“Ahh,” he gasped. “Where to start?”
“From your birth,” she mimicked. They chuckled at that. “You have no wife, no children?” she asked, trying to get him to open up some chapter in his life. The painting was of someone special, obviously. Who she may have been, and what had happened to her was a mystery that Zofia was very curious about.
“My wife died, some time ago,” he said almost darkly, shifting his gaze out the window.
“I'm very sorry,” she said. “How did she die?”
“She died of something I was unable to diagnose, and could not cure.”
“Cure?” She had noticed that a number of the titles in his library were medical. “You are into the medical branch of alchemy?”
His eyes turned to her and glittered as they searched her face. Ah yes. She would know since she was working on his librar
