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‘No,’ Nico said simply and without emotion.

He rose. The earth trembled. A bony hand thrust out of a crack in the stone.

‘You have no idea who I am,’ he said.

And then he drew his sword and charged Nyx.

Will watched as Nyx revealed Nico’s demons, and he wished his suspicions hadn’t been right.

He remembered hearing something on the steps descending from the Door of Orpheus, but, like Nico, he had convinced himself that his overactive (and, frankly, terrified) imagination was running wild. But now, staring at the pack of tiny demons as they approached his boyfriend, Will’s whole mind was screaming at him.

This felt wrong. Like something he shouldn’t be seeing. What Nyx had done to Nico was horrifying! Everyone had their own personal demons and traumatic events in their history, butthis?

She had made them real.

She had brought them tolife.

And now Nico didn’t even have the choice to keep them to himself.

But Will had no idea what he shoulddo. Attack Nyx? Grab Nico and jump into the roaring rivers below? He was generally pretty good at strategy, but he felt completely out of his element here.

‘Accept it,’ said Nyx. ‘Accept that you prefer the darkness. Youprefer suffering. Youknowit is true! Your own children prove it! Stop denying your nature!’

Will looked to Nico, and he watched as his boyfriend’s face settled.

He knew that expression.

And he knew what Nico was about to do.

He backed up, and when Nico said ‘No’ to Nyx, Will saw the cracks in the ground appear and begin to spread.

Nico was about to raise the dead.

There was a part of Will that would always be unnerved by this display, but at that moment, as the cacodemons scattered, he felt an immense pride.

Nico was refusing Nyx’s manipulation.

He wasfighting back.

‘You have no idea who I am,’ said Nico.

Will’s boyfriend drew his glowing blade in one swift movement and, before Will could do anything, Nicocharged.

He swung his sword down in front of Shadow, and the horse reared up in shock. When it did, the ground underneath Nyx’s vampire horse split open, and the deadragedforth.

‘Nico’s fight invigorates me!’ said Bob, pressing an open palm to his chest. ‘Come, son of Apollo! Let us lay waste to Nyx!’

Will wasn’t sure about laying waste toanyone– particularly Nyx’s children, who were all now backing up and away from their mother rather than defending her against Nico. But as he watched Bob scream, his broom raised in the air, his cat changing back into a sabre-toothed tiger, Will was energized, too.

He was the son of Apollo.

He had survived in the Underworld without the sun.

He was one of only four demigodseverto travel to Tartarus.

And now here was Nico di Angelo, the boy he’d fallen in love with, fighting to return to the mortal world.

It all came to Will so suddenly then: Nico might have been born to Hades. He might have suffered untold amounts of pain and sorrow. He was at home in darkness.