The message came through a runner from the healing wing, a folded note in handwriting William recognized from supply requisitions Reyes used to scribble between raids. Discharged. Come by the Copper Kettle if you’ve got time. Bring the pup if you want, nobody there asks questions.
The Copper Kettle turned out to be a quiet tavern tucked into a side street off the fourth district’s main thoroughfare, the kind of place hunters went to drink without guild scouts or curious nobles trailing behind them. William found Reyes at a corner table, leg still braced but a cane propped against the chair instead of a stretcher, looking more like himself than he had in the healing ward.
"You’re walking," William said, sliding into the seat across from him, Frost curling immediately beneath the table while Cerberus, still puppy sized, hopped up onto the bench beside him.
"Barely. Healers cleared me for short distances only, and only because I threatened to walk out on my own otherwise." Reyes nodded at the empty mug across from him, already refilled by a passing server before William could ask. "Figured I owed you a drink that isn’t a hospital cup of water."
"You don’t owe me anything."
"Wrong answer, but I’ll let it go for now." Reyes took a slow pull from his own mug, studying William over the rim with an assessing look that felt different from the desperate urgency of the hollow. "You’ve been keeping quiet. Word around the district’s mostly died down to rumor and guesswork. That your doing?"
"Some of it." William scratched behind Frost’s ears where the fox had draped itself across his boot beneath the table. "Low profile Tower runs, staying off the guild boards, not giving anyone a reason to look twice."
"Smart." Reyes’s eyes flicked briefly toward Cerberus before returning to William’s face. "Association’s still confused about your evaluation. I heard some of it secondhand. Scanners couldn’t find anything, right?"
"Nothing they could measure."
Reyes didn’t push further, though something in his expression suggested he suspected there was more to the story than convenient luck, same as Yuen clearly had. He let it sit, unspoken, the way a man who’d survived something inexplicable alongside William seemed willing to grant him the space not to explain it fully.
The tavern door opened behind them, admitting a gust of street noise and two familiar figures William hadn’t seen since the outpost steps three weeks earlier. Kessa spotted them first, her sharp eyes narrowing at the sight of Reyes upright and drinking, before catching on William beside him.
"You’re alive," Kessa said, crossing the room with Bram a step behind her, disbelief coloring the words despite the report she’d filed herself confirming exactly that. "Both of you. Together. Having a drink like nothing happened."
"Something happened," Reyes said dryly, gesturing at the cane leaning against his chair. "Sit down before you make a scene."
Kessa and Bram slid into the remaining seats, and an uneasy silence settled over the table, the weight of everything left unsaid since that stairwell three weeks ago pressing down on all four of them at once. Bram was the one who finally broke it, running a hand through his hair with a grimace.
"We should have gone back for you," he said, looking at Reyes directly. "I’ve thought about it every day since. We just left you there."
"You made the right call." Reyes’s voice was flat, certain, no trace of resentment in it. "Going back would have gotten all of you killed alongside me. I gave the order to retreat for a reason."
"Doesn’t make it feel any better," Kessa muttered, though her eyes had drifted toward William now, something more complicated than guilt crossing her face. "And you. You went back down there alone. After everything you’d already survived that day." She shook her head slowly. "I called you insane for trying to tame that thing in the middle of the fight. Turns out I was wrong about a lot more than that."
William shifted uncomfortably under the weight of her stare, aware of exactly how much she’d witnessed and exactly how little of the full truth he was willing to share, even here, even with people who’d bled through the same disaster he had. "I got lucky. It was already weakened. I just happened to be the one standing there when it finally gave out."
"Lucky." Kessa repeated the word slowly, clearly no more convinced by it than Yuen had been. "Whatever you want to call it, William, half the guild boards in this district have been quietly asking about the tamer who walked out of that Tower with a Guardian Class beast. You know that, right?"
"I’ve heard." William kept his tone even. "Doesn’t mean I have to answer them."
Bram leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice despite the tavern’s general noise. "For what it’s worth, we haven’t said anything beyond the official report. No embellishments, no extra details about how it happened. Figured that part was yours to tell or not tell, however you want to handle it."
"Thank you," William said, meaning it.
"Doesn’t mean others won’t come sniffing regardless," Kessa added. "There’s already a rumor going around that some noble house sent an inquiry to the Association asking about you by name. I don’t know how much truth’s behind it, but rumors like that don’t usually come from nowhere."
Reyes’s jaw tightened at that, glancing toward William with something sharper than his earlier easy warmth. "That’s sooner than I expected them to move."
"I figured I had more time," William admitted, the comfortable ease of the last few weeks souring slightly at the thought.
"You had exactly as much time as it took for the right person to hear the story and get curious." Reyes set his mug down with a soft clink, expression turning serious in a way William hadn’t seen since the marsh. "Whoever’s asking, noble house or guild, they’re not going to wait forever for you to come to them. Sooner or later, they come to you instead. Better you decide now how you want that conversation to go, instead of scrambling for an answer when someone’s already sitting across from you expecting one."
The tavern’s warm noise carried on around them, oblivious to the quiet unease settling over the corner table, and William found himself turning Reyes’s warning over in his mind, the fragile sense of control he’d built over the last three weeks suddenly feeling far more temporary than he’d let himself believe.