Page 113 of This Monster of Mine

“Yes,” she said at the same time that Kadra said “No.”

She didn’t look as Kadra’s gaze bored a hole into her profile.

“You’re tired,” he said as though that was the end of the matter.

“I’m awake.” She reached for her birrus, stomach churning. “You aren’t the only one who’s been under pressure.”

Gaius shifted awkwardly as she awarded him a bright smile.

“Are we going as a group?” She wrapped her birrus around her.

Glancing at Kadra, who was radiating visible menace, Gaius muttered something about having to confirm that and raced out of the office.

The door shut, leaving a strange, uncomfortable intimacy in the room. Acid frothed in her gut, dread snaking under her ribs to squeeze tight. She shoved it aside, shaken.

It’s not like we’re anything to each other.This shouldn’t matter. Kadra had gone to pleasure houses before and likely seen all manner of exhibitionism. She slapped the scrolls containing her summaries of evidence on his desk with unnecessary force, all too conscious of him watching her.Stop, you’re being ridiculous. Pulling herself together, she retreated behind a placid mask. Neither of them said a word. By the time Gaius returned, the tension in the room was thick enough to slice. Looking terrified, he eked out that their horses were saddled and fled once more.

Kadra finally moved from his position by the fireplace. “Do you really want to come?”

Her eyes jumped to his. His coal-black gaze glittered, something turbulent within. At least, she wasn’t the only one seething.

“Might as well see what the fuss is about.” It was past time that she cauterized this madness. What if Kadra met someone in the future? Or ifthe owner of that accursed ribbon resurfaced? That panic was welling in her even now at both possibilities didn’t bode well.

Kadra’s jaw tensed. “If you’d like.”

“I would.”

Their black moods persisted until they reached the stables, where Kadra’s vigiles, who’d been chatting excitedly, suddenly found themselves quite occupied with the sky, the grass, or the buttons of their tunics. She put on an outward show of interest in “Where the Cocks Crow” as the pleasure house was called.

“Do they have anything similar in the north?” a woman asked with interest.

“It was just affairs in Arsamea, with each other or the rare outsider.” A new female arrival in town sparked as much of a hunt as for deer in the winter. “The closest pleasure house was all the way in Sal Flumen.”

The vigile gave her a pitying glance. “You haven’t lived much then.”

“Life was survival.”

“Isn’t it always?” The woman sighed.

It wasn’t long before their motley group of at least twenty vigiles drew up outside a pleasant-looking inn. Only the jaunty sign perched on an overlarge weather vane at the top gave its identity away. As Sarai read it, her lips twitched. Someone had seen fit to convert a “C” to a “G.”

“‘Where the Cocks Grow,’” she read. But a laugh wouldn’t come.

The clammy feeling in her chest twisted with every step to the front gate and she was flooded with dread when a stunning woman met them there.

“Tetrarch Kadra’s party?” Her strikingly pale eyes seemed to glow as she smiled. “Right this way.”

Inside, the pleasure house wasn’t like any of the raucous, wine-soaked xanns she’d slept at on her journey to Edessa, or as opulent and high-priced as a xann she’d briefly spotted in Kirtule. This place embodied comfort and easy amusement.

An array of plump couches and cushions decorated the atrium’s tiled courtyard with a fountain of wine at the center. Artfully placed candlesticksilluminated a wide staircase that led to two floors of private rooms, scantily-clad pleasure workers at every corner. By the fountain, a troupe of musicians roared bawdy songs to a growing crowd, dancing in the nude.

Groupings of all orientations and numbers lounged about, clothed, unclothed, deep in conversation or fondling each other on couches, blowing clouds of blazeleaf into the air. The vigiles scattered in every direction with uproarious cheers. And, suddenly, she was alone in a world she’d only ever read of. She hung her birrus over her wrist, skin tingling at the moans coming from the patrons and drifting down from the second floor.

Off-kilter, she nearly didn’t notice the quick glances from vigiles at every corner, even as they selected their partners. Eyes swerved toward her and then several steps to the left where Kadra was heading to the bar. Trying to escape them, she ducked into the ebb and flow of people dancing by the musicians and accidentally inhaled a lungful of blazeleaf. She tottered, a languorous heat spreading through her.

Across the room, Kadra inspected a bottle of wine. Glowering at the cork for a long moment under the barkeep’s nervous gaze, he uncorked it, poured some in a glass, and stared at it some more before practically downing the entire bottle. She stared as he pointed out another bottle and performed the same ritual. He didn’t turn to her once.

He never engages, Anek had said, but perhaps, deep down, she’d secretly hoped that she would prove the exception. A foolish wish that had cost her.I shouldn’t have come. Perhaps this was why he’d tried to stop her. Because he’d known how lost she would be here. Swallowing, she ignored the heat behind her eyes. At least she hadn’t given any outward indication of what she felt for him. Tetrarchs and Petitors were bound for life. One foolish confession and she’d have condemned them to horrendous awkwardness. She debated slinking away when a beautiful neutralis stepped in her path.

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