Just as he started to turn, thesomniacame swooping out of the darkness, moving alarmingly fast for a dream demon. He was caught so off guard by the rapid approach that he barely had time to remove his sword from its scabbard before it flew past him, heading straight for the café door.
Des’s pulse thundered in his ears as he leapt after it, sure it was going for the girl. But before he could catch up, Jasper had unsheathed his own blade and decapitated thesomniain one sweeping arc of iron. The burst of green flame was so close that it nearly singed Des’s eyebrows as he reeled backward.
“Aciano’s beard!” Daisy gasped. “Where did that come from?”
Des looked past her to the café window, where six or seven patrons stood with their pale faces pressed to the glass, their expressions distorted by shock and alarm.
“For fuck’s sake,” Des muttered as the owner of the café emerged.
“Well done,” the woman said, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Come inside. Drinks are on me.”
The entire night had gone from calm to utter chaos in a matter of minutes. Des dragged a hand down his face as he followed the others in. The café was old but well-kept, with stained-glass skylights overhead, depicting some sort of flower in soft pastels. Most of the patrons had returned to their seats, though some approached hesitantly, hoping to shake the hands of the Iron Guards. A cluster of young people sat at one table, gossiping loudly, while the older patrons sipped their drinks and cast exasperated glances at the youths.
Des’s eyes found the Blake girl immediately. She sat on a high-backed stool at the end of the long wooden bar, a purple cocktail sitting in a cut-crystal coupe before her.
“Did you see?” someone hissed nearby. “Cut its head clean off!”
“He didn’t even flinch!”
But while Jasper and Gareth clearly relished the praise, and Daisy blushed under the attention, Des hardly heard them. The rush of blood in his ears was too loud. It was the first time he’d seen the dean’s niece stationary and in proper lighting. And for reasons he didn’t care to examine, the sight of her had taken his breath away.
She was clad in a fine green dress, the square neckline revealing a swath of pale skin interrupted only by a black ribbon around her neck that looked like it would come undone with just the slightest tug.
Des’s gaze traveled from the dark chestnut hair framing her heart-shaped face and wide green eyes to her narrow waist, to her slipper-clad feet that dangled a good two feet above the ground, his brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of her. She was smaller than Daisy, which was almost incomprehensible. Daisy, who had sidled up to the bar in her practical training leathers, her red hair tied into a messy ponytail, while this girl looked like she belonged on a shelf in a row of porcelain dolls.
How did a person like Miss Blake survive in a demon-infested world?
A touch on his arm startled him. A young woman had approached and was gazing up at him in a way Des knew most men craved. “Thank you for saving us,” she said, batting her thick lashes. His eyes fell on her long, perfectly manicured fingernails against his leather arm brace, and Des felt his stomach turn in disgust.
Girls like Aurelie Blake survived by staying behind the safety of the university’s iron gates, he reminded himself bitterly. By idling their days away studying while girls like Daisy risked their lives. Des gripped the hilt of his sword and stepped pointedly away from the girl to move closer to the bar, where his friends were ordering drinks.
And somewhere from across the bar, he heard Aurelie Blake giggle.
His eyes shot up and caught hers, and she blanched under a glare that suggested she was as useless as a demon, something else that needed eradicating but wasn’t worth the effort.
“Des, what do you want to drink?” Daisy asked, finally tearing his attention away from the girl. He asked for a pint and tried to clear his head as his fellow guards chattered.
“You really think it was following her?” Daisy asked Gareth, who nodded.
Des grunted his assent. “We need to get back and tell Commander Yew. Something is definitely wrong with that girl.”
It took him a moment to realize that the others were staring at him with blank expressions.
“What?” he growled.
“Have you actually looked at her?” Jasper asked. “She’s the size of a flea and clearly wouldn’t know a demon if it bit her on the—”
“Cheek,” Daisy said, cutting him off. “Jasper is right. If the demon really was following her—”
“It was,” Des insisted.
“Ifit was, she clearly knew nothing about it.”
They all turned their eyes on the girl, who had finished her drink since they entered and was waving her hand politely to get the bartender’s attention.
She must have felt the weight of their collective gaze on her, because her eyes darted toward them, and her pale cheeks flushed pink before she looked away.
“I’m going to talk to her,” Daisy proclaimed.