When she finished healing him, she drew back and clenched her fists until the tendons crackled. Sweat beaded her forehead and the back of her neck, and as the chill of the room descended over her, she shivered against it. “Well. You’re no worse, but you’re certainly no better.”

All the hope he’d managed to hold on to withered before her eyes. “So there’s nothing you can do?”

“I never said that.” Wren folded her hands in her lap. “It’d be wise not to insult me. You haven’t exactly been the most pleasant patient to deal with so far.”

“I meant no offense,” he said, almost chastised.

“Good.” At least he was being civil, if not curt. “Not everyone is as forgiving as I am, you know. Do you understand how lucky you are that I showed up?”

“I do.” This time, he closed his eyes. The light elongated the shadows, the outline of his eyelashes scoring his cheekbones like scars. When he spoke again, irony and a strange kind of gratitude tangled together in his voice. “Perhaps it’s divine providence.”

That notion drifted too close to heresy, even for her. Their meeting here seemed a coincidence far more sinister, but she held her tongue on the matter. “Indeed. How strange that you have a lead on the very case I’m trying to solve.”

Hal’s expression shuttered again.

“I haven’t stopped turning our predicament over,” Wren pressed on. “A decorated soldier and future politician, throwing it all away to become a valet for a man who has no ambition other than to throw the most extravagant party of the season? I think not. It couldn’t be your lead that brought you here, could it?”

Silence, as expected. It was wishful thinking to believe he’d feed her even crumbs of information. Wren crossed her arms. “Fine. Can you at least tell me more about this sickness? When it came on, how it felt?”

“Three weeks ago,” he said. That seemed about right, judging by the atrophy of his muscles and the soft hollows beneath his cheekbones. “It was gradual at first. After about two days of running a fever, the cough started.”

Wren frowned as she scratched a quick note to herself. “And was hemoptysis present initially, or is that a more recent development?”

Hal blinked at her.

“Coughing blood,” she supplied. “Sorry.”

“I see. That started immediately.”

She lifted her pen as she registered the almost wry lilt to his voice. For the life of her, she could not tell if he was making fun of her or not. Shaking her head, she ignored it and jotted down another note. “Alright. Fever. Coughing blood. What next?”

“A worsening fatigue. By the third day, I couldn’t get out of bed. It felt as if I were being torn apart from the inside.” He paused. “I thought I was going to die.”