The garden was still around them and the afternoon sun was casting long, pale shadows across the stone floor of the pavilion, and Fainyx sat with the empty plate of cookies beside him while the scent of the flowers blooms moved gently on the breeze.
Ambrosia sat across from him with her back straight and her yellow eyes fixed on his face with the particular intensity of someone who was looking through a person rather than at them, and then she spoke with a voice that carried a quiet and heavy gravity.
"Do you notice anything strange in your body, young master? Anything at all?" she asked, and her hands were folded so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone white.
Fainyx looked at her with his usual neutral expression and his crystal violet eyes stayed still and clear, and then he slowly shook his head.
On the outside, he was the perfect image of a composed noble son, but inside his thoughts were drifting back to the midnight garden and the words Ruth had spoken under the silver moonlight.
'I already know perfectly well what is happening to this body because Ruth was very direct about the Hollow Constitution Syndrome and the way it refuses to let me grow,' he thought with a dry and internal sigh.
'But I can't exactly write that down without explaining how I know a thousand-year-old dragon and his restaurant-owning friend, and that sounds like a great deal of effort I would rather avoid.'
Ambrosia watched his denial and her expression shifted into something deeply sad and she seemed to be seeing someone else entirely, her mind moving back to a room that had been quiet and dim and smelled of sickness.
She imagined her husband, Smith, and she saw him smiling at her with a body that had grown thinner and more brittle with every passing day until he could no longer move his limbs, and the memory made her shoulders feel heavy with a grief she had never quite put down. She remembered the way he had looked at her from the bed, smiling one last time before his strength left him completely, and she looked up and stood with a sudden and decisive movement that made the tea in her cup ripple.
"We are going to the Duke's office," she said, her voice absolute and firm.
She looked at Fainyx and she had made up her mind to tell the Duke everything because she could not bear the thought of them being parted without warning, and she thought to herself, 'They just can't be part with each other and we don't know how long he can live if the illness has already taken hold.'
Ambrosia leaned forward and tried to lift Fainyx into her arms, her movements hurried and tense, but she was stopped by Yong who had stood up with his usual unhurried ease.
He looked at her and shrugged and his emerald green eyes were bright with a particular kind of amusement that Ambrosia clearly found irritating.
"I will carry the young master instead," Yong said pleasantly, and he winked at Fainyx with the expression of someone who was enjoying the drama far more than was strictly necessary.
Ambrosia looked at him with an annoyed expression and she snapped his name but she didn't argue further, and she asked Estrella to show them the way to the office immediately.
Fainyx allowed himself to be lifted and he rested against Yong's shoulder with a quiet resignation while they moved through the long corridors of the mansion, and he thought about how his plan for a lazy and unnoticed life was currently being dismantled by his own instructors.
'To think I'm being carried to my own medical intervention like a sack of grain while my teacher winks at me,' he thought as he looked at the passing paintings on the walls.
They reached the office and Estrella knocked and they heard the Duke's deep and measured voice tell them to come in. The Duke was sitting at his desk which was covered in stacks of papers and reports, and he stopped writing and looked up and for a brief moment he smiled a bit when he saw Fainyx.
"What is the reason for this visit?" the Duke asked, his gaze shifting to Ambrosia.
"There is a serious matter your Grace needs to know," Ambrosia said, her voice steady despite the way her hands were trembling. "I request that a physician who can use aura and mana be summoned to examine Fainyx's internal state.
He needs someone who can see whether he has a hidden illness that the regular exams have missed."
The Duke went very still and his expression shifted into something sharp and cold and the air in the room grew heavy as his aura began to stir. "Why do you make such a request?" he asked, and the pressure in the room made the curtains move as if there were a wind.
Ambrosia was sweating and the Duke's aura was raining down on her with the weight of a mountain but she did not back down and she looked him in the eye with the particular stubbornness of a knight. "I swear on my honor that I am telling the truth and I believe the young master's condition is dangerous," she said.
The Duke looked at her and then he looked at Fainyx and he let out a heavy sigh and turned to Weinhart. "Find Michael and bring him here at once."
Weinhart bowed and left the room and the Duke told them to sit by the sofa, and Yong sat down beside Fainyx and leaned in to whisper where only Fainyx could hear him. "This is going to be fun," he said, and he winked again.
Fainyx looked at him with his usual neutral mask and he reached for his notebook and wrote a single line.
[ You are enjoying this too much. ]
Yong only grinned and Fainyx sighed in his head and thought about how his teacher was remarkably unhelpful during a family crisis.
A few minutes later Michael entered the office and greeted the Duke and Ambrosia began to explain what she had sensed inside Fainyx's body, her voice carrying the pain of her own history as she spoke about the symptoms she recognized. Michael listened with a serious expression and he approached Fainyx and began the examination and Fainyx felt the aura moving through him again.
It was warm and cozy and it felt like a soft light moving through his veins and he sat quietly and waited while the physician worked.
Then Michael's face went pale and he began to sweat profusely and he took his hand away as if he had been shocked, and he looked at the Duke with eyes that were full of a terrible kind of seriousness.
"This is a grave matter, Your Grace," Michael said, and his voice was shaking.
"The young master is suffering from a terminal illness called Hollow Constitution Syndrome."
The Duke stood up so fast that his desk moved and he asked Michael to explain but Ambrosia put her hand up and said she would do it instead. She explained the full effects of the syndrome, and how it drains the body and how it can cause sudden stomach and muscle pain that lasts for hours, and how it varies from person to person so that no one knows exactly what the symptoms effects will bring. "Most who have it die early," she said quietly. "Perhaps in their twenties or thirties if they are lucky..."
The Duke did not speak and his face was pale and he looked at Fainyx with a raw and agonizing pain in his eyes that Fainyx had never seen before. He walked around the desk and crouched down in front of his son, touching Fainyx's shoulders with hands that were visibly shaking.
"Are you in any kind of pain right now, Fainyx?" he asked, and his voice was broken and small.
Fainyx looked at him and he didn't know what to write at first because for the past three years he had felt the dull ache spreading through his body every morning but he had never mentioned it to anyone.
In his past life as an orphan he had always been alone and he was used to enduring things in silence and so he simply assumed this pain was part of him. He looked at his father's desperate face and he slowly and reluctantly nodded.
The Duke looked like he was about to cry and he told everyone else to leave the office so he could have a chat with his son.
The others nodded and went out and Yong looked at Fainyx and his eyes said 'good luck' before the door closed and left them alone in the quiet room.
The Duke didn't talk at all but he pulled Fainyx into a hug and he was shaking so hard that Fainyx could feel it through his clothes, and then he heard his father's whisper.
"No ... not again ... you can't leave me like this again ..."
Fainyx felt a heavy sense of trouble and he realized that his father was having a real emotional problem as he held onto his son, and Fainyx thought about telling him that Ruth was already preparing a cure with the Kalmia and the world tree roots.
But he knew he couldn't say it yet because Yong and Ruth were still supposed to be strangers and he didn't want his father to be suspicious of them.
He let out a quiet internal sigh and he realized that in this life he was a noble son with a family that actually cared and he had no choice but to try and comfort the man who was currently breaking down.
He reached up with his small hands and hugged his father back and then he looked him in the eyes. The Duke's eyes were wet with tears and Fainyx tried to smile, and for the first time it wasn't a stiff or neutral mask but a real and faint smile.
"!?"
The Duke saw the face of his wife in his son's smile and the resemblance was so sharp that he began to cry again, and he hugged Fainyx so tightly that Fainyx found he actually couldn't breathe.
Fainyx had to tap his father's arm to get him to stop and the Duke realized and took his hands away, and Fainyx sat there and was a bit shocked. He looked at the man in front of him and he realized that the cold and emotionless Duke could cry after all, and he sat in the deepening shadows of the office and truly didn't know what to think of his new father.