The Princess and the Alchemist - Part 22

The Princess and the Alchemist - Part 22
Agon positioned the petal beneath the lenses, adjusting the focus. Lissandra watched beside him, arms crossed, and her foot tapping with anxiety. Her eyes carried that mix of exhaustion and stubbornness that, at some point, he had learned to interpret as “don’t even try telling me to sleep.”
When the magnification finally revealed the inside of the petal — which he now knew for certain really was a petal — Agon held his breath.
There, between dried fibers and almost grayish tones, irregular microstructures pulsed like crystalline webs. It was strange — the petal was dead, yet it seemed to hold an organization still active, a trace of vitality that defied all known biological logic. He turned the focus wheel, bringing it closer, until tiny details revealed themselves, like small cavities filled with almost invisible dust.
Agon reached for the reagent vial and, carefully, dropped a single bead onto the petal. The effect was immediate. The structures vibrated, as if waking, reorganizing with impossible speed. The substance, which should have broken down dead fibers, instead illuminated the microscopic pattern in bluish tones. Lissandra gasped.
He brought a slide with plague spores closer — the ones that always reproduced too quickly in samples. When it touched the petal… the spores simply… stopped. There was no combustion, no explosion, no smoke. Only… cessation. As if the petal, under the reagent’s effect, were a natural barrier, a silent wall saying “you go no farther.”
Agon stepped back, heart pounding so loudly that maybe Lissandra could hear it.
“It can’t be…” he murmured.
Lissandra leaned over the bench, her voice low, enchanted. “It neutralized.”
“Neutralized isn’t enough.” Agon rubbed his face with both hands. “It stopped the growth. Still… this… this is completely new.”
He returned to the bench and prepared another slide, repeating the test to be sure. Again, the same result. Zero spore replication, zero plague advancement.
A dry petal. A dead petal.
Agon let out that nervous, almost disbelieving laugh of someone who stumbled upon an answer he wasn’t looking for, but had always needed.
“It’s a potential antidote. Not a full cure… yet. But it neutralizes the spread. It would buy time to save the fields.”
Lissandra ran her fingertips along the edge of the bench, breathing deep. “But it’s very little.”
“It’s almost nothing.” Agon lifted the petal with the care of someone holding a fossil that could turn to dust. “With this, I can prove the theory. I can understand the structure, replicate patterns… but I can’t synthesize a complete antidote.”
Her voice came out in a whisper. “Then we need more.”
Agon hated when she said “we” like that, as if responsibility were a crown she picked up without thinking twice. He opened his mouth to respond, but Lissandra was already looking down, her movements slow, contemplative. It seemed like something was surfacing inside her, not as a memory, but as an unavoidable truth.
“In the Cathedral…” she began.
Agon felt his stomach drop.
“Lissandra.” He wished he had said her name as a warning, but it came out more like a plea.
She continued, her voice loaded with memory. “The tree’s flowers… I saw them, Agon. Lady Hestira took me to them. No one touches them now. They’re stored… protected.” She raised her eyes to him. “And there are many, still alive in some way, even after so many years since they were harvested from the tree.”
Agon went still. He didn’t even breathe.
Lissandra seemed to speak to herself, as if trying to assemble a reasoning she wasn’t ready to admit. “They’re there. In one of the inner chambers.”
“Lissandra.” He finally forced himself to breathe. “Do you have any idea what you’re implying?”
She blinked, and in that instant, she realized it. Her expression shifted — from realization to weight. A crushing weight. As if reality had arrived a few seconds late but was now pressing against her shoulders.
“I…” Lissandra pressed her palm to her temple. “The flowers… I would have to… take them.”
“Steal,” Agon said, bluntly. “The verb is steal.”
She closed her eyes, but didn’t back away. “I know.”
“You’d be going against your father’s orders. You weren’t only chosen — you’re being trained to succeed the Oracle. And this… this would be treason.”
Lissandra braced herself against the table’s edge, her voice trembling not from fear but from conflict. “If the flowers are the key… if they can save the kingdom…”
“I won’t let you destroy yourself for a possibility.” Agon took a step forward, standing between her and the microscope slide, as if he could shield her from her own idea. “I can try to synthesize a compound. Replicate patterns. There are safer paths.”
“You said you need raw material.” Her eyes were intense, burning with that impatient flame that always appeared when she decided to challenge the world. “You need flowers. Many of them.”
“Lissandra.” He said her whole name again. And that name, spoken with that weight, made the air in the laboratory grow denser. “I don’t want to lose you over a flower.”
She gripped his wrist, firm.
“Then don’t ask me to watch the kingdom die.”
Agon looked away first, as if her truth had opened a window he wasn’t yet ready to face.
Lissandra was breathing fast, with that urgency that wasn’t fear but drive. Determination. And it was that determination that frightened him.
Agon ran a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth, wrestling with himself, with logic, with her instinct for self-preservation, and with the hope he kept trying to smother.
“If you do this…” He stopped, turning to her. “There’s no turning back.”
“There hasn’t been a turning back since the moment I saw the first field die.” Her voice didn’t tremble anymore. “Since I chose to help you. Since I realized that my role as priestess isn’t to guard walls. It’s to guard lives.”
She spoke with a conviction that hurt because it was beautiful. Dangerous. Untamable. Agon wished, with almost physical force, that she were wrong. But the plague kept spreading. The fields kept dying. The people kept despairing. And the answer was there, in a dead petal.
Lissandra lifted the vial with the petal, holding it near the lamp. The light reflected on the glass surface, casting a flower-shaped shadow on the wall.
“If there is a path…” she said, “I will walk it.”
Agon closed his eyes.
And in the silence between them, the choice began to take shape — terrible, necessary, and inevitable.

…

Over the next few days, Lissandra began observing everything with an attention that bordered on instinct — the steps of the older priestesses, the moment they extinguished the lamps, the sound each door made as it closed. On the first night, she noticed that Hestira slept deeply after the second vigil. On the second, she mentally noted when the three guards of the east corridor gathered to switch rounds. On the third, she identified the sliver of time when the corridor leading to the relic chamber was empty.
Agon didn’t like it. She could feel that in the way he furrowed his brow whenever she recounted another detail of the Cathedral’s routine. Even so, he helped build the plan. They met in the laboratory at dawn once more, when the wind hid whispers and the cold disguised nerves. Lissandra brought a map of the Cathedral, an imperfect sketch, but enough for them to orient themselves.
“You enter through the side door,” he said, pointing with his finger. “If at night only two priestesses walk through there, and they don’t go more than twenty steps before turning back, then you won’t be seen.”
Lissandra watched everything, memorizing without needing paper.
“And you?” she asked.
“I stay here.” He marked a point outside. “Between the bushes, in the tower’s shadow. I’ll see any movement in the street or courtyard. If you take too long, I…”
“You’re not going in.” She lifted her gaze, firm. “Promise.”
Agon closed his eyes for a moment. “I promise.”
That promise came out like a torn thread.
He then opened a small box with glass containers and absorbent powder. “The flowers must be fragile, even preserved the way you say they are. You need to keep them from breaking before they reach the lab. Put them in these vials. Don’t touch them directly with your hands. The moisture would ruin everything.”
She nodded, more serious than she had ever been in front of him. “I can do it.”
“Lissandra…” He studied her for a moment. “It’s not too late to back out.”
“It was already too late long before the moment you found that petal.”
The plan was set.