I took it from him and slid it into my waistband. “Speaking of being arrested, the guards are probably gone. Let’s go.”
He leaned against the door. The bathroom was suddenly too small with his frame taking up all the space. “I can’t leave yet.”
The anger that had been simmering since the dungeon exploded outward. “What do you mean you can’t leave? I need to find my men!”
I was pacing now, my boots clicking against the floor. I didn’t know when I’d started thinking of Nico, Amari, and Val asmymen, but it felt right.
“We’ll find them.” Raphael hadn’t moved, and his voice was still infuriatingly steady.
“We’ll find them?” I stopped in front of him, jabbing a finger at his chest. “I don’t even know what happened to Nico! A lion was chasing him, and they will stop at nothing once they lock onto prey. And Amari—” My voicecracked, and I hated myself for it. “They were going to take his arm.”
Raphael waited, watching me with those stupid brown eyes that sparkled with amusement even in the middle of a crisis. The vein in his forehead had calmed down, and his entire demeanor had shifted to something almost... patient.
The words kept tumbling out. “And Val? I don’t want to think about what they’ll do to him to contain him. And what did I do? I came here to hide! Then there’s my brother?—”
“I know what will help.”
I stopped mid-rant, my mouth still open. “What?”
He pushed off the sink and moved toward the door. “Come on.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you until you explain?—”
“Sammy.” He said my name as if we were old friends, which we absolutely were not. “Do you trust your brother?”
I hesitated. “I don’t trust anyone right now.”
“Trust me for five minutes.”
I wanted to refuse and demand that he take me immediately. But something made me follow him out of the bathroom instead of grabbing a feather and disappearing.
“What is this?” The room we’d stepped into was… a lot.
Everything was bright, and there were people everywhere sitting at little tables, standing in line, tapping their fingers on the same rectangle that Raphael had.
Did they all stare at glowing rectangles all day?
I stopped, my eyes traveling over everything. There was a menu on the wall with words I didn’t recognize and containers of things I had no names for. There were more rectangles that steamed and whirred.
“This is a coffee shop.” Raphael placed a hand on my lower back to steer me toward a counter. “You’re in the way.”
I gaped at everything. How did humans live like this? So much... stuff. So much noise. So much light.
A small tug on my jacket sleeve made me look down. A little girl was staring up at me. Her hair was in two pigtails that stuck out at odd angles. “I love your hair. You’re so pretty, like a princess!”
I blinked down at her, momentarily forgetting about the chaos of everything else. “Thank you.”
Her mother hurried over, apologized, and led the little girl back toward a table. The girl waved at me as she was pulled away, and I waved back.
“Sammy?” Raphael was at the counter, waving a hand in front of my face. “What do you want?”
I stepped up next to him. “I don’t know what any of this is.”
“I’ll order for you.” He sighed like I was purposely being difficult and turned to the woman behind the counter. “I’ll have a medium coffee, black. She’ll have a medium iced blended mocha with extra chocolate, extra whipped cream, and two cake pops.”
The woman tapped her finger on a rectangle. “That will be sixteen sixty-six.”
Raphael tapped his phone against another rectangle. “We wait over here.” He pulled me to the side where other people were standing, looking at their phones.
