Alfia listened to the entire story without looking up from her book. When he finished, she simply turned a page.
"So go," she said.
Rayleigh paused. "That's it? That's your counsel? The most dangerous goddess in Orario sends her avatar to my front gate, and your expert advice is to go have dinner?"
"You've avoided her for a year." Alfia finally raised her eyes. "How is that working out for you?"
"Fine, right up until yesterday."
"It was working until she chose for it to stop working. That's her entire point." Alfia closed the book over her index finger.
"Freya isn't a wall you climb, Rayleigh. She's the weather. You can stand out in the rain and pretend you're winning, or you can go look her in the face and find out what she actually wants." She let the silence stretch for a moment.
"You're going to go anyway. You've been standing there arguing with me for ten minutes, which is exactly what you do instead of admitting you've already made up your mind."
'I hate that she does that.'
"If I don't come back," Rayleigh muttered, "you can have my chair."
"I already have the chair."
...
The Hostess of Fertility was loud, impossibly warm, packed wall-to-wall, and smelled like the best thing that had happened to him all week.
"Yōtōsai-san!" Anya was on him before he made it two steps through the door, her cat ears standing straight up, practically vibrating with energy.
"You came! You actually came! Syr said you would, and Mama said you wouldn't, and I bet three days of tips on you, so you have to eat a lot, nya!"
"That's a lot of pressure for a bowl of stew."
"It's a very good stew!"
It was, in fact, exceptional stew.
Mia Grand slammed the heavy bowl down in front of him with the careless force of a woman who had once been a Level 6 and had never entirely stopped being one.
She looked him up and down, offering a single grunt of acknowledgment.
"Hello, sword boy."
"Sup."
"Hmph." She jabbed a thick thumb toward the dining room, gesturing vaguely at the dents in the wall and a table someone had clearly patched together in a hurry.
"You break anything in my house, I'll take it out of your hide, Level 4 or not. I don't care what you did under the city."
"That's fair."
"Damn right it's fair!" Then, tossing the words over her shoulder as she walked away, "...Eat while it's hot."
Rayleigh ate while it was hot.
The stew was excellent, and the bread was even better.
Around him, the tavern roared with life—adventurers arguing over dungeon floors and prices, someone singing terribly off-key, Anya dropping a tray and loudly blaming a chair.
For a little while, it was the most ordinary hour he had experienced in months.
That was, of course, the trap.
It wasn't a trap with a knife hidden in the dark. It was a trap built from warm bread, a crackling hearth, and a waitress who was genuinely, uncomplicatedly thrilled he had shown up.
If you wanted to catch a man who had spent two years being feared, you didn't ambush him.
You fed him.
Syr slid into the seat across from him, resting her chin on her hands, watching him eat with open satisfaction.
"See?" she murmured. "Nothing terrible happened."
"The night is young."
"You're a very suspicious person, Yōtōsai-san."
"I've earned it."
She laughed, a bright, easy sound.
Reaching across the table, she refilled his cup without asking, settled back in her chair, and fixed him with grey eyes that were far too steady for a simple waitress.
"Can I ask you something?" Syr asked. "You saved my life. You never came to claim a reward, and you never told a soul. You've walked past this place a hundred times."
She tilted her head. "Most men would have come knocking that same week. Why didn't you?"
Because I knew what you were before you even finished saying your name.
"Because you didn't owe me anything," Rayleigh answered. "You were just somebody standing in a street where a bomb was about to go off. I moved you. That isn't a favor... turning it into a debt would have made it something else entirely."
He shrugged, taking another bite.
"I don't want payment for that."
Something in Syr's expression shifted.
It was a microscopic change—a flicker, there and gone, like a lamp guttering when a draft catches it.
For a single heartbeat, the pleasant, grey-eyed girl vanished, replaced by something ancient and deeply intrigued looking out through her eyes.
"Everyone wants something," she said softly.
"Sure. But not for that."
The chaotic noise of the tavern rolled on around them, completely oblivious.
Syr held his gaze for a long moment.
Rayleigh let her, neither of them blinking, neither of them moving.
Then the flicker passed.
She was a waitress again, smiling pleasantly as she tucked a stray strand of silver-grey hair behind her ear.
"Then let me get you some more bread," she offered smoothly. "You can owe me for that."
...
Later, in a room high above the city that no mortal in the tavern would ever see, Freya sat with her cheek resting against her hand, her eyes focused on nothing.
She had touched him.
Not physically, but with the divine essence she had been born with—the invisible weight that opened mortal souls like books left in the sun.
She had let it brush against him across a wooden table while he ate her stew and calmly explained that he didn't want a reward.
And she felt nothing.
It wasn't resistance, she knew resistance well.
Resistance was a locked door, and doors could always be opened, breaking the lock was half the fun.
This was entirely different.
Her charm had reached for him and found only the blades.
All of them angled inward, forming an impenetrable barrier between her and the boy inside.
The boy hadn't even noticed at all. He had been too busy eating his bread.
"You aren't even shielding yourself," she murmured to the empty room. "You have no idea I even tried."
That was the detail keeping her perfectly still, her wine forgotten.
Every soul she had ever coveted had eventually looked up and realized she was watching them.
That realization was the moment she lived for—the beautiful, terrible ritual of capture.
But this boy had sat across from her, stated that kindness wasn't a transaction, and gone back to his meal while his swords quietly closed around his soul like a hand protecting a candle flame.
She could break it.
Probably.
She had never encountered something she couldn't eventually possess.
But lingering behind those blades, faint, steady, and utterly foreign, that strange presence pulsed like a second heartbeat.
It was something that had no business existing in the Lower World.
It had been there in Hephaestus's parlor months ago, and it was there again tonight, completely immovable when she pushed against it.
Freya laughed softly under her breath.
"What on earth are you carrying, Yōtōsai?"
She finally picked up her glass.
"Ottar," she called out to the shadow standing by the door.
"Yes."
"Don't touch him or follow him. Don't let anyone from this Familia anywhere near him." Her smile was slow, lovely, and endlessly patient.
"He came tonight because he chose to. He'll come again for the same reason, or he won't come at all. If I reach for him now, I'll only cut myself."
Ottar remained silent, which was his way of asking why.
"Because I want the boy," Freya explained. "Not some hollowed-out puppet with my name in its mouth. A man who refuses to be bought with a debt certainly won't be bought with a war."
She took a delicate sip of her wine.
"So, we wait. He's interesting, and interesting things always find their way to me eventually."
...
Rayleigh walked home under a clear night sky, refusing to relax his shoulders until he was at least three streets away from the tavern.
'She looked at me.'
He was absolutely certain of it, even if he couldn't explain how he knew.
Sometime between the stew and the bread, an invisible pressure had brushed against his skin.
Every blade he carried had physically shifted in response, bristling like a guard dog lifting its head at a sound no one else could hear.
The sensation had lasted only a breath before vanishing, leaving the girl across the table pleasantly offering him seconds.
Either she found nothing, or she found something. Either way, she isn't done.
He knew he should feel hunted.
Instead, he felt the grim, disgusted thrill of a man who had just realized exactly how deep the water really was.
'Fine. She's patient, but so am I.'
He was two turns away from his own gate when the alley to his left abruptly stopped being empty.
Amazons, tall and moving with predatory ease, spreading out to block his path without crowding each other.
None of them had weapons drawn, but every single one of them was positioned perfectly to strike.
The leader leaned casually against the brickwork with her arms folded, eyeing him up and down like a butcher appraising a cut of meat.
"Yōtōsai," she drawled. "You're smaller than the rumours."
Rayleigh stopped walking.
He didn't reach for a hilt. "Everyone says that. It's getting old."
"My Lady wants to talk."
"Your Lady can make an appointment."
"My Lady doesn't make appointments." The Amazon pushed off the wall, a dangerous grin spreading across her face.
"She makes offers. She also told us to play nice, which is the only reason we're talking to you instead of carrying you."
'Ishtar.'
Rayleigh suppressed a heavy sigh.
'Of course. One goddess feeds me dinner, and the next one sends muscle to corner me in an alley on the exact same night.'
"Let me guess," Rayleigh said deadpan. "She's offering money, women, or a favor."
The Amazon's grin widened into something feral. "All three. Guaranteed to be a very good time."
"Pass."
"That isn't one of the choices."
"It is now." Rayleigh shifted his weight.
The moonlight caught the five distinct hilts resting at his hips.
All three Amazons noticed. Their relaxed, confident stances instantly grew a fraction tighter.
"Tell Ishtar I'm flattered," Rayleigh said. "Tell her I'm not for sale and I have zero interest in whatever game she's playing to try and beat Freya."
He started walking forward again, striding straight down the middle of the alley, forcing them to either step aside or draw steel.
"And tell her the next time she sends people to my home, they better knock."
They let him pass.
He had expected them to; Ishtar wanted him captured, not killed, and corpses made for terrible prizes!
But he felt their eyes boring into his back the entire way to his gate.
He knew, with the bone-deep weariness of a man who had already read this script, that this had been the diplomatic attempt.
Freya would wait for him to come to her.
Ishtar wasn't going to wait for anything.
And somewhere out there, Apollo is probably still sulking over his bruised ego.
Rayleigh let himself into his courtyard and threw the heavy locks on the door.
'Wonderful. Three gods, and not one of them has figured out that I don't take orders.'
From the top of the stairs, Alfia's voice drifted down, dry as ever. "How was the stew?"
"It was very good stew," Rayleigh admitted.
"Mm." The crisp sound of a page turning echoed in the quiet hall. "That's how they get you."