The moon hung above the palace like a surgeon's lamp, white and pitiless.
Lyra moved through the lower infirmary in silence, her lamp hooded, her pulse loud in her ears.
The cot at the far end trembled. A young man lay there—barely more than a boy—his skin grey with fever, eyes unfocused. The records said "Subject Seventy-Two: Failed response." He was supposed to be disposed of before dawn.
She couldn't let that happen.
Lyra drew the curtain closed and whispered, "You will live, do you hear me?"
The boy's lips moved without sound. She pressed a cool cloth to his forehead, then searched the workbench for anything useful. The jars gleamed in the dim light—Ace's instruments, his legacy of order.
Her fingers brushed the edge of one scalpel, the same kind he used with such calm certainty. She hesitated only once before cutting the binding straps at the boy's wrists.
"Forgive me," she murmured, "for borrowing the devil's tools to serve the gods."
She mixed herbs the way her tutors had taught her, whispered prayers her mother once believed in, and forced the draught between his teeth. The boy convulsed, then went still. For a dreadful moment she thought she'd killed him. Then his chest lifted, shallow but steady.
Lyra exhaled and sank back, shaking. One life, she told herself. One defiance.
Scene II – The Physician's Smile
Far below the palace, Ace examined a ledger. One entry was missing.
Sylene waited beside him, expression unreadable beneath her raven mask.
"Seventy-Two survived," she said. "Or rather—the Princess kept him from dying."
Ace's eyes flicked up from the page, faint amusement at the corner of his mouth.
"Compassion," he said softly. "A fragile organism."
"Shall I retrieve the patient?"
"No. Observe. Let her believe she's conquered death; it will make her easier to study."
He closed the ledger and looked toward the ceiling, as if he could see through the marble and into the rooms above.
"Every saint begins as a thief," he murmured. "She's stolen life. Now she'll want to justify it."
Scene III – The Garden
Three nights later, Lyra waited in her walled garden. The boy slept nearby under blankets, his breathing steadier. Moonlight silvered the vines and the fountain's rim.
A voice came from the shadows.
"You chose an interesting place for a resurrection."
Ace stepped into view, coat immaculate, expression unreadable.
"If you've come to arrest me," she said, "do it quietly."
"Arrest you? No. I'm curious."
He walked to the bedside, studied the patient's pulse, and nodded.
"Adequate work. You've delayed the inevitable."
Lyra bristled. "He's alive."
"For now. You traded one poison for another—the poison of hope."
"And what would you have done?"
"Documented the failure and learned from it."
"Then you learn nothing of mercy."
He turned to her, eyes glinting. "Mercy is entropy in disguise. You slow decay and call it virtue."
They were close now, close enough for her to smell the faint metallic scent of his gloves.
"You think I'm afraid of you," she said.
"Not afraid," he answered. "Fascinated."
The word struck harder than any threat.
He reached out, adjusted the blanket over the patient with precise care, and said almost gently,
"Continue your treatment, Princess. Consider it… collaboration."
She stared, caught between relief and revulsion.
"Why would you allow this?"
"Because I want to see how long compassion survives in captivity."
Then he turned and vanished into the garden's dark archway, leaving only the rustle of leaves and the faint echo of that terrible, calm voice.
Scene IV – Aftermath
At dawn, Lyra found a folded note on her writing desk.
The handwriting was elegant, surgical.
Every cure begins as disobedience.
Welcome to the experiment.
She crushed the paper in her fist but didn't throw it away.
The words pulsed in her mind like a second heartbeat.