We had a male server.

  The silver man walked over to our table wearing a suit.

  “Welcome! My name is Dravin, may I take your orders?” He smiled as he took out a notepad from his pocket. The fact that he didn’t have a crystal band, which was what all Adventurers wore to keep track of their skills, store their items, and perform tasks like messaging other Adventurers and allocating their stat points, meant that he was a Mundane. He also hadn’t given his last name, which for a Mundane would be the name of the city.

  I pointed at Aelin who was across the table from me, one space to my right. “She has our orders.”

  There were a lot of reasons why I’d put Aelin in charge of the orders. First was that she had been a waitress before she had gotten a mantle. Remembering all of our orders and conveying them to the staff would be as easy as breathing for her. Second, she was a people person. Even if I hadn’t put her in charge, she would have been chiming in. And third was that it gave her a distraction from trying to set me up with anyone else.

  “... And you wouldn’t happen to have a cute waitress whose shift is about to end?” The blonde batted her lashes at our waiter.

  Okay, so the third reason was a bust.

  “I can ask while I put in your order.” The waiter seemed unfazed by the extra request. Either he was used to it or he wasn’t taking it seriously.

  “She’s joking.” I waved at the man.

  He simply nodded and walked towards the kitchen.

  “What’s the plan when we reach the city?” Jenne, who was sitting directly across from me, looked at either end of the table where the two older women were sitting.

  “We’re going straight to the palace.”

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  I turned to my left to look at Kara, who was on the other side of Ether. The drained Scarlet hadn’t let her sister get very far away from her since they’d been reunited, which I could understand. I didn’t have any siblings, but I could imagine that if I did and had thought they were dead for the last six years, I’d be wanting to stay close to them too.

  I tried to think about how to word my reply to Jenne. It wasn’t that what Kara had said was wrong, just that we were in a half full diner and I didn’t want to elaborate on everything that would be taking place in front of the spy.

  “It’s going to be late by the time that we get into town, so we probably won’t have time to do much other than get settled into our rooms.” I looked between Kara and Jenne, then leaned back in my chair to stretch as I looked around the rest of the room. “We can discuss what we’re doing after that once we’re settled in.”

  “Is she staying with us now?” Ren nodded at Kara. From the look on the other women’s faces, I could tell that was a question they all had too. So far, most of them had only known that I had a Scarlet watching over me, that Ether’s sister would be joining us hadn’t been announced until this morning.

  I looked over at Kara. “For now.” I had a feeling that Klix wanted there to be a bodyguard around me and Ether for some reason, though there wasn’t much that Kara could do at her level that Rix wouldn’t be able to pull off.

  I could see that there were a lot more questions that they had, but this definitely wasn’t the place to have that discussion.

  I turned to the woman on my right. “Have you thought of what you’re going to do for the Adventurer Games?” I started counting. “You have twenty days until the next semester starts.”

  No one questioned that Oz was the leader of the secondary team. I had a feeling Astrid might challenge that, but that was more of a Gesai problem, than one for me.

  “It’s hard to plan anything when we don’t know who our last party member is going to be and we haven’t been able to work on our teamwork either.” The brown woman sighed. “I’m ready for things to slow down.”

  “So you’ve read up on the Dungeon’s here?” There was something mischievous in Gesai’s voice.

  “Um…” We all started looking around at each other. Oz swallowed. “Rix has the info, but we didn’t have a terminal…”

  “Might want to have that memorized before Trent wakes up.” The teacher winked at us as the waiter came out with our food.

  There were groans from everyone. I looked across the table at Jenne. “I guess you know what we’re doing now.”

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