The inn's common room was already lively by the time they got back, the rest of the party gathered around a table with plates of food and the easy, animated energy of people who'd each had a good day of their own.
"There you two are," Eric said, waving them over. "Was starting to think you'd gotten lost."
"Not lost," Ana said, settling into a seat. "Just thorough."
"That covers a lot of ground, apparently," Aria said, eyeing the lingering warmth in Ana's expression with obvious curiosity, though she mercifully didn't push further. "We were starting to place bets."
"I don't want to know the terms of those bets."
"Wise choice."
Tatsuya looked giddier than usual, already deep into recounting his day at the local forge before anyone had even sat down. "Their smith's technique is different from John's — less about raw enchant density, more about blade geometry. I watched him work for two hours. Two hours, and he barely noticed I was there."
"Sounds thrilling," Eric said, deadpan.
"It was." Tatsuya either didn't catch the sarcasm or simply didn't care, plowing ahead with genuine enthusiasm. "I'm going back tomorrow. He said he'd let me handle some of the raw materials if I came back."
"Of course he did." Aria shook her head, though she was smiling. "Meanwhile I found an archery supplier with actual quality fletching materials for once. Might be worth stopping by again before we head back."
"And you?" Ana asked, glancing at Eric. "Find your contacts?"
Eric's jaw tightened for half a second — there and gone fast enough that Kaelid almost missed it. "A few. Mostly just old business acquaintances. Nothing major." He said it easily enough, though Kaelid filed the momentary shift away regardless, curious but not inclined to push in front of the whole table.
Dinner continued in comfortable noise after that, everyone trading small details of their day. The warmth of the meal and the company settled over the table. Despite everything, it already felt like home, even here, in a city none of them had grown up in.
Kaelid caught Ana's eye at one point across the table, the same quiet, easy exchange that had become so familiar over the past few days, and found himself thinking, not for the first time, how strange and wonderful it was that a life built almost entirely by accident had ended up feeling this solid.
The last two days blurred together, easy and unhurried, each of them scattering off to their own version of "make the most of it" before the return trip.
Tatsuya spent nearly every waking hour at the forge, coming back each evening smelling faintly of hot metal and looking more content than Kaelid had ever seen him. By the second day, the smith had him doing basic maintenance work under supervision — reading a blade's edge, correcting minor warps, understanding the difference between a weapon that was merely sharp and one that was properly balanced. "Anything with an edge, now," Tatsuya said proudly over dinner, turning Moonlight over to demonstrate a barely-visible improvement to its maintenance he'd apparently learned that afternoon. "I could probably keep an edge on her with nothing but a rock now, if I had to."
Tatsuya glanced at Ana with a grin.
"Please don't test that on my knives," Ana said.
Aria disappeared into the archery supplier for most of an afternoon and came out with better fletching feathers than the makeshift ones she'd been stretching for months, plus a few straighter, more consistent shafts — nothing dramatic, just good material worth the trip. "Might actually be able to put together some real upgrades once I've got time to sit down with them," she said, testing the balance of one against December. "Wish I'd found this place months ago."
Kaelid and Ana kept their own thread quieter, no grand outings to match the bridge or the hill — just small moments folded into the ordinary business of the last two days. A shared meal at a food stall Ana used to frequent. A quiet walk back from the market one afternoon that needed no particular destination to justify it. Nothing dramatic, nothing that demanded its own telling — just the comfortable accumulation of two people who'd stopped needing an excuse to enjoy each other's company.
On the final evening, Ana insisted on one last stop before they packed up for the road — back to the market, back to Marta's stand, and, at Ana's quiet request, a final visit to Silvia's shop as the sun began its slow descent.
Silvia met them at the door with the same warmth as before, pulling Ana into one more hug before turning her attention to Kaelid with a knowing, appraising look.
"Taking good care of her, I hope."
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"Doing my best."
"Mm." She studied him a moment longer, mouth curving into something wry. "You've got that look about you. The one that thinks it's being subtle."
"I don't know what you mean," Kaelid said, entirely too fast, and Ana's ears went predictably pink beside him.
"Sure you don't." Silvia laughed, warm and unbothered, and let them go with one final embrace and a promise to write.
Marta was no better at the market, wrapping two final pies for the road and pressing them into Kaelid's hands with a knowing look of her own. "Make sure she actually eats, not just heals everyone else and forgets herself. And you—" she added, pointing between the two of them, "—don't wait too long to figure out whatever this is. Life's short enough without wasting good years being polite about it."
"We're not—" Ana started.
"Sure you're not, dear." Marta patted her cheek, entirely unconvinced.
Ana opened her mouth again, but Marta was already shooing them both off, the protest left unfinished.
They walked back toward the inn in flustered, comfortable silence, neither quite willing to be the first to comment on it, the last of Raichas's evening light settling gold and warm over streets that had, somehow, come to feel a little bit like home again — for Ana, and, in some smaller, newer way, for Kaelid too.
Dawn came grey and cold the next morning, the caravan already stirring by the time the party made their way to the warehouse — Gerald directing the reloading with the same brisk efficiency he'd shown on the way out, cargo swapped for whatever Raichas had to send back toward Avalon in return.
"Good trip?" he asked, spotting them approaching.
"Yeah," Ana said, something easy and steady in her voice that hadn't quite been there four days ago.
"Glad to hear it. We'll be moving within the hour — same formation as before." Gerald returned to his checklist, already moving on to the next thing demanding his attention.
They settled into their positions with familiarity, gear checked, the last of Raichas's morning bustle picking up around them as the caravan prepared to depart. Kaelid took one last look back at the city as the gates came into view — smaller than Avalon, softer somehow, a place that had given him more pieces of Ana's history in four days than he'd learned in the months prior combined.
"Ready?" Ana asked, falling into step beside him as the wagons began to move.
"Ready." He glanced at her, catching the small, genuine smile she wore now, so different from the guarded uncertainty she'd carried through the gates on the way in. "You look lighter than you did coming in."
"I feel lighter." She looked back once more as Raichas began to shrink behind them, her shoulders easing, something peaceful plain across her face. "I think I needed this more than I let myself admit. Thank you for that, too, by the way. For being part of it."
"Wouldn't have been anywhere else."
She didn't respond to that beyond a small, warm look that said more than words probably could have anyway, and the two of them walked on in easy quiet as the caravan rolled steadily south, Raichas fading into the horizon behind them, Avalon and the rest of their lives waiting somewhere ahead.
The return trip settled into the same rhythm as the first — long days on the road, quiet nights around the fire, and a group that had long since stopped needing to work at being comfortable with one another. For Kaelid, though, most of it passed in something of a blur — the road, the fires, even most of Gerald's caravan hands blending together into vague, unremarkable impressions he couldn't have described if asked. He remembered other things instead. The way Ana laughed at something Eric said on the second night. The way she tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear when the wind picked up. The quiet, focused look she got while scanning the road ahead, old habit keeping her alert even when there was little to be wary of.
He'd caught himself watching her instead of the road more times than he was willing to admit, and she'd caught him at it more than once too — a raised eyebrow here, a small, knowing smile there, neither of them quite bold enough to comment on it out loud, though the accumulating weight of unspoken acknowledgment had started to feel like its own kind of conversation.
Guess I wasn't as subtle as I thought, he thought, glancing at her one more time as Avalon's gates opened to let the caravan through. Silvia was right. Damn her.
Ana caught the look again, this time meeting it directly instead of pretending not to notice, something warm and unhurried in her expression that didn't ask him to look away.
He didn't.
They filed through the gates with the rest of the caravan, Avalon's familiar noise and bustle swallowing them whole — merchants calling out prices, the clatter of cart wheels on stone underfoot, and a smell to the city Kaelid hadn't realized he'd missed until it hit him all at once.
Gerald pulled the caravan to its final stop near the guild's contracted warehouse, cargo unloading beginning almost immediately under his brisk direction.
"Pleasure doing business," he said, shaking each of their hands in turn once the paperwork was settled. "Guild will process final payment within the day. If you're ever looking for escort work again, you know where to find me."
"We'll keep that in mind," Ana said.
They said their goodbyes and made their way from the warehouse toward the mansion, the walk feeling shorter than Kaelid remembered, familiar streets passing by in silence.
"Feels strange," Aria said, glancing around at the city. "Being back. Good strange, though."
"Yeah," Tatsuya said. "Feels right."
The mansion came into view a few minutes later, standing exactly as they'd left it, and something in all of them visibly relaxed at the sight of it — not quite the relief of survival, the way it had felt after the ogre fight, but something quieter, gentler. Just the simple comfort of a place that had become, without any of them quite deciding it, genuinely theirs.
"We're home," Ana said quietly.
He nodded. "I'm glad we're back."