Nyx sucked on the straw in her striped drink, still watching my face. She blinked over the green contact lenses, and I realized she was still wearing her glasses, even as a cat.
“Huh,” is all she said.
Miranda barreled into me then, and grabbed my arm, laughing, as she began dragging me out to the dance floor. “C’mon,” she said, ignoring my attempts to plant my feet in the flat-bottomed, slippery-soled sandals. “We’re dancing!”
“No, Mir,” I immediately protested. “No. Seriously. I’m way too tired.”
“No whining, Leda. You look hot.Ilook hot. We’re dancing. Drake and Jolie and even Luc are out there already. You’re coming with us.”
I was still struggling half-heartedly, glancing back at the goblet I’d left behind on the small table. “Gods, you are freakishly strong,” I complained. “I came, didn’t I? Against my better judgment. Isn’t that enough?”
She ignored me, still dragging us both insistently out to the center of the crowd, where the rest of our friends were dancing as a group, most of them still holding drinks.
I ended up by Draken somehow, who dropped his glass on a passing tray, then caught hold of my hand. “Hey,” he said. “Let’s dance for real. Everyone else has a drink.”
I felt myself balk, on more than one level, but my brain reacted slower, and I couldn’t think of a good excuse. “I’m really not up for dancing,” I said, when he wrapped an arm around my nearly-bare waist and tugged me into a scrum of couples.
It shouldn’t have been weird.
Miranda had just started dancing with Darragh, who’d dressed as one of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Jolie and Luc joined them as I watched, and even Nyx was dancing with Dervish, who’d come as a drakai, one of those fist-sized, messenger creatures, and magicked himself so that his body appeared to be on fire. I still felt weird, verging on paranoid, as Draken brought me closer, then spun with me as the tempo of the thumping music changed.
I held him lightly, keeping as much distance between us as I could, but there were so many people out there now, I got squished into him every other turn.
Draken leaned down to my ear then, and I realized he was more than a little ahead of me with the drinking part of the evening.
“Gods, you look fucking gorgeous, Leda,” he said.
I flushed hotter, and tried to laugh, pushing him back with a hand. “I’m pretty sure that’s the day-drinking talking, Drake.”
His hands wrapped around my waist as he looked at me seriously.
“It’s not,” he said. “You know it’s not, Leda, I––”
Someone shoulder-checked him before he could finish, hard enough, they nearly knocked him down in the middle of the dance floor.
I managed to step back before I lost my balance, but when I glanced up, gold eyes met mine from beneath a black, iron-looking crown with spikes that rose a foot over his head. He’d magicked his face to redden his complexion, but hadn’t changed his features much apart from that, so I had absolutely no doubt who I was looking at.
His hair, now long, scraggly, and black, hung past his shoulders. He wore black armor under a heavy, hooded cloak, bone-colored rings and a bone belt, and gripped a tall staff with an uneven, two-pronged fork in one hand.
“Fitting fucking costume,” Draken snapped, glaring at him. “At least you’re dressed as the inner you.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes off Bones’s face.
Gold and green flames swam through his irises as he took in my costume in a lingering stare. Draken seemed to notice both things, because he tensed when he saw Bones looking at me, then flinched when Bones turned a harder glare on him. I had to hope he’d think the irises were part of Bones’s costume.
“Fuck off,” Draken said. “Go be evil somewhere else.”
“Actually, I was wondering if I should be absconding with your date,” Bones drawled, towering over him as his eyes flashed hotter. He leaned on the staff, and looked at me. “If we’re going all-in on costumes, I believe the witch you’re currently pawing at is my wife.”
My breathing stopped.
Bones’s eyes held mine a beat longer, and I didn’t miss the meaning there.
“That’s my ring on her finger, isn’t it?” Bones asked coldly.
He looked back at Draken, and my friend’s expression flinched, right before it twisted in anger. I saw the confusion on his face, though, mixed with something like unease, maybe even fear at whatever he saw in Bones.
I didn’t see that relax until Bones looked away.
