percy and some of my other friends were throwing me a surprise party. I know, I know. It sounds pretty lame, but it really isn't every day that a demigod turns sixteen. And unfortunately for Percy—who has an incredible amount of bad luck—he had to fight a war on his sixteenth.

I made it over the property line and to Thalia's tree without incident, stopping at the top of the hill. I inhaled the scent of the valley. As usual, I saw lava pouring down the side of the rock wall and Leo was scampering to the top. At the archery range, I spotted Chiron wrapping a camper's arm. Near the edge of the woods, a poor satyr was chasing after a dryad.

Home sweet home.

I picked up my bags and trudged back down Half-Blood Hill toward the direction of Cabin 13. That's when it happened.

I walked past Hestia, who was tending the hearth, and nodded respectively to her. All of a sudden, there was a person dressed in blue that came from my right. I tried to sidestep out of the way, but with my luck, they crashed right into me and we tumbled to the ground. They landed with their hands pressed to my chest, and that's when I noticed the long blonde hair and blue-green eyes.

It was a girl.

If I didn't have a girlfriend, I most likely wouldn't have minded being in that situation, but I was in a relationship.

Even though it wasn't even my fault, I was going to just say sorry. But whoever this chic was, she really was crabby. "Watch where you're going," she snapped. What was her problem? She seemed to have forgotten that she crashed into me and that I was the one that she landed on.

The girl—whose name I didn't know, even though I try to know who everyone is—got up quickly after noticing the very awkward position that we were in. As she brushed off her jeans, I glared at her. "Why don't you take your own advice? You make it seem like this was my entire fault. Did the fact that you ran into me just so happen to slip your mind?"

She glared back, eyes blazing, yet panicked. "Look, I don't have time for this. I have somewhere to be, and that is definitely not here." Then she dashed off.

I sighed and resumed walking to my cabin. People nowadays—no respect for their elders.

As I walked in, I felt like I could finally let myself breathe without having to watch my back. There was barely light in the cabin, it was freezing half the time, and nearly everything was colored black.

It's one of my favorite places in the world.

I dropped my bag on the floor next to my desk, deciding to take a nap. Shadowtraveling is cool and all, but I couldn't have been anymore exhausted. All I really wanted to do at the moment was sleep for approximately 1,000 years.

Right as I was about to close my eyes, Kaylee burst through the door, hair flying. She was this daughter of Hecate that had stumbled over the camp's borders about four years ago after the second Titan War, but we had been only dating for a year.

She'd always been convinced that her freckles were the worst part about her face, but I thought they were great. It's not like she had a lot of them, either—just a small dusting over her small nose. Her hair was a deep black, just like mine. It was streaked through with the same purple of her eyes, which were framed with long, dark lashes.

In other words, she was beautiful. And mine.

"I heard you were back, so I wanted to come and see you," Kaylee panted.

She was breathing heavily, as if she had been chased by monsters all the way from her cabin to mine. I jumped out of my bed, nap completely forgotten. "What's up?" I asked, reaching out my arms to give her a hug. She relaxed as I drew her into my chest and gave a content sigh.

"Nico," she said, and I nearly melted right then and there.

"What?" I asked, stifling a yawn.

"I missed you so much. Break was boring without you."

"I missed you, too," I mumbled into her ear. I felt kind of bad, because I knew that I probably should have stayed for the winter, but I still wanted to find out more about my family.

Kaylee said something, but it was muffled because her face was buried in my shirt. "What?" I asked.

"I said, 'Isn't there a rule about two campers of different genders being alone in a cabin?'"

Rolling my eyes, I answered, "Screw the rules." I could feel her smile against my shirt and I knew that we both probably could have stayed there forever, but the conch horn blew for dinner.