The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“What do you want me to say? That you were right?”

“Yes, Rhodes, of course. Always.”

Fair. She had walked into that one.

Libby rose to her feet on the basis of her own agitated desire to stand. The significance of it being a response to her own volition and not Nico’s command felt especially relevant at the moment.

“You weren’t right,” she corrected him sharply, though she was pretty sure it didn’t matter what she said. Nico de Varona lived in his own reality; one that even Tristan couldn’t make sense of, probably. “Ezra’s not… unremarkable. Or whatever it is you always say about him.”

“He’s average,” said Nico bluntly. “You’re not.”

“He’s not av-”

She stopped, realizing she was focusing on the wrong thing.

“You make that sound like a compliment,” she muttered under her breath, and Nico made a face that was equal parts shut up and also, I said what I said.

“The problem with you, Rhodes, is that you refuse to see yourself as dangerous,” he told her. “You want to prove yourself, fine, but this really isn’t the uphill battle you think it is. You’re already on top. And somehow, you don’t seem to see the unfiltered idiocy of choosing someone who makes you…” He paused, considering it. “Duller.”

“Are you finally admitting I’m better than you?”

“You’re not better than me,” Nico replied perfunctorily. “But you’re looking for the wrong things. You’re looking for, I don’t know. The other pieces.”

She made a face. “Other pieces of what?”

“How should I know? Yourself, maybe.” He scoffed under his breath before oppressing her with, “Anyway, there aren’t any other pieces, Rhodes. There’s nothing else. It’s just you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Either you’re complete or you’re not. Stop looking. It’s right fucking there,” he informed her, snatching impatiently at her hand and half-throwing it back into her chest. She glared at him and pulled out of his reach, vandalized. “Either it’s enough for you or nothing ever will be.”

“What is this, a lecture?”

“You’re a fire hazard, Rhodes,” he said. “So stop apologizing for the damage and just let the fucker burn.”

Part of her was annoyed beyond recognition.

The other part of her didn’t want to walk into the trap of taking Nico de Varona at his word.

So, lacking a conceivable response, Libby glanced askance at the broken lamp and reconstructed it, replacing it on the desk.

Nico, in answer, turned the desk into a box.

Whenever Nico did any magic, it always unsettled her. He was vast, somehow. She never saw the details of what he was doing; if the world’s materials were strings with Nico as the puppeteer, they were unidentifiable. Things simply were and then they weren’t, just like that. She never remembered it happening, even if she stared. It was a desk, now it was a box, soon it might be a chair or a swamp. Probably the desk didn’t even know what it had once been.

“What are you, then?” she asked him. “If I’m a fire hazard.”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe.” She returned the box to the form of a desk.

“It’s funny,” Nico said. “I wouldn’t have done any of this if they hadn’t come for both of us.”

“Why’s that funny?”

“Because of this place I’m a murderer,” he said. “Complicitly,” he amended after another moment’s consideration. “Soon to be.” The last was a conclusive mutter.

“Get to the funny part,” Libby suggested drily.