"So how was it?" His calm voice filled the room.

Before she could respond, he rose from his seat and moved with deliberate grace across the room. He picked up a sturdy wooden stool and a smooth, well-worn paddle brush from the corner. Placing the stool precisely in front of his neatly made bed, he turned to her and, with an inviting gesture, silently asked her to sit.

Without hesitation, she sat facing the same direction he was facing, her head full of lustrous black hair in full view for him.

He reached out and gently stroked her hair, his fingers moving slowly through the silky locks. "Tell me about your little trip," he prompted, his tone both curious and teasing. "You’re a little late, don’t tell me you stopped to shop for clothes again? I’m quite sure you already have enough outfits to fill an entire wardrobe."

She blushed, cheeks glowing like ripe tomatoes at a farmer’s market. She simply couldn’t resist the siren call of the city’s impeccable fashion. The clothes were so finely crafted, they practically whispered [Eva] from the shop windows. The very first time she visited the city, she went into full magpie mode, her eyes glinting at the sight of a silk cloth shining like treasure under the lights.

Alaric, poor soul, endured an odyssey of fabric, buttons, and endless opinions, dragged from one clothing shop to the next. To him, every dress looked like a dress; if it had sleeves and a hem, it was ready to wear. He made the rookie mistake of telling her to buy anything that caught her eye, forgetting their bank account wasn’t bottomless and her tastes had no bottom at all. Naturally, she took his advice very literally and proceeded to buy anything that so much as looked like clothes.

He had gravely underestimated the iron will of a determined woman armed with a credit purse and free will. He was still learning, mostly the hard and expensive way.

"Hmm, don’t underestimate my ability to resist those tempting silks; they might look beautiful, but they have no power over me." She said, trying to hide her embarrassment, but failed catastrophically. In Alaric’s attentive company, her efforts at concealment were as transparent as glass, though he, ever gracious, pretended not to notice her flustered state, allowing her the dignity of her little charade.

"I went to the merchant you talked to when we first arrived in the city. He had most of the items we needed; the rest he didn’t have. He pointed me in the right direction." She gestured at the sack bag she placed beside his desk before sitting down.

When they first entered the city, they came across an enthusiastic merchant; well, every merchant in this city was enthusiastic to everyone. He welcomed them, introducing them to the various wares and facilities they can use freely and those they have to pay for.

"He had Ironhide Boar Blood, Earthbear Essence, skinforge Root, and jade skin ore. The rest of the ingredients, he gave me instructions for where to buy them."

Alaric’s hands had already found their rhythm, the paddle brush moving through her hair in long, unhurried strokes. The bristles caught the faint light from the window, and Eva felt the familiar sensation of tension leaving her scalp with each pass, something that happened without fail whenever he did this, as if the act itself carried some minor, unregistered cultivation technique.

"Good," he said simply. "You found all of it?"

"Everything on the secondary list. The remaining two, Black Marrow Sap and Crystalline Dew Moss — he said we won’t find them in the market district. There’s an apothecary two streets east of the trade hall. A woman named Sura runs it. He said she keeps rare cultivator stock for private buyers, but she doesn’t advertise."

"Private buyers," Alaric repeated. There was no inflection in it. Just the words sitting in the air between them. He could already infer that those buyers were specially privileged people, perhaps those who had earned favors from others in the city.

"He implied you’d need to know someone, or at least know the right thing to say." Eva tilted her head slightly, then corrected herself before the brush could snag. "He said to mention the Crimson Scale Consortium. He has dealings with them."

Alaric filed that away without comment. His hand guided the brush in a slow arc along the right side of her hair, separating it from the rest with practiced ease. Eva had thick hair, the kind that resisted ordinary brushing with the stubbornness of a mule, but under his attention it never knotted. He’d learned, early on, to start from the ends and work upward. She had learned, also early on, not to mention that most men did not know this.

"Did he say anything else about her? This Sura."

"Only that she’s particular about customers. His words were..." Eva paused, as if reconstructing the exact phrasing. "’Don’t go in looking like you need something. Go in looking like you’re doing her a favor by being there.’"

A ghost of a smile crossed Alaric’s face, though Eva couldn’t see it from where she sat.

"Useful advice for many situations," he said.

"I thought you’d like it."

Outside, the sounds of the city continued their indifferent procession: cart wheels on stone, the distant call of a vendor, the occasional bark of laughter from somewhere down the inn’s corridor. The room itself felt insulated from it all. The bed was made with military precision, the desk cleared except for a single leather-bound journal and an inkwell sealed with a cork. Eva’s sack bag leaned against the desk leg, slightly bulging at the side where the jade skin ore was probably wrapped in cloth.

Alaric set the brush down on the edge of the stool and worked his fingers through the section he’d just finished, checking for tangles the bristles might have missed.

"The Ironhide Boar Blood," he said. "What container did he use?"

"Sealed clay vial. Double-stoppered. He wrapped it in waxed leather before he put it in the bag." She folded her hands in her lap. "I checked it when I left the shop. It wasn’t leaking."

"Good. Boar blood turns if it comes into contact with air. Even a small seep can contaminate the Earthbear Essence if they’re stored adjacent."

"They’re not adjacent," Eva said, with the particular flatness of someone who has already thought about a thing and is mildly offended to have it raised. "The ore is at the bottom, wrapped separately. The blood is on top in its own section. The root is in the side pocket."

"I know."

"Then why..."

"Because asking is different from doubting." He resumed brushing from the crown down, the motion even and deliberate. "You did well. I’m not checking your work."

She subsided. The faintest huff escaped her, which she immediately blamed on the air.

Several minutes passed in the comfortable non-silence of people who had stopped needing to fill time with words. The brush continued its slow work. Eva watched the late afternoon light move across the far wall in parallelograms, reshaping themselves by degrees as the sun shifted. She thought about the apothecary. She thought about the name, Sura, and what kind of woman ran private cultivator stock in a city like this, and whether she’d be the kind who needed flattering or the kind who found it insulting.

"I should go to her some other time," Alaric said, as if reading the thread of her thoughts, or more likely following the same thread himself.

"Not now? I thought they were needed for the pills...?"

"There’s no need." He said with confidence, "I know someone else who could provide those things for us.

Eva considered this. "Really?" She was a bit skeptical.

"Yes, no need to worry about that anymore." He began gathering her hair into a loose arrangement at the back, his fingers working without looking. "You’ve done enough for today."

She turned her head a fraction. "I’m not tired."

"I didn’t say you were tired. I said you’ve done enough." His hand gently redirected her head forward. "There’s a difference."

She turned back, looking at the wall again. "You say that like it’s obvious."

"It is obvious." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"It isn’t," she said, with less argument in it than she intended. It came out quieter. "You always make it sound like doing a thing thoroughly means you’re finished. Some people can just keep going, you know."

"Some people keep going past the point where going helps anything." He secured her hair with a cord she hadn’t noticed him produce, and smoothed the surface with one last pass of his palm. "You sourced seven ingredients, cross-checked a supply list, navigated a merchant quarter you hadn’t visited before, and got a secondary lead on the last two items. That’s the day’s work completed. Finished, not abandoned."

Eva sat with that for a moment.

"And the silk shops?" she asked, her voice recovering its lighter register. "You didn’t ask about those."

"I noticed the sack bag was full," he said, moving around to face her. His expression was even, calibrated to a precise degree of neutrality. "The merchant’s items presumably didn’t fill it entirely."

Her cheeks staged their predictable performance.

"There was a coat," she said. "Lined. Double-breasted and very, very beautiful." She emphasized.

"Naturally."

"And a blouse. But that barely counts."

"It counts."

"It was on sale."

"They’re always on sale." He picked up the brush and stool and returned them to the corner with the same deliberate placement as before, the brush handle aligned, the stool set flush with the wall. Eva tracked the movement without meaning to. There was something in the care he took with small things that she had never quite gotten used to, though she’d been watching it for long enough. "I’ll see the apothecary I once met before tomorrow morning. You should eat something. I prepared something earlier."

She rose from where she sat and stretched her arms above her head with a sound that was not quite a groan. This is what she likes to hear: Alaric cooking something for her. She hasn’t found any chef as good as him, nor did she believe any exists in this world. "You’re not eating?"

"I already did."

She looked at him for a moment.

"Ah, I almost forgot to tell you."