The Princess and the Alchemist - Part 23

The Princess and the Alchemist - Part 23
On the chosen night, the sky seemed complicit in that planned theft—dark, starless, covered by a thin mist that absorbed the moon’s glow. The city slept, but Lissandra felt as if the entire world were awake inside her. She wore a simple cloak, without adornments. The attire of an apprentice, not of a future Oracle. At every step, she felt her muscles tense, as if the very air were made of expectation.
Agon waited exactly where they had agreed to meet. He said nothing, just touched her shoulder and breathed deeply, as if trying to hold inside himself the moment before the storm. Then he handed her a vial with a transparent liquid, telling her to spread its contents over her body. That would help hide her scent from most inhuman noses, but he also warned her not to trust it completely.
After spreading all the liquid on her skin and hair, she walked to the Cathedral’s side door, which had always stood like a monolith in her memory. That entrance, so familiar during the day, seemed sinister at night. The stained glass, lit only by the invisible moon, cast distorted shadows, historical scenes twisting across the floor. The walls exhaled the scent of slumbering incense, the aroma of faith that rests but never fully sleeps.
When she pushed the door, it groaned softly. Lissandra froze. Nothing. No movement in the corridor. No footsteps echoing.
She entered.
Every sense strained to the limit: the sound of her breath, the cold touch of the stone floor, the flicker of a distant lamp. Every shadow seemed alive. Every corner, a silent observer.
It was strange to realize how the Cathedral, a place that had always been one of her homes, now weighed on her like judgment. The vaulted ceiling seemed to lean, the columns crowded the space around her, and the stained glass vibrated under the moonlight, like ancient eyes following her.
Guilt.
Fear.
Conviction.
The three emotions walked with her, fighting for space in her chest.
“I’m doing this for the kingdom,” she thought, repeating it mentally like a mantra. “Not for me. Not for Agon. For the lives that depend on us.”
But even so, something inside her trembled.
Her footsteps echoed. They had the lightness of a feline—an ironic thing to think, given her lycan heritage—but the intensity of a heart that knew it was crossing its own boundaries.
She passed by the paintings that told the story of Muris and Ralous, but it wasn’t in the gaze of the Moon Goddess that she felt the divine watching her—it was in the masked eyes of Time and Death, which for some reason no longer seemed to be just part of the painting, but rather a way for them to be there, looking at her.
But how could they be angered by what she was doing if it was for the good of all Norden?
That was what she chose to think throughout the entire path.
She reached the relics corridor. There were no guards. The door was considered too secure to demand constant vigilance. After all, who would dare challenge the law inside the very house of faith?
Her.
Only her.
Before the heavy wooden door, Lissandra retrieved the key hidden beneath an old floorboard. No one would imagine someone would memorize that detail, but she had always been the most curious among the apprentices. The kind of curiosity that now puts her at risk.
She turned the key slowly, feeling the soft click.
She entered.
The room was dark, except for a pale light that came from a circular opening in the ceiling. The air was cold, unmoving, as if time itself didn’t dare enter.
And in the center of the room…
The chest.
A large, heavy box of wood reinforced with iron, protected by simple locks and ceremonial symbols. Nothing was made to prevent sophisticated theft—because there had never been a need. Lissandra stopped before it. For a few seconds, she couldn’t touch the locks. It was as if every possible gesture in that moment were tied to an entire future. As if opening that chest would also open every consequence to come.
“If I do this, I stop being what they expect of me.”
“If I don’t, I stop being what I expect of myself.”
Her breath shortened. Her hands trembled. Her throat tightened.
But then she remembered the dying fields, the sick animals, the crying children, while the healers repeated prayers that didn’t stop the disease. She remembered the petal in Agon’s hand, the still-embryonic hope. And she remembered what he had said: “I don’t want to lose you because of a flower.”
In that instant, Lissandra understood something terrible and true: if she didn’t try, she would lose far more than him.
With a precise motion, she touched the first lock. Then the second. The chest opened with a deep creak, and inside, the flowers of the ancient tree rested—preserved, dried, yet whole. They were pale, almost moon-colored, and glowed faintly, as if they had kept an ancient memory within them. They looked sad. Or perhaps that was only the weight of knowing they were being taken from their rest to face the world again.
Lissandra held back the urge to caress them. Instead, she followed Agon’s instructions: she took a vial, placed the first flower inside without touching it directly, then the second, then the third. She was on the fourth when she heard footsteps. Her heart seemed to drop straight to the floor.
The corridor door opened lightly. The sound of sandals on stone. A priestess.
Lissandra pressed herself behind one of the inner columns, her body rigid, hands sweating, breath trapped in her throat, praying that the girl was human. The vial nearly slipped from her fingers.
The footsteps approached the threshold. She saw the shadow cast across the floor, the silhouette shifting right… then left… then paused.
“Is someone there?” asked the priestess, her voice too gentle to be reassuring.
Lissandra closed her eyes, pressing her body against the cold stone. An instinctive prayer surfaced in her mind, but died before becoming a word.
The shadow hesitated, moved a little… then pulled away.
The footsteps echoed down the corridor again. Slowly. Far too slowly for comfort.
But they left.
Lissandra stayed there, unmoving, for several seconds—or minutes, time seemed to melt between her nerves. When she finally managed to breathe again, she finished the collection, trembling from head to toe. She closed the chest. Locked it again. Left the room without looking back.
Every step to the exit seemed to carry centuries on her shoulders. Every sound, every whisper of the night, was a threat.
Crossing the Cathedral’s side door back into the cold pre-dawn air, she nearly lost her balance. But before she fell, a hand pulled her into the shadow of the shrubs.
Agon.
He wrapped her in silence, wearing the most intense expression she had ever seen on him—a mix of relief, fear, and desperate gratitude. She leaned her forehead against his chest, breathing fast. The relief was almost physical, a deep thud, as if her body had finally been permitted to exist again.
Agon whispered, his voice hoarse:
“You can still turn back.”
Lissandra lifted her face.
“Not after this.”
And he understood. Nothing would be the same. Not for either of them. And the path they chose now would lead them somewhere with no return.
…
Lissandra and Agon ran through the sleeping streets like two specters fleeing from a forbidden miracle. Agon led her through narrow alleys, avoiding any distant lantern, until they reached the back door used by palace servants to enter the kitchen.
At that hour, there was no one around, but that didn’t mean the door was locked—before they left, unseen by anyone, Agon had opened it from the inside and left it that way, to make their return to the palace easier afterward.
Thus they entered, and he locked it again from the inside, returning the key to the exact place where he had left it earlier, so no one would suspect the door had been open.
They slipped through the palace corridors, two almost-criminal shadows heading toward the laboratory. And as soon as they entered, he locked everything with quick, almost instinctive movements, as if danger had invisible fingers trying to follow them. The silence that settled afterward was so deep it felt like the pause between lightning and thunder.
Agon went straight to the workbench, grabbing vials, opening boxes, rekindling lamps with a precision bordering on frenzy. He looked like someone using his own heart as a reagent, letting each beat dictate the rhythm of the mixtures. The containers clinked with impatience. The fire crackled as if suspicious of what it was about to witness.
Lissandra approached slowly, her hands still trembling, but steady enough not to drop the flowers. Exhaustion weighed on her shoulders as if every muscle were made of soaked stone, yet her eyes stayed open, watchful, attentive, almost luminous with determination. She placed the vials down with the care of someone laying newborns in a cradle.
Agon drew a deep breath, observing those small vessels that carried a chance. “Let’s begin.”
They worked side by side, almost wordless, but in complete sync. Their movements complemented each other like gears in an ancient machine rediscovering its rhythm. She crushed small portions of petals under his guidance; he heated reagents and adjusted precise measurements; she controlled temperatures; he observed color changes. No motion collided with another. No vial knocked the wrong forearm. It was a kind of dance neither had ever learned, but both had seemed to wait their whole lives to perform.
When Agon placed the final mixture over the soft heat of the burner, Lissandra felt the air shift. The white mist rising from the substance dissipated quickly, revealing a golden tone that made no sense, yet seemed determined to.
Agon raised his brows, incredulous. “It’s reacting.”
“The right way?” Her voice was thin, a whisper from far away.
“Exactly the right way.”
For a moment, the world sharpened.
Agon extinguished the flame, held the vial, and walked to a container isolated at the corner of the table. Inside it, a piece of organic matter—infected with the mold that was ravaging crops—pulsed slowly like a suffocating organism.
He opened the small golden vial. Lissandra held her breath.
Agon poured three drops onto the mold.
The reaction was immediate. The greenish, viscous web recoiled like a wounded creature. The edges began to shrink, then darken, until, with one final shudder, they died. They didn’t vanish—they died, as if the organism itself had given up on life.
Lissandra brought a hand to her mouth.
“Agon… you did it.”
“We did it.” He set the empty vial on the workbench and braced himself on his arms, exhausted. “This… this is real. It works. Lis, it works.”
Without thinking, she picked up the original vial—not the tested one, but the one containing the pure antidote. It was small, light, and unimpressive at first glance. But now, under the lamplight, it shone like a stubborn star trying to be born inside glass. The golden reflection cast itself on her face, illuminating the dark circles, the cold sweat, and the relief.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“It’s more than beautiful.” Agon stepped closer, his voice low, almost a whisper, so as not to scare the moment away. “It’s our hope in a bottle.”
She laughed—a short, tired laugh, but so sincere it nearly unmade his chest.
“To think this was locked away for centuries.”
“To think you dared to go in there.” He watched her with a gentle intensity, nothing like the fear of earlier. It was a silent reverence. “The strength you showed… Lis, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Don’t.” She held the vial more firmly, like something too fragile for the world. “Just go on. Make it worth it.”
Their hands touched unintentionally, both adjusting the vial to observe it better. There was no jolt, no retreat. Only a small, quiet warmth running through them like a confession that didn’t need words. The lamp flickered, casting trembling shadows behind them.
Neither mentioned the risk. They didn’t speak of the Cathedral, the priestess, the crime now weighing on their shoulders, or the possibility that everything could collapse before dawn. Speaking of those things would be like throwing stones into the smooth surface of a newly formed lake. And that moment, that provisional victory, needed to exist whole, without cracks.
Agon touched his forehead to hers, slowly, like someone asking permission without asking.
“Do you realize what this means?”
“It means the kingdom might flourish again,” she answered.
“And that the two of us… are in the middle of it.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “I don’t regret it.”
“Neither do I.”
They stayed like that, unmoving, breathing the same air that smelled of reagents and freshly forged courage. The antidote vial glowed between them, lighting the small space where their shadows met on the floor.
Agon was the first to pull back, just enough to look at the vial again.
“Now the hard part begins.”
Lissandra nodded, but with a soft smile that looked tired and indestructible at once.
“The hard part always starts after finding the solution.”
The two of them stood side by side, watching the small vial of antidote on the workbench—that fragile, luminous thing that could change everything.
Or destroy them.