Ana stood eventually, stretching out a kink in her back with a small wince she didn't bother hiding from him anymore. "I'm going to check on the mansion's wards before bed. Habit, mostly — but after yesterday, I'd rather not skip it."
"Want company?"
"You should be resting."
"I've been resting all day. I slept through most of the healing, half the walk home in spirit if not in body, and now dinner." He stood anyway, testing his ribs and finding them sore but steady. "I think I can manage a walk around the garden."
She gave him a look that said she wasn't fully convinced, but didn't argue either — just turned and let him fall into step beside her as they made their way out through the back door.
The garden was quiet at this hour, moonlight catching frost still clinging to the hedges Ana had insisted on planting despite everyone telling her they wouldn't survive Avalon's colder months. They had, somehow. Stubborn things.
She moved along the perimeter with practiced ease, fingers occasionally brushing stone or wood, checking the faint threads of ward-magic worked into the mansion's boundary. Kaelid mostly just watched her work, content to trail along without much to add.
"You're staring," she said, not looking up from the ward stone she was examining.
"I'm supervising."
"You're staring."
"Fine. I'm staring." He didn't bother denying it further. "Sue me. You're interesting to watch when you're doing that face."
"What face?"
"The one where you're concentrating so hard you forget anyone else is around." He smiled when she finally glanced over, caught. "It's a good face."
Ana huffed, equal parts embarrassed and pleased, and went back to the ward stone if only to have somewhere else to look. "Everything's holding," she said after a moment, voice a little too even. "We're safe tonight."
"Good." Kaelid tipped his head back, looking up at the clear night sky instead of her, giving them both a stretch of easier silence. "That's all I wanted to hear."
They didn't linger outside much longer after that — the cold finally catching up with both of them, and whatever adrenaline had carried Kaelid through the walk starting to fade fast. By the time they made it back inside, he was moving noticeably slower, favoring the side Ana had spent the most time on the night before.
"Bed," Ana said, catching it before he could pretend otherwise. "Now. Not tomorrow, not after one more thing. Now."
"Bossy."
"Observant." She nudged him toward the stairs without much gentleness. "You want to be useless for another two days? Keep pushing it."
He didn't argue further, mostly because she was right and he was too tired to pretend she wasn't. They climbed the stairs together, quiet in that comfortable way that didn't need filling, until they reached his door.
"Thank you," he said again, quieter this time. "For today. For yesterday. For — all of it, really."
Ana studied him for a moment, something unreadable passing behind her eyes before she softened it into something closer to fondness. "You'd do the same for me."
"I would," he said, no hesitation in it at all. "In a heartbeat."
That seemed to catch her slightly off guard, like she hadn't expected him to answer that fast, or that plainly. She recovered quickly, waving it off with a small, tired laugh. "Get some sleep, Kaelid."
"You too."
She lingered a second longer than the moment strictly required before turning down the hall toward her own room, and Kaelid stood there watching until she disappeared around the corner. Only then did he let himself into his own room, dropping onto the bed fully clothed, too worn out to bother with anything else.
Seven cores. Everyone made it home. And her.
He was asleep before he could finish the thought.
Morning arrived without the fanfare of the day before — no aching confusion about where he was, no unfamiliar weight against his shoulder. Just Kaelid, alone in his own bed, sunlight cutting through the curtains at an angle that told him he'd slept later than usual.
He lay there a moment longer than necessary, testing his ribs with a slow breath. Sore, still, but nothing like the deep, grinding ache from two days ago. Whatever Ana had poured into him last night had done its job.
By the time he made it downstairs, the smell of food was already thick in the kitchen, and most of the party had beaten him to the table. Tatsuya sat sharpening Moonlight again — a near-permanent state at this point — while Eric argued with Aria over the last of whatever Ana had cooked.
"You've had two helpings already," Aria said, guarding the plate like it owed her money.
"I'm recovering. I need my strength."
"You got hit by a club. Not starved."
"Recovering from being hit by a club requires strength."
Ana glanced up as Kaelid entered, something easing in her expression at the sight of him upright and moving on his own. "Look who finally decided to join the living."
"In my defense, someone told me to sleep and meant it." He grabbed a seat, ignoring Eric and Aria's ongoing war over breakfast. "What's the plan for today?"
"Guild," Ana said, already back to business. "We turn in the cores, settle what's owed, and figure out what's left over. After the week we've had, I think we've earned a proper look at where we actually stand."
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"Financially, or in general?" Tatsuya asked, not looking up from his sword.
"Both, probably." Ana allowed herself a small, tired smile. "Let's not almost die again anytime soon, though. I'd like a quiet week. Just once."
"No promises," Kaelid said, and the whole table groaned in unison — the closest thing to a normal morning they'd had in days.
The guild hall was busier than usual by the time they arrived, midmorning traffic filling the floor with the usual mix of returning parties and fresh postings on the board. Emma spotted them the moment they walked in, her expression shifting from routine professionalism to something closer to real relief.
"You're all in one piece," she said, eyeing the group with the practiced once-over of someone who'd seen plenty of parties come back looking worse. "That's more than I can say for some of the reports that came through yesterday."
"Define 'in one piece,'" Eric muttered, still favoring his arm.
"Close enough for guild purposes." Emma waved them toward the counter. "Let's see what you brought back."
Kaelid set the wrapped bundle of cores down carefully, and Emma's eyebrows rose the moment she unwrapped it. She counted slow, turning each core over, expression shifting somewhere between impressed and mildly alarmed.
"Seven," she said finally. "The posting said two ogres."
"There were three," Tatsuya said, flat as ever.
"...Of course there were." Emma exhaled, already reaching for her ledger. "I'm almost afraid to ask how that went."
"Badly," Ana said, "then fine. In that order."
Emma didn't push further — guild receptionists, Kaelid had learned, developed a talent for knowing exactly when not to ask a follow-up question. She sorted the cores instead, separating the four smaller ones from the three larger, darker ones with practiced hands.
"Two of these aren't ordinary ogre cores," she said, holding one of the darker three up to the light. "These read stronger. Marauder-class, not Brute."
"Yeah," Kaelid said. "That one wasn't part of the original two."
Emma gave him a look that suggested she wanted the full story eventually, but for now let it go, turning to her ledger to work out the numbers instead.
"Four Brute-class cores, Fractured rank," Emma said, sliding an abacus across the counter with the ease of long habit. "Two gold apiece. Eight gold total."
She moved to the darker three next, weighing one in her palm before setting it down. "And these — Marauder-class, Fractured. Twenty gold each. Sixty gold."
She tallied it, then looked up at the five of them with an expression that had shifted somewhere past professional courtesy into genuine surprise. "Sixty-eight gold, total. That's an exceptional haul for a two-ogre contract."
"We're aware," Ana said dryly.
Emma counted it out from the guild's strongbox, stacking coin with practiced efficiency, and slid the total across the counter. "There's also the completion bonus for the original job — five gold, since you cleared the posting despite the complication."
"The complication," Eric muttered, "nearly ate Kaelid."
"I'll note that in the report," Emma said, entirely deadpan, already writing.
Kaelid stared at the pile of coin now sitting in front of him — more money in one place than he'd ever personally been responsible for, even counting Eric's ridiculous platinum reveal back at the mansion. Seventy-three gold, split five ways, was still more than enough to matter.
Seven cores. Almost died for it. Worth it, probably. Ask me again in a week.
Ana was already doing the math out loud beside him, murmuring about debts and repairs and how much of this needed to go where before anyone got the idea to spend it on something stupid. Tatsuya, for his part, was already eyeing the door — sword-obsessed as ever, no doubt calculating how much of his share could go toward whatever upgrade he had in mind for Moonlight.
Emma finished logging the transaction and looked up at them one last time; something a little softer beneath the professional tone this time.
"Take a few days," she said. "Actual rest, not guild-hall rest. You've earned it."
Nobody argued with that. They filed out of the guild hall together, the midday sun doing a decent job of thawing the last of the morning's chill, coin pouches noticeably heavier than they'd been walking in.
They settled it back at the mansion, gathered around the same table from the night before, coin sorted into small stacks while Ana worked through the numbers with the same brisk efficiency she brought to everything else.
"Kaelid," she said, sliding one stack toward him, "ten gold, straight to Eric. That clears the mansion loan."
"Finally," Eric said, sweeping the coin over without much ceremony. "I was starting to think I'd die still owed."
"You nearly did," Tatsuya pointed out.
"Exactly. Would've been embarrassing."
Ana pulled a second, larger stack toward herself instead. "And this is everyone's share of the repairs. I fronted fifteen gold to fix the place up and furnish it properly, so that comes back to me now — split what's left five ways."
Nobody argued. Four small stacks slid across the table toward her, Kaelid's included, and she swept them into her own share without much fuss, like she'd been waiting three months to finally get that particular debt closed.
Kaelid counted what was left of his own cut once both were cleared — ten to Eric, and his share of what remained after Ana's fifteen came off the top — and felt something loosen in his chest that had been sitting there, quiet but persistent, since the day he'd first handed over ten gold for a house that turned out to be barely standing.
No debt. For the first time since I left the village, I don't owe anybody anything.
It wasn't a fortune. It wasn't the endless mountain of gold he used to daydream about back home, shoveling bread dough at three in the morning. It left him with barely more than what he'd started the week with, once everything was said and done. But it was his — clean, earned, and entirely his own.
"You look like you're about to cry," Aria said, watching him with open amusement.
"I'm not."
"You're a little misty."
"I got dust in my eye."
"Sure you did."
Tatsuya spoke up, sword resting across his lap as usual. "So what's the actual plan now? We've got money, we've got a mansion that isn't falling apart, and apparently a week where nobody's required to almost die."
"Rest," Ana said immediately, not even looking up from where she was tucking her share of the gold away. "A real one. No jobs, no training beyond whatever Yami forces on you two—" she nodded at Kaelid and Tatsuya, "—and no wandering off into random clearings."
"That was one time," Kaelid said.
"It found you a unicorn. I'm not saying stop entirely. I'm saying maybe don't make it a weekly habit."
Eric leaned back in his chair, testing his bad arm again with a wince he was clearly trying to hide. "I'm not opposed to a week of doing nothing. My arm could use it."
"Your arm needs more than a week," Ana said, already glancing his way with the particular focus she got whenever someone's injury became her responsibility again. "Let me look at it for real tonight. I only did the bare minimum out in the field."
"I'm fine."
"You're not, but you will be. Sit still tonight and let me actually fix it instead of holding it together."
Eric raised his hands in surrender, and the table settled into something easier — plans for the coming days forming loosely between bites of food and idle conversation, none of it urgent, all of it comfortable in a way that felt earned after the week they'd had.
Kaelid sat back and let it wash over him, coin pouch light in his pocket, ribs still sore, and none of it mattering half as much as it should have.
A week off. Actual rest. Almost don't know what to do with that.
He caught Ana's eye across the table again — a small, easy thing now, familiar in a way it hadn't been a few days ago — and found he didn't mind the not-knowing one bit.