~Playlist: "Trust" by Christina Perri~

"I knew better than to trust myself, to trust someone else, to trust the doubt in the back of my mind"

Percy's POV

Nico glares at me from across my bedroom, his dark eyes boring holes into my body. I rub my temple in a slow circular pattern. My pulse is a ticking of a clock, one that's been tracking time ever since he came in here.

"I'm here, Nico," I say, trying again, though I've lost track of how many times. "What did you want to talk about?"

Fury radiates from his small figure. I fight the urge to throw something at him to make him talk.

"Is it about Bianca?" I press, throwing the one word I know will affect him the most.

"No," he snaps, the first word he's said since he announced he wanted a meeting.

"Then what?"

The small victory of getting him to speak fades into frustration as he doesn't say anything further.

I sigh. "I don't know if you're aware, Nico, but another Selected has gotten hurt: Reyna Ramírez-Arellano. So if you're going to waste my time, could you at least do it after I check on her?"

After I ran into Annabeth hours prior to my meeting with Nico, I had raced to Reyna's room. She didn't seem thrilled to see me, but she answered my questions and accepted my condolences. Reyna said she didn't know who had thrown the knife, which had helped me not at all. Not that I can blame her; she just got brutally injured.

"I'm not looking to waste your time," says Nico, pulling me back from my thoughts.

"Then I guess it's just a happy coincidence."

He glares at me. "Do you ever stop joking around?"

"Do you ever stop giving people your death glares?" I retort.

Nico scowls at the ground, lowering his dark eyes. I sweep a hand through my hair, noticing how long it's gotten. I really need a haircut, but that need somehow got lost through the need to find Willow, to prepare a mass funeral for all the soldiers who gave their lives protecting me, to get through this entire Selection, to focus on interacting with all the girls, to avoid getting killed by Willow, to--

"Are you even listening to me?" Nico asks loudly.

I jump in surprise as I met his gaze. He's looking at me with concern and confusion in his eyes, and I realize that the entire time I'd been thinking, Nico had been talking. "Uh, yeah, definitely."

"You're an awful liar," he sighs.

"And you're awful at giving compliments. Looks like we all have our flaws," I say, but it's half-hearted. I'm far too worried about Reyna to focus on Nico, and I'm even more worried about the look in Annabeth's eyes when she spoke to me.

The look had been dark, and when she talked to me, her eyes had darted around, as if she was afraid. And the way she had ran from Reyna's room...it was as if she had been hiding something.

An uneasy feeling turns in my stomach. Annabeth would never hurt anyone, much less Reyna. They were friendly enough, and didn't seem to have a problem with each other. But Annabeth had grown very distant lately, and the way she had avoided meeting my gaze...

"I'm here because I want to help you," announces Nico suddenly.

"Okay," I respond uncertainly. "Uh, that's great. If you really want to help me, you'll let me get back to Reyna and check on her--"

"You didn't let me finish!" he interrupts. I shut my mouth instantly. "I want to help you, if you promise to help me."

"With what?" I ask.

He fidgets with the buttons on his black jacket. "That's not important right now," he mumbles, not meeting my gaze.

Know who else didn't meet your gaze? My brain reminds me. Annabeth.

Shut up!

And now you think she's going around stabbing people. What's Nico, an axe-murderer?

"Shut up!" I think again, but this time, I say it out loud.

Nico shoots me a quizzical look, his pale hands finally releasing the button on his jacket.

"Sorry," I mutter. "I've been under a lot of stress recently. But go on, and just ignore me."

"It must be really stressful having to date six different girls at the same time. Poor you," Nico says venomously.

"What? That's not what I--"

"Right, you must be relieved now that you've lowered it so much. Thirty-five, and now six. And it all happened so fast. I hear some of the eliminated Selected are angry about that. They feel they never even got to speak with you, like you didn't even try to get to know them, like you didn't even care. Isn't that just weird?"

"What are you even talking about?" I ask, completely confused.

"Forget it, Percy." Nico stands up, and walks out of my room, not bothering to close the door behind him.

I'm left sitting on my bed, hurt and confused. What the heck did he mean by all of that? And why did he sound so personally wounded when he said it?

Check on Reyna.

All thoughts of Nico go out of my head as I exit my room, heading straight for the "hospital", as my mom and I call it. We only ever use it if I get a nosebleed or a headache, or during that special time each month when my mom says "I'm dying" and "stop laughing Percy, if you were me, you'd be pitching yourself off from the highest tower now go find something to stop the pain".

Those aren't my favorite days because they always include something thrown in my general direction after I refuse to get her a nurse.

But now, I'm not going to the "hospital" for my mom or myself. No, now I have to see if one of the six girls I'm held responsible for is still alive.

The hallways are near empty, except for the guards trailing behind me. Since I'm running, they're forced to do the same. I can hear their grumbling as they try to stay close to me. Even though they're protesting, I know that none of them would dare leave me alone, especially not after Reyna so recently got hurt just by walking in the halls. Our loud footsteps blend together until it sounds like a pounding rainstorm.

The hospital doors  are already open when I arrive, and two other girls and one guard are by her side. Piper and Hazel, accompanied by an unfamiliar guard. However, once they see me, they respectfully step aside, leaving the entire area by her bedside open.

Reyna is awake, her dark eyes taking in my face. A ghost of a smile flickers across her face, and relief crashes over me. She's not dead.

"How are you?" I ask softly. "Are you in pain?"

"No," she says. "I'm fine. But thank you."

"You're not fine," Piper cuts in, giving the other girl a playful look. "You were stabbed. I wasn't fine, so you don't get to be fine, either."

Reyna laughs, and we can all see the pain flash across her face. But we all ignore it, and pretend like it didn't happen.

I want to ask her who did it. I want her to tell me that it wasn't Annabeth, that I had imagined the secrets in her familiar gray eyes. But as I watch her laugh and pretend to be fine, I realize that I can't, at least not now.

Which means I'll have to confront Annabeth myself.