The chamber smelled faintly of crushed lilies and antiseptic.
Rainlight filtered through stained glass, painting the room in bruised colors.
Princess Lyra sat upright at last, thin as paper, her hands folded loosely in her lap.
Across from her, Ace Valemont watched the flutter of her pulse beneath translucent skin.
"So this is the miracle worker," she said, voice hoarse but steady.
"You don't look like a priest."
Ace adjusted his gloves. "I prefer my miracles measurable, Your Highness."
Her mouth curved faintly. "Then you must find the palace exhausting. Everything here is weighed in faith."
He inclined his head. "Faith is a convenient currency. It requires no proof, no accounting.".
"And yet people die without it."
"People die with it," he replied. "In roughly equal numbers."
Lyra studied him for a long moment, then gestured toward the table beside her bed. On it sat a small glass vial, a residue of blue light pulsing at the bottom.
"That was in my blood, wasn't it?" she asked.
Ace's expression did not change. "A contagion of the royal kind. I've reduced its appetite for now."
"But not destroyed it.".
"No. Destruction is simple. Containment is art."
Her eyes flicked toward him — intelligent, assessing.
"You speak like a man who has practiced both."
He smiled slightly. "Observation is the only honest form of worship."
Silence hung between them, fragile and taut. The rain tapped at the windows like fingers searching for entry.
Lyra's next words came softly.
"They told me you were cruel. That you see bodies as puzzles."
Ace leaned forward just enough for the candlelight to touch his face.
"And what do you see, Your Highness?".
"A man who looks at the world and wishes to remake it in his own image."
"Ambitious," he said.
"Terrifying," she corrected.
Her breath trembled — not in fear, but in something more complicated.
He noticed the way her fingers traced the edge of the vial, as if daring it to break.
"Tell me," she said finally, "when you cut into the body, what is it you hope to find?"
"Order," he said without hesitation. "And the place where mercy ends."
She nodded slowly, a strange understanding passing between them.
"Then perhaps," she murmured, "we are both searching for the same thing. Only I call it grace.".
For the first time, Ace had no ready answer.
The candle guttered. The rain stopped.
And in the silence that followed, both felt the faint pulse of something neither science nor faith could name.