The guards cleared the way for Lord Thornwald's descent from the carriage. He was impeccably dressed as usual, with his ornate walking cane and fabric fine enough to cost more than most workers yearly wage.

  He emitted an aura of intimidation, and the crowd parted way for him. Those still waiting for healing pressed themselves against shop walls. A mother pulled her child closer. The street, moments before filled with desperate voices, went quiet except for the strike of Lord Thornwald's boots on cobblestone.

  "Father," Lucia whispered as he approached.

  "Inside." He didn't look at the crowd or acknowledge Clive. His attention was solely on his daughter.

  Lucia led him through her workshop door. As she entered, Clive gave her a silent nod but otherwise remained outside with Garrett.

  Lord Thornwald's boots struck the floor harder than necessary as he navigated between the brewing stations. His shoulder brushed a hanging bundle of violet, sending dried petals drifting to the floor. He didn't notice or care. His eyes swept the workshop, taking in the cluttered worktables, the rows of labeled vials, the books stacked in precarious towers.

  "You've expanded your operations yet again." He picked up a bottle of ruby liquid. "Every time I come, there’s more equipment than last time."

  Lucia remained silent. She knew why her father was here. It wasn’t for small talk. The rumors of the cure would have reached him by now, and she dreaded having that conversation with him.

  "Is it true what they say?" Lord Thornwald set the bottle down. "Can you cure the stone curse?"

  Lucia nodded. Here it came. She clenched her fist in anticipation.

  "Then why have you not come?" His voice rose with each word. "Why have you not cured Lydia yet?"

  "It won't work, Father." Lucia stared at a stain on the floorboards. A week-old splash of cabernet extract that had left a permanent mark despite her scrubbing. She couldn’t bear to look him in the eye, not now. "Mother turned completely for almost three months now. The cure only works on partial transformation. We need living tissue to restore from."

  Lord Thornwald stumbled backwards, his hands finding the edge of Lucia's worktable. A glass stirring rod rolled toward the edge and shattered on the floor. The crack sound that resonated throughout the room echoed the breaking of the two hearts in the room.

  "You know this? How can you be certain?"

  "We’ve tried, Father. We tested it thoroughly. Complete petrification... there's nothing left to restore."

  “Then you didn’t try hard enough!” Lord Thornwald's cane swept across the workbench. Glass shattered against stone. Liquid pooled across the floor, mixing colors that should never touch.

  He adjusted his grip on the cane. Straightened his coat.

  “I was going to praise you. To admit your little potion game amounted to something after all.” He looked at the broken glass. "I should have known better."

  Clive heard the sound of glass shattering inside. Then another crash, heavier this time.

  He glanced at Garrett who gave him a quick nod.

  “Go,” Garrett said. “I’ll handle things here.”

  Broken glass covered the floor near her workbench. Dark puddles spread across the stone, mixing into muddy brown where they met. Lucia stood frozen by her equipment while Lord Thornwald gripped his cane near the window.

  “Is everything alright?”

  Lord Thornwald turned to face Clive. "You're the painter everyone speaks of. The miracle worker who's been healing half the district."

  "I've been helping where I can."

  "But not my wife. Not the woman who gave birth to the girl whose workshop you're standing in."

  "The magic requires something to work from," Clive said. "Even a patch of original skin, a single finger that hasn't turned. Without that reference point—"

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Excuses." Lord Thornwald moved to the window, looking out at the dispersing crowd. "Do you know what it's like? Watching your wife transform piece by piece? First her feet, so she couldn't walk. Then her hands, so she couldn't hold anything. I fed her myself those last weeks. Spooned broth between her lips while we both pretended everything would be fine."

  He touched the glass pane. "The morning it reached her face, she was trying to tell me something. Her lips were still moving when the stone took them. I'll never know what her last words were meant to be."

  The workshop fell silent except for the gentle bubbling of something fermenting in the corner. Lucia hadn't moved from her position by the workbench.

  "The statue stands in our garden now," Lord Thornwald continued. "The servants think I'm mad, keeping it there. But I can't bring myself to move her. She loved that garden. Spent every morning tending her roses." He turned back to them. "The roses all died after she changed. No one else knew the proper way to care for them."

  "Father—" Lucia started.

  "I've consulted every healer in the kingdom. Spent a fortune on supposed cures. Master Jankin from the capital said it was impossible. The court physicians agreed. Even that charlatan from Ironhaven admitted defeat after taking my gold." His gaze returned to the window. Outside, a few patients still lingered, watching the workshop. "These people, they’re calling you a miracle healer. Where’s the miracle now?"

  Clive remained silent, unsure of what to say. He never wanted such a title. It only placed undue expectations on him. But he wasn't a miracle worker. He was just an artist who'd found a different canvas. In the end, he could only repeat himself.

  "The magic I use—it's like restoration work on a painting. I need to see the original to know what to restore. With complete petrification, there's no original left to reference."

  “And what if I could provide you with a portrait?”

  Clive straightened. Even Lucia looked up from the floor.

  A portrait. Not living flesh, but at least a visual reference. His restoration work had always required direct observation, but if he could match the colors exactly, if the portrait was accurate enough...

  "It's worth a try," Clive said.

  The Thornwald manor stood where the merchant district met the noble quarter, with stone walls rising three stories above manicured hedges. Iron gates bore the family crest and opened onto a drive wide enough for two carriages to pass.

  Inside, the great hall stretched the full height of the building. Marble floors echoed under their boots. A chandelier hung from iron chains, its hundred candles unlit in the daylight that streamed through tall windows. The walls displayed the accumulated wealth of a merchant family's rise: Eastland tapestries, a suit of ceremonial armor, shelves of leather-bound ledgers that tracked decades of shipping contracts.

  But the portrait dominated the space. It hung opposite the entrance, impossible to miss, depicting a woman in cream silk, seated in a garden with roses blooming behind her. The canvas was nearly life-sized, painted with the kind of intricate detail that Clive recognised as a masterpiece.

  "I had this commissioned for our tenth anniversary." Lord Thornwald stopped before it. "There are no artists in Marblehaven, so I had to get one from the capital. Spent three months here, insisting on perfect light, perfect colors. I thought him mad when he mixed seventeen different shades just for her skin."

  "It's Mother exactly as I remember her," Lucia said. She stood beside her father.

  Clive moved closer, studying the brushwork. Lady Thornwald had been beautiful. Auburn hair that reflected like copper, warm brown eyes with fine lines at the corners that suggested frequent laughter. The way she held her shoulders, the slight tilt of her head, the hands folded with casual elegance. The artist had captured not only her physical appearance but also the way she conducted herself with grace.

  "The garden behind her," Lord Thornwald said. "Those are her roses. She bred that particular variety herself. Crossbred yellow and pink strains until she got that exact shade of coral. They bloomed once a year, always on her birthday."

  They crossed through the manor's east wing, past sitting rooms and a library where the curtains had been drawn against the sun. The garden door stood at the end of a narrow hallway lined with smaller portraits of ancestors in shipping attire, their faces growing sterner the further back in time they went.

  The garden had gone wild. Rose bushes that once formed neat borders now tangled into thorny walls. Weeds pushed through gravel paths. A fountain sat dry, its basin filled with dead leaves. The coral roses Lord Thornwald had mentioned were brown stalks, their custom-bred beauty lost to neglect.

  “Father wouldn’t allow any of the gardeners to touch this place after Mother turned. It was her special place,” Lucia whispered to Clive.

  Lady Thornwald stood at the garden's center, one hand extended toward where her roses once bloomed. Every fold of her dress, every strand of hair had been preserved in gray stone. Perfect and lifeless.

  "We'll need to move her inside," Lord Thornwald said. "The light's better in the great hall, and you'll need to compare with the portrait."

  He called for servants. Four men approached the statue with a wooden platform with wheels. Moving Lady Thornwald required all four men, two wooden poles for leverage, and careful coordination to avoid cracking the extended arm.

  They positioned her beneath the portrait, angling the statue so Clive could see both simultaneously. The painted Lady Thornwald smiled down at her petrified self. The contrast—warm flesh tones above, cold gray stone below—only made the tragedy worse.

  Clive set up his supplies on a small table that the servants provided. The original artist had used seventeen shades. Clive would need to match them all.

  He got to work.

  I spent seven years crossbreeding yellow and pink to achieve that perfect coral shade.Seventeen failed attempts before the roses bloomed true. Nature teaches us that some beauty can only emerge from patient failure, and that the most precious things cannot be rushed or forced, only coaxed into being through love and time.

  —From the personal journal of Lady Lydia Thornwald