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“You’re welcome.”
“And here’s your latte,” Lucy said, sliding a mug across the bar. The foam had a perfect heart poured into it.
I sniffed it—it was fruity, but not in a sickly way. I sipped it and nodded. “Is that cherry? That’s super good.”
“Yep! It’s really popular right now.” She grinned. She opened her mouth to speak, but Chad stepped between us.
“So, what’s been going on?” he asked, a playful smile on his face. “How’s life without us?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I should ask you that. It looks like you’re surviving without me, contrary to how you felt when I quit.”
“You worked for me for a long ass time, Arden.” Chad shrugged. “And do you know how hard it is to get someone reliable who doesn’t even flinch when someone yells at them about their coffee?”
I laughed. “It couldn’t bethathard.”
Chad pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced at it. “Shit, I forgot I have to be back at my apartment to oversee some repairs. I need to go.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “I just got here.”
“Then walk with me. You know I’m close, especially when I take the shortcut.” He nodded his chin toward Lucy. “You can come back in a bit to hang with Lucy.”
“Okay, sure.” He lived about ten minutes away on foot, and now that I was seeing him in person, I actually did want to catch up. “Be back soon, Luce.”
Chad and I went outside, the door lingering open from a breeze that Lex made. I felt him, Flint, and Jagger close behind us.
“How’s the shop been?” I asked. “How are the regulars?”
“Good. They miss you.” He took a left turn and crossed the street. “The new kid’s nice and all, but he’s not you.”
“Where’d you even find him? He looks so young.”
“The college,” he said. The quickness of his answer made me uneasy for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint. Maybe it was Lex and Jagger influencing me through our bond. “He gets his friends to come. Keeps the students coming in, especially on buy one, get one pastry days.”
He caught me up on some other regulars as we wove through the streets toward his apartment. He liked to take this shortcut through the various alleys, something I wouldn’t have done if I were alone. The sky was overcast, threatening rain, making the alleys feel even darker. I felt my guys on high alert when we rounded a corner into an alley with a fence through it. The fence didn’t serve much of a purpose if any fae could undo the lock and use it as a shortcut, but the owner of the building just beyond it hadn’t done anything about it since the last time I had been there.
The fence was always unlocked, though, so I waited for Chad to undo the lock. But he paused, his hand hovering over it.
“Shoot, they changed the spell?” Chad sighed.
“Here, let me do it.” I nudged in front of him to undo the spell, but he stayed close. “Back up, Chad. Why are you in my—”
Chad suddenly fell to the ground with a groan. A knife had sliced his shoulder, but where had it come from?
I whipped around, my back to one of the buildings, since the attacker had to be above us. Chad trembled as his blood spilled out faster than it should have. Why wasn’t he healing up faster than that? Knives kept flying toward us—the gust that Lex shot out saved us narrowly.
The Royals uncloaked themselves and stood between me and whoever was throwing knives. Lex fended off the knives with wind, sending them shooting off in different directions, but the attacker still hadn’t uncloaked. The angle changed from the knives coming from above to them coming from our plane. Either they were great at levitation, or two of them were working together.
Flint created a flood of water along the ground, which picked up one attacker’s footsteps. He was coming right at us. I dug deep within myself, focusing on the rocks in the concrete beneath us, and yanked it upward, right as Flint surged toward the attacker. I wrapped concrete around where I hoped the attacker’s ankles were and caught him, making him cry out.
But not before I got his arms. A knife flew directly into Flint’s chest.
In most circumstances, Flint would have ripped the knife out, healed in seconds, and moved on. But not this time. He staggered, then collapsed, clutching his chest. The wet, shaky breath he took rattled me to my core.
No.No. I didn’t care if I got stabbed, too. I shoved past Jagger and Lex and fell to my knees, cradling him in my arms.
“Flint? Flint, you’re okay. You’re going to be fine,” I said, my voice shaking. He was so pale. “You’re with me, right? Open your eyes.”
He did, the clear blue of his irises foggy. “I always am.”
