Chapter 81: Back

The Old Willow Inn looked exactly the same as when Nacho had left it, which shouldn’t have surprised him but somehow did. The broken windows had been fixed, the sign repainted in fresh teal, and the creaky stairs no longer sounded like they were plotting murder with every step. Lizbeth had been busy while he was gone.

She nearly dropped the pot she was carrying when he walked through the door.

"You’re back." Her voice came out flat, like she was stating a fact about the weather rather than greeting someone she hadn’t seen in weeks. "I thought you died."

"Nope. Still breathing."

"Obviously." She set the pot down on the counter with more force than necessary. "You could have sent word. A letter. A messenger. Anything."

Nacho rubbed the back of his neck. He’d been so focused on trafficking rings and political conspiracies and rescue operations that he’d completely forgotten to check in with the woman who’d given him a place to stay when he had nothing. The realization sat heavy in his stomach like a stone.

"I should have. I’m sorry."

Lizbeth stared at him for a long moment, her pale emerald eyes searching his face for something. Whatever she found there made her shoulders drop slightly, the tension bleeding out of her posture.

"You look different."

"Different how?"

"Older, maybe? No, that’s not right." She tilted her head, studying him with the same intensity she used when perfecting a new recipe. "You look like someone who’s seen things. Done things. Things that changed you."

He didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t try. Instead, he walked past her into the main room, taking in the changes she’d made in his absence. New chairs, sturdy ones that wouldn’t collapse under normal weight. Fresh tablecloths. A menu board on the wall that hadn’t been there before.

"Business has been good?"

"Better than good." A note of pride crept into her voice despite her obvious irritation. "Those pamphlets you made actually worked. People keep coming back for the food, even without the massage parlor running."

"About that." He turned to face her, leaning against one of the new tables. "I’m going to be gone again soon. Longer this time. Maybe a lot longer."

Her expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind her eyes. Disappointment, maybe, or resignation. The look of someone who’d learned not to expect people to stick around.

"Where?"

"North. Into the Empire’s interior. There’s someone I need to help find."

"Someone important?"

Nacho thought about Sera’s face when she’d talked about Vael. The way her voice had cracked just slightly on the word friend. The vulnerability she’d shown in that moment, so different from the iron-willed Grand General who’d confronted him in that infirmary room all those weeks ago.

"Important to someone I care about. So yeah. Important."

Lizbeth was quiet for a moment, processing his words. Then she walked to the kitchen and returned with a wrapped bundle, which she pressed into his hands.

"Food for the road. It’s not much, but it’ll keep."

"You already gave me food for the road. When I left the first time."

"That was different. That was for a trip to the Mortal World." She met his eyes, and for the first time since he’d arrived, she smiled. It was small and tentative, but genuine. "This is for a trip into the Empire’s interior. You’ll need more than dried kelp and preserved fish."

He tucked the bundle into his inventory without looking at its contents. The gesture mattered more than the food itself.

"Thank you, Lizbeth."

"Don’t thank me yet. Just come back in one piece." She paused, then added with a hint of her usual sharpness: "And next time, send word. I don’t care if it’s just a note that says ’still alive, busy causing problems.’ Something is better than nothing."

"I will."

"You better." She turned back toward the kitchen, then stopped. "The massage room is still there, by the way. I cleaned it up while you were gone. Fixed the table too, since someone kept breaking it."

"That wasn’t entirely my fault."

"I didn’t say it was." A ghost of a smirk crossed her face. "I’m just saying it’s ready whenever you want to start working again. Assuming you survive whatever you’re about to do."

She disappeared into the kitchen before he could respond, leaving him standing alone in the main room with a bundle of food in his inventory and a strange warmth spreading through his chest.

Sera found him an hour later, perched on the roof of the inn and watching Lumen’s bioluminescent skyline. She’d changed out of her armor into something more practical for travel, dark clothes that would blend into shadows and wouldn’t reflect light at inconvenient moments.

"Ready?"

"Almost." He didn’t turn to look at her. "Just saying goodbye."

She settled beside him on the roof’s edge, her legs dangling over the side like a child sitting on a dock. It was such an unexpectedly casual pose that he almost did a double-take.

"To the city?"

"To whatever this was. The massage parlor. The inn. The weird little life I built here over the past few weeks." He gestured vaguely at the lights below. "It wasn’t supposed to matter. I was just supposed to be passing through, gathering Talents, getting stronger. Building something permanent wasn’t part of the plan."

"Plans change."

"Yeah. They do."

They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the city go about its evening business. Somewhere in the distance, a group of Sirens were singing, their voices carrying across the water in harmonies that made his chest ache for reasons he couldn’t explain.

"The facility Thorne mentioned," Sera said eventually. "I’ve been doing research. Cross-referencing her information with intelligence reports from the past year."

"Find anything?"

"Maybe. There’s a region in the northern provinces called the Hollows. It’s technically Imperial territory, but the local lords have been ignoring central authority for decades. The perfect place to run an operation that you don’t want anyone to know about."

"How far?"