CHAPTER ELEVEN
CADI
The Friday night crowd was absolute chaos as Cadi slumped against the back of the metal chair, fighting to pull enough air into her lungs after the mad dash across the bar to beat out another group for one of the last remaining tables.
Sera slid into the seat across from her, resting her head on her forearms for half a second before looking up.
“Holy shit, I forgot how fast minotaurs are,” she said between breaths, “for a second I thought I was gonna lose an arm when I cut him off.”
Cadi’s brows shot up, her eyes going wide. “Wait … would he have done that?”
Sera pressed her lips together in what Cadi took as silent confirmation, and she made a mental note never to find herself on the wrong side of that particular breed of mythic.
Bodies gathered tightly around them as a steady stream of eager patrons continued to file in from the front door.
Even though this was only her second visit to The Crow’s Nest, Cadi could tell this was a much larger turnout than normal.
The allure was no doubt due to the band currently setting up their gear on the small stage next to them.
“I didn’t realize these guys were so popular,” Cadi said, raising her voice over the growing noise.
“Oh, they’re not,” Sera replied with a smirk. “Everyone in this place is just a slut for live music.”
Cadi laughed, still not fully used to how easy it was to relax around Sera.
The lightness she now felt was a stark contrast to the near constant state of vigilance her body had been in, not just over the past month, but for years.
Even when she’d thought things were going well, it was like a part of her knew something her brain hadn’t yet figured out.
As their laughter faded, the jovial light in Sera’s eyes shifted to something steady and serious. “How did things go at the temple?”
Cadi shrugged, picking at the loose corner of a menu.
She had officially followed through with her decision to leave the Order, returning her sigil to the head attendant before her shift on Wednesday.
Polly had tried everything to change her mind, from offering a different schedule to suggesting she might even be able to find a way to start paying her, but Cadi held firm.
She had spun some made-up story about changes at work, opting not to reveal the true reason for her separation. Things were messy enough.
“About how you’d expect. Begged me to stay, offered me everything. I’m just glad it’s done.”
Sera studied her for a moment, then smiled softly with something akin to pride.
“Well, we couldn’t be at a more fitting place than this to toast your divorce from the Order,” she said, just as Cadi’s phone screen lit up with a breaking news notification.
Cadi tipped the device toward her to read the headline reporting the disappearance of the god governing a small country just south of Sumbria.
“Shit,” she muttered as she scrolled through the article.
“Everything okay?” Sera asked, her voice tinged with concern as she lifted off her chair for a better look at Cadi’s screen. Cadi shook her head, skimming through reports of riots and soaring crime rates in the wake of the disappearance while a strange sense of unease settled in her chest.
“It looks like whatever is happening here is spreading,” she said, looking up to meet Sera’s questioning stare. “Some goddess from a country just south of here has vanished.”
“Lakshmi,” Sera said. Her eyes dropped to the table, and Cadi’s brows pinched at the quiet sadness in her friend’s voice, almost as if she were mourning the loss of a friend.
“Sera?” Cadi pressed, resting her hand against her friend’s soft skin. In an instant, the melancholy in Sera’s features evaporated, replaced by a familiar sly grin as she slipped from beneath Cadi’s touch.
“Now is not the time to talk politics,” she declared as her eyes flicked to the bar over Cadi’s shoulder. “We need drinks, and as penance for leaving me to face every Somnium alone, first round is on you.”
Cadi chuckled and shook her head as she slid from her seat. She supposed buying her friend a drink was the least she could do. “Try not to lose any limbs while I’m gone,” she called over her shoulder.
“Better make it quick, that guy is still hovering.”
Cadi snaked through the press of bodies, her path growing more and more narrow the closer she got to the rail.
When she was finally able to squeeze through, she leaned forward over the polished wooden surface, looking first to one end and then the other, a slow, sinking feeling spreading through her when all she found were unfamiliar faces.
She knew it shouldn’t matter this much who made their drinks—tonight was about her and Sera—but for some reason, it did.
“What can I get you?”
Cadi looked up into the sparkling green eyes of a cheerful bartender, her mess of thick blonde hair piled high atop her head in a style that looked both chaotic and effortlessly chic.
With a jolt of panic, she realized she had left the table without asking Sera what she wanted, and at the rate the crowd was growing, she dreaded the idea of having to leave her spot to go get it now.
“Um … actually I—”
“I got this one, Saoirse.”
Cadi’s heart leaped into her throat at the sound of Elias’s voice, a situation made even worse by the way he leaned forward onto his hands and smiled at her.
“You just get here?” he asked.
Cadi nodded, forcing past the unexpected fluster. “I think I lost a few years off my life trying to get a table, but here we are.”
“Here you are.”
There was something in the way he said it, soft and gentle, that sent a warm flush across her skin, making her suddenly very aware of her own body: The way she stood, how her hair fell, even the way her hands rested against the bar.
She fought the urge to fidget, letting out a small breath when he spoke again, mercifully shifting her focus.
“What are we drinking?”
“I’ll do an Old Fashioned … and I have no idea what Sera wants.”
Elias waved a hand, grabbing a highball glass from the shelf behind him. “No need, I’ve had her drink order memorized for a while now.”
An unexpected tightness pinched Cadi’s chest, and she tried to logic away the cascade of thoughts that threatened to take hold. It made sense that he would remember Sera’s order after knowing and working with her for so long. She didn’t even know why she cared.
She glanced over her shoulder to where Sera sat guarding their table, arms crossed over her middle, glaring daggers at the sour-faced minotaur that was slowly inching closer.
“I may need to come back for those,” Cadi said, “if I’m gone much longer, someone may be getting dismembered, though I’m not entirely sure who that will be.”
Elias looked up, eyes darting to the tense standoff behind her, and his mouth crooked into an amused smirk. “Why don’t you go ahead? I’ll bring these out to you.”
Cadi waved a hand. “You’re busy, I can come back.”
He shook his head, securing the metal shaker over a pint glass with a practiced tap. “Best not to leave her alone; she’s easily provoked, and I don’t want to deal with the mess tonight. Besides, it gives me an excuse to come bug you.”
Ice rang against metal as he shook the cocktail, a playful glint dancing in his eyes that momentarily removed Cadi’s ability to form a coherent thought. She cleared her throat, buying herself a much-needed moment.
“Alright, but if she asks, I didn’t agree to this.”
Elias chuckled, skillfully pouring a stream of bright purple liquid into the sugar-rimmed glass.
Cadi pushed off from the bar and slipped back toward the table. She had no idea what good she would be in a fight against a mythic with a propensity for violence, but if nothing else, she could at least keep Sera from getting in over her head. Probably.
Sera barely seemed to notice when Cadi climbed back up onto her chair.
Her eyes remained on the minotaur, who had now been joined by an attractive pair of sirens, each one gripping a thickly muscled arm.
One of them pushed up onto her toes and whispered something in his ear that Cadi couldn’t make out.
Though, judging by the way his eyes glazed over before he lazily let them guide him back into the crowd, it was clear she had just done them a favor.
Cadi smirked. It was good to see women helping women, even when they weren’t the same species.
Sera tracked the group for a moment before her gaze finally turned to Cadi, her features softening, then quickly pinching into disappointment.
“What gives?” she asked, throwing her arms out to gesture at the empty table. “I send you for booze and you come back with air?”
Cadi shrugged and pressed her lips together in feigned innocence. “Bartender said he’d bring them out to us.”
Sera’s eyes narrowed again, her tone laced with annoyance so thick that Cadi had to bite her lower lip to keep from laughing. “Which bartender?”
Cadi opened her mouth, but was saved from the impossible task of keeping a straight face when Elias sauntered up to the table, drinks in hand and a self-satisfied grin already plastered across his face.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite employee.”
“I hate you,” Sera deadpanned as she snatched the vibrant cocktail from his grip. His smirk only widened as he slid a lowball glass toward Cadi, the amber liquid gently dancing against a single rectangular ice cube in the center of the tumbler.
“Don’t you have a bar to tend, or something?” Sera asked.
Elias shrugged, shifting to lazily drape his arm across the back of Cadi’s chair.
She tightened her fingers around the cool glass, her pulse thundering in her ears at the simplicity of the gesture.
As if it was something he’d always done, instead of a move that had her questioning her understanding of reality.
“That’s one of the perks of being the owner,” he replied, “no one to tell me to get back to work.”