Black. Kohary’s monster had black eyes, dull as coal.
Fuck.
Cash’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He swallowed stickily and fumbled for a take back. Before he could come up dry on that, a hand touched the small of his back and he breathed in mead and linen.
“Kohary,” Arkady said. His voice was tight, strung through with suspicion and discomfort but still awkwardly courteous. “Enjoying the wine? The grapes came from the caverns in Italy where my mother grew up. A taste of home.”
Kohary blinked, and his eyes were green again and unexpectedly regretful.
“It’s… a taste,” he said. “Earthy.”
“Fungus,” Arkady said. “Donna always says it tastes like why she came to America, but it’s traditional.”
“And she’s a traditional woman?” Kohary asked as he set the glass aside.
“She’s a businesswoman,” Arkady corrected. “She doesn’t have to enjoy the tradition to see its worth.”
“Out for herself,” Kohary said. “Good to know.”
The undercurrents in the conversation could have drowned a horse. Cash shifted uncomfortably away from the tension, and Arkady tugged him back, fingers hooked in the waistband of his jeans.
“My sister is on her way,” he said. “We don’t want it to look like you’re avoiding her.”
Black threads flickered in Kohary’s eyes as he drained the rest of his wine. To his credit, he didn’t grimace at the taste. Most people did until their palates accepted their fate.
“Good idea,” he said. “How things look isn’t something that can be ignored.”
Arkady’s knuckles pressed into the small of Cash’s back as his hand tightened. “It can be for a weekend,” he said shortly.
“Perhaps. Go greet your sister,” Kohary said. He was talking to Arkady, but his eyes were on Cash as he said it. “Don’t let me keep you. We can catch up later.”
Hopefully not.
Cash waited until there were bodies between them and Kohary to let the full-body shudder escape him. He felt more relieved than he had when he got out of the cuffs last night.
“He’s not that bad,” Arkady said as he moved his hand up Cash’s back. It would look less like he was dragging Cash somewhere.
Cash snorted. “That’s clearly a lie,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Arkady dip his head and tilt the corner of his mouth in a wry acknowledgment. “Is the fact you work for the Left Hand of the Prodigium one of those things I would have known if I’d asked?”
“If you asked the right people,” Arkady said. “Ellie doesn’t know. Donna does.”
“I wouldn’t ask Donna if my head were on fire,” Cash said.
“She likes you now.”
“Somehow that’s worse.”
Arkady made a dry noise of agreement and slid his hand up Cash’s back. He walked his fingers along the knobs of his spine up to the weird, sensitive spot between his shoulder blades. The sort of spot that only someone who knew—still knew—your body could find. Awareness prickled under Cash’s skin like inverted goose pimples, and he felt his ears flush.
“It does take the thrill out of you being the bad boy,” Arkady said. “Her approval, you know?”
It was only monsters who’d look at the two of them and pick Cash out as the bad influence. Good influence, he supposed, from the human side of things.
“It’s a shame,” Arkady murmured as he nodded a coolly distant acknowledgment to a… thing? Cash hadn’t been introduced. The monster bent its great, thorn-antlered head back to Arkady, mindful of the other guests around it. “But if you can’t ruin my reputation, at least you can look pretty on my arm. For a weekend.”
Cash ignored the pointed restriction as he nodded polite acknowledgment to the monster—it’s wild bloodred eye had already rolled on over the crowd, but it was never wise to assume that was the only way something could see. “And who should I have asked about the Worm in residence?”
There was a beat as Arkady absorbed that question. Then he smiled pleasantly and leaned down slightly toward Cash as they paused.
