The request board smelled like old leather, cheap ink, and the quiet desperation of men who hadn't eaten a proper meal in three days.
I knew that smell well. I had been marinating in it for three years.
"Greaves." Marta, the front desk clerk, didn't look up from her ledger. She was a stout woman in her fifties with reading glasses perpetually perched at the end of her nose and absolutely zero tolerance for nonsense. "Board's got a new posting. It's a herb collection quest at the Silverleaf, north ridge trail. Rank F."
"Got it."
"The client's offering two copper."
"Got it."
"And Leon." Now she looked up. Over the rims of her glasses. With the particular expression reserved for stray dogs and adventurers she'd watched fail the same quest fourteen times. "Please don't take the north trail shortcut. The last three people who used it got chased off the ridge by a Stoneback Boar."
"I know. I was one of them."
She stighed. "The copper's yours when you get back."
I pulled the request slip off the board, folded it twice, and tucked it into my vest pocket. Around me, the Ironbell Adventurers Guild buzzed with its usual morning energy. A pair of C-Ranks in matching cloaks were arguing over a dungeon map spread across the central table. A group of fresh-faced rookies clustered near the entrance, new guild tags gleaming, voices loud with the specific confidence of people who hadn't been humbled yet. A B-Rank adventurer named Doros caught my eye from across the room and laughed at something his friend said without breaking eye contact with me.
I had been here long enough to know that one was about me.
I didn't take it personally anymore. That was a lie, but I'd gotten very good at telling it to myself.
The truth was, it had been tree years at the Ironbell Guild and I was still F-Rank. Still pulling herb collections and delivery runs and the occasional "please scare the rats out of my cellar" request that even the rookies tried to avoid.
The guild had a wall near the back hallway, unofficial, where members scratched tallies of each other's career milestones.
First dungeon clear. First rank-up. First solo boss kill. Things like that that made being an adventurer long while with the rewards and payment.
Someone had scratched my name there once.
I stepped out into the morning before I could think about it more.
---
Caelford was a city that had never quite decided what it wanted to be.
It had the bones of something grand, it had wide cobblestone avenues, a skyline of old stone towers that predated the current kingdom by three centuries, a market district that pulled traders from six different nations.
But it also had the soul of something tired. Cracked facades. Makeshift stalls wedged between proper shops. The kind of city that had seen a lot of history and was now mostly just trying to get through the week.
I liked it, honestly. We understood each other.
The north ridge trail began at the edge of the residential quarter, where the city's cobblestones gave way to packed dirt and the dirt gave way to the slow climb of the Caelfen hills.
It was a quiet walk this time of morning.
Silverleaf grew in clusters near rocky outcroppings, which meant I had to pick my way carefully along the upper ridge.
Not because I was in any danger of falling but because the rocks had a way of shifting underfoot, and I had twisted the same ankle twice in the past year.
I found the first cluster after twenty minutes and crouched down to harvest.
The work was a simple one. Pinch the stem low. Don't tear the roots. Lay them flat so the leaves didn't bruise. The guild's herbalist clients were specific about bruising and I had learned that the hard way.
I was on my fourth cluster, mind pleasantly empty, when I heard the footsteps.
I turned around to meet a tall woman with long silver-whitw hair who wore traveling clothes and was staring at him with vertical pupils that were a shade of molten amber.
The tail was a giveaway, if the eyes hadn't been. It was long and scaled, the same deep crimson as the faint markings along her collarbones. It swept behind her with each step in a slow in an unconscious rhythm.
Seraphine Du'Varek.
My wife.
Well one of them.
She stopped two feet away, looked down at me crouched in the dirt with a bundle of herbs in my fist, and was quiet for a long moment.
"You're harvesting Silverleaf," she said. Her voice was low and even like she was disappointed.
"It was a delivery request. Two copper."
Another silence.
"Two copper," she repeated.
"The client was very specific about the leaf quality."
Seraphine had been alive for four hundred and twelve years. She was the third daughter of the Dragon Sovereign, a being old enough to remember when Caelford's grand stone towers had been freshly built. She had personally ended two wars, negotiated the Border Accords of the Varek Reach, and was widely considered one of the twelve most dangerous living creatures on the continent.
The look she gave me was not cruel. It wasn't even pitying, exactly.
"The others are at the house," she said finally. "Mira broke something. I did not ask what."
"Was there an explosion?"
"A small one."
"So Yenna."
"Yenna," she confirmed.
I straightened up, tucked the Silverleaf carefully into my satchel, and brushed the dirt from my knees. Seraphine watched me do this patiently.
"I'll finish the collection first," I said. "Tell them I'll be back by afternoon."
She didn't answer immediately. She just watched me for another moment then she turned and walked back up the ridge without a word.
I watched her go. Then I turned back to the herbs.
If I completed the work I would be paid two copper, just the same as every other day.
I crouched back down and reached for the next stem, and then every thought I had ever had emptied out of my skull at once.
----
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[The Husband System has awakened within Leon Greaves.]
[Your bonds are your power. Their joy is your strength.]
[Scanning registered wives… 7 detected.]
[Calculating baseline happiness values…]
[Combined Marital Happiness: 12%]
[Current Power Rank: F]
[Potential Power Rank: ???]
[Warning: Your wives are not happy.]
[We strongly suggest you do something about that.]