Chapter 1785:


    “Why are you sighing? What did you find? Is it treatable? Am I dying?” He caught himself mid-spiral. “Wait — do you actually have medical training? I didn’t even ask that.”


    “You’re infertile.”


    The words arrived so directly that everything else in his head went silent.


    Alban’s hand flew up to cover her mouth — toote. The words were already out, hanging in the air between them. He looked around the corridor in pure rm. Empty, thankfully. Had anyone been within earshot, his most private and closely guarded truth would have be public knowledge in an instant.


    He pulled himself back toposure with visible effort. “You diagnosed that from my pulse?”


    The fact that she had done so this quickly meant her medical knowledge was in a category entirely its own.


    “We need somewhere private,” Christina said quietly, her eyes moving through the space around them.


    Alban assessed the corridor and nodded once. “Follow me.”


    They moved into a small, unupied room off the main hall, dimly lit and away from foot traffic.


    “No one will hear us here,” Alban said, taking a seat and attempting to project a calm he didn’t quite feel. “Tell me. What is it?”


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    “I’ll be direct,” Christina said, her voice level and unsparing. “You’re infertile, and someone is poisoning you.”


    He was on his feet before she finished the sentence. “Poisoned? You’re serious?”


    “Completely. It’s a slow-actingpound — extremely difficult to detect. It umtes quietly until intervention is no longer possible.”


    Her certainty was absolute, because she had seen it before. This was the same poison that had been used on her father. Alban hadn’t been exposed as long, but the concentration was far higher — meaning his condition was deteriorating more rapidly. Based on what she had observed in her father’s case, she could tell the dosage had been escting. Whoever was behind this was losing patience. They wanted both Hurley and Alban dead, and they wanted it done soon.


    “I feel fine,” Alban said, the disbelief in his voice genuine. “Are you certain you’re not misreading something?”


    He couldn’t entirely dismiss the possibility that she had simply heard about his condition through some channel and was constructing the poison im around information she already had.


    “I’ve told you what’s wrong,” Christina said, her expression asposed and unreadable as stone. “Whether you choose to believe me is your concern, not mine.”


    It wasn’t her life at stake. If Alban was going to treat her diagnosis as fabrication, she saw no reason to spend another word on it.


    “You’re not even going to try to convince me?” he asked, something almost incredulous in his tone.


    “I don’t owe you anything,” Christina said, and turned for the door.


    Alban was on his feet in an instant, moving fast enough to cut her off before she reached it.


    “Is there a problem?” Christina asked, her eyes locking onto his.


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