“Yeah, well, not going to be talking much if I’m under you,” Cash pointed out. He grabbed yesterday’s jeans and pulled them on. The time it took him to hitch them up over his hips gave him the chance to pull his thoughts together. “I found out who our leak—your leak—is leaking to.”
“Was that before or after they hit you on the head?”
Cash left his jeans unbuttoned as he reached up to touch his head. He probed gingerly at his skull. It still hurt, but the knot had gone down from a goose egg to a chicken’s egg overnight. The skin had pulled back together as well, although he could still feel the seam of it with his fingers.
“Simultaneously,” he said.
“Who?” Arkady said. His monster pushed up against his skin, a sheen of sickly gold that bled through his honey tan. “I’ll kill them, and all we have to deal with is a traitor. Not the Left Hand and the Prodigium.”
“That won’t work.” Cash sat down on the edge of the bed, T-shirt dangling from his hands between his knees. “It’s not one wannabe Hunter, it’s 12:28.Even if you kill the crew that’s here, it won’t stop the investigation. If anything, it will just confirm to any doubters at the network that there issomethinghere.”
Arkady stalked over and leaned down to take Cash’s hands. He turned them over and grazed his thumbs over the half-faded marks left by the cuffs.
“I want to kill them,” he said.
That made Cash’s heart stutter hard enough that he wondered if Arkady could feel the skip in Cash’s pulse through his skin.
“And ten minutes ago you wanted to kill me,” he said. “You got over that, you’ll get over this.”
Arkady lifted Cash’s hands and brushed a hot-lipped kiss over the marks. It made the tender skin sting and itch as Arkady’s power picked at the wound.
“I didn’t realize I’d gotten over wanting to kill you,” Arkady said dryly as he gave Cash’s hands back. He stalked restlessly around the room to burn off emotion as the gold sheen sank back under his skin. The pressure in the room changed, and the absence made it easier to breathe. “Fine, discredit rather than murder. Them, at least.”
Cash pulled his T-shirt on with a wince as the collar scraped over the back of his head. He ignored the jab.
“We’ll get the chance,” he said. “Apparently they plan to crash the wedding.”
Arkady stopped for a second and then swore through his teeth. “That makes no sense.”
“Why not?” Cash asked. “No one will have their human skins on. The director is expecting to just catch Yana’s husband—”
Arkady snorted something under his breath and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“—but they aren’t going to stop filming because they see more monsters than they expect. Even if none of the film gets out, a breach of the law that… huge… would bring the Prodigium down like a hammer.”
The Abascals would bear the brunt—even if they hadn’t commissioned the exposure, just to show that no one was above the law—but everyone would suffer. Every monster involved could be relocated… to the bottom of the salt sea if any of the footage did make it out to the world.
“Exactly,” Arkady said. “Why did I want you here for the wedding, Cash?”
“To piss your family off?”
A flicker of bleak humor tucked the corner of Arkady’s mouth. It didn’t last. “No secrets from you, huh?” he said. “Not just that, though. Any monster whocouldhave done this is going to be here. If they’re going to help the humans gatecrash, then they’ll definitely be here. That means they’d be part of the breach, along with the rest of us.”
Cash hesitated as he tried to explain that away. “Maybe that’s to throw the Prodigium off their scent?” he said. “They’d assume the same thing—that no one would expose themselves.”
“Would you put your faith in the Prodigium’s proportionate reaction to this?”
No. Cash wouldn’t. No monster with sense would. He didn’t want to admit that to Arkady just yet, though, so he changed the subject.
“It doesn’t matter anyhow—”
“It’s the only reason you’re here.”
That caught Cash off guard, right between the ribs. He felt his lungs hitch in at the almost physical ache of it, and he spat the sour breath out. It was a lie. Cash could tell that, but it still hurt. Apparently, his pride was an idiot.
His monster sighed—a long sibilant hiss in the back of his head—but didn’t even dignify that with a jab.
“The Worm was collateral damage,” Cash said. He’d worked that out last night, and he thought saying it aloud would make his head hurt less. It didn’t. “Whoever did this didn’t do it to unseat him. They just wanted to convince the 12:28crew to trust them. Whatever they want to accomplish with that, it was always going to happen at Yana’s wedding. If it looks like we’re going to derail that, I don’t think whoever it is will just give up.”
