Once back home, the investigation began. The field of research was immense. They didn't even know what country the man might be in. They decided to try London first, to limit the possibilities a little. But their chances seemed increasingly slim. If such a powerful society still couldn't get its hands on such a person, how would they succeed?

Despite everything, Lucy refused to give up. Even though their chances were low, she continued to think that they still had a few, Lucy was indeed even more delusional than she was optimistic. Maude was working diligently, without ever complaining, just as an underpaid typing secretary would have done. The task was different from what she was used to, but she felt more motivated each time she thought that it was she who had decided to accomplish it, smiling happily, without being able to grasp what it was about. She had the imagination of a woman little inclined to invent, confined to the dark and gloomy streets of London little subject to the impulses of the dreams of a soul. As such, her imagination had found itself atrophied and could hardly grasp what an immortal knight could be, except that he was more important than the count she had served.

Alistair kept silent most of the time, rarely communicating with others. He had barely spoken about what he thought of their interview with Liora and what she had revealed to them about the White Lily, despite Lucy's pleas. He knowingly revealed nothing and, no matter what words Lucy used, nothing could convince him. He only spoke with veiled truths and never said more than was strictly necessary.

Alistair's reactions seemed strange and unusual to Lucy. She didn't dare talk to him about it, for fear of upsetting him. He was in a bad mood and locked himself into his monotonous and taciturn silence, like a sky veiled by a thick layer of clouds.

Several times, Lucy tried to put her hand on his shoulder to comfort him and encourage him to confide. Alistair, however, did not seem to want it and never answered the calls she made to him. He just gave her a weak, grateful smile and got back to work, while the dark circles that underlined his eyes attenuated the brightness of his gaze. Sometimes he even ignored her, giving her a simple shrug of the shoulders as a response.

They had to consult dozens of newspapers, hoping that one of them would mention something about the Silver Knight, even the beginning of a lead. They also tried to question those around them as discreetly as possible, in the hope that someone would know something. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Nothing positive had yet come out of their research. It was despairing. Lucy almost wanted to suggest to Alistair that he give up, but he seemed strangely absorbed in this research. Lucy remained perplexed by his behavior. She sometimes wanted to ask him directly if he, Alistair, really believed in this kind of nonsense but always refrained when faced with the unfriendly appearance her companion wore. Every day he moved a little further away from Maude and her, sometimes not speaking to them all day. Lucy, despite everything, continued to move forward. Because Alistair was, against all odds, her comrade, the only one who had agreed to believe in her dreams as a detective and even to offer her the means to make them come true.

From now on, it was their investigation, she had to solve it!

In a moment of discouragement, Lucy almost wanted to go out into the street and travel throughout the city, calling for the Silver Knight to show himself. At the time, it seemed like the most productive thing to do. However, she was stopped in time by Alistair who still managed to see the flaws behind this seemingly infallible plan.

When she felt least well, Lucy would go up to the roof to throw grains there to attract birds, against the will of their carekeeper, but he didn't need to know. There was one in particular she was hoping to see. An eagle with golden brown plumage who came to see her very often. She was very surprised the first time to encountered such an animal in the city of London. But she had gradually gotten used to his presence and had stopped asking questions. When she looked into his eyes, she felt like she was reading the wisdom of the world there. She found him magnificent.

Lucy, every day, went up to Alistair's office, invariably finding him working in cellar silence, paying no attention to her. She had the impression of tumbling into a painting of immobile elements of which she was the only moving variable.

That morning, Alistair was almost frantically going through dozens of books at once, making haphazard notes on scraps of paper. When Lucy glanced at it, she couldn't decipher a single line.

It despaired her not being able to say the slightest word to him. Alistair could also be terribly stubborn and didn't seem inclined to communicate with her.

As he wrote another illegible scribble, quite different from his usual elegant and neat handwriting, he raised his head a little and turned it towards her.

"What do you think about it?" he asked her.

"What?"

"Of everything that happens. Do you believe it? Do you believe in these angels, in the Twelve Tortured? Why do you want to investigate this? It's dangerous, it won't do you anything and what's more, everything seems false in this matter."

"And you? If you think so, why do you want to investigate?"

He looked up at the wall in front of him, seeming to think.

"Because I have had contact in my life with the White Lily, without really realizing it, I think. I blame myself a little. I should have seen something and realized what was going on. But I was blind, I did nothing when I could have acted."

"It wasn't your fault. Moreover, now, tell yourself that you have an opportunity to change things."

Alistair nodded slowly, his lips tight and drawn into a thin white line.

"Lucy, why do you want to be dragged into all this?"

"Because I want to discover the world, because I want to live, to have adventures. Doing nothing with my life, staying forever in the same place, never seizing the opportunities that present themselves because they are dangerous... All that is not for me. All of life is dangerous, so I want to live it to the fullest, as long as possible. You know Alistair, I like to dream, I like to believe in impossible things. So believing in angels, in immortal people, is not strange to me. I am a detective, I want to unveil all the mysteries of the world."

Abruptly, Alistair stood up, dark and menacing like a storm cloud on the horizon, portending turmoil. His long silhouette was like a mountain in this tiny little attic, in front of Lucy, so frail compared to him.

Alistair turned towards her, his face cold and empty, and walked in her direction, forcing her back, hitting the wall with her back. For the first time since they met, she was afraid of him, she was afraid of the face he showed her. And he seemed to know it, he seemed to realize it.

"You don't know, you don't realize," he whispered in a voice from beyond the grave that sounded like an organ in the silent room. "Angels? Immortal beings? This isn't a fairy tale where you can barge in and put yourself in danger forever. It's not a sweet story that ends with "they lived happily ever after and had many children." It is a tragedy, an absurd tragedy that has no spectators except the actors forced to participate in it and who follow one after the other. They all end up the same way, killed, forgotten, buried, and abandoned."

With each word he spoke, he moved a little closer, his fists clenching under the white gloves he wore at all times, his voice strangely low, as if something inside him might break.

"They die and no one is there to mourn them anymore, because everyone is too busy suffering their own tragedy. You want to know? Do you want to know what they can do to you? What they might do to you, how they could change you, you, so joyful, in your pretty blue dress, always smiling, your head full of dreams, such beautiful dreams, they would take them and they would break them as if they were made of glass to leave nothing but sharp debris behind."

Lucy felt the paneling of the wall digging into her back, her arms clenched against her body, fear rising within her like the tide, passing through each of the dikes she tried to establish and surging within her. She ran her tongue over her teeth and got a warm feeling from it as if she were going to cry. Already, her eyes were blurring, as well as her vision.

Alistair, with the same terrible gravity, slowly removed his cloak which he threw aside, before rolling his sleeves up to the elbow. In a final gesture, he removed the glove from his right hand and tossed it aside, leaving his skin exposed. Lucie vaguely reflected that she had never seen his skin without a glove, coat, or frock coat on top. Then the light struck his arm and she saw. She saw on Alistair's palm an engraved drawing as if a knife had passed the same symbol over it many times, inscribing the same trace, again and again, leaving forever a raw scar, a flesh lacerated and torn as if it was just paper. A lily had been inscribed there. The wound looked old and yet it was as red as the first day, it almost seemed to be throbbing unpleasantly.

It was then that she saw the rest of his arm and the horror made her nauseous. Flesh, raw flesh, without any skin on top, a gigantic burn that ran the length of the arm, full of sinuosities and ribs, revealing the nerves of the body. It was red, burning red, as must have been the fire that had ravaged his body forever. It was like a withered limb, some kind of filthy and disgusting thing, a carcass that had been left to rot. A tongue of fire which had run through his entire skin, setting every part ablaze. A sort of abomination that had miraculously survived. She could almost hear the flames crackling as she observed the incarnate hues of his arm. And, under the thin light provided by the half-closed window of the room, the burned limb, directly illuminated, appeared to be made entirely of blood, blood that had taken shape.

It was like a scarlet claw, a demonic hand coming out of hell to come and haunt her with its bloody fingers. A monster's hand, it was a monster's hand, one of those monsters from a child's nightmares that slid gently to reach her in her sleep. The fabrics were completely exposed, like a thousand intertwined crimson threads all heading towards her, garnet streams flowing in her direction. She could almost hear the blood dripping. And this same hand was stretched out before her, revealing itself in all its abominable and repulsive appearance.

However, when she met Alistair's gaze, he did not flinch. His eyes had become darker and more thoughtful as if filled with lingering pain when he had to show such a visible old wound. He was always the same. He was still Alistair.

Then, with a slow and careful gesture, Lucy put forward her hand. With terror mixed with apprehension, she touched Alistair's arm, afraid of hurting him with the simple touch. She instantly remembered all the times she had hung herself from that same arm, unaware of the injury that the fabric permanently hid.

Under her fingers, the flesh seemed almost smooth, dotted with those veins that the fire had left as a signature. She moved closer to the symbol engraved on Alistair's palm and he shuddered imperceptibly. She felt with precision each of the knife marks that must have engraved this eternal tattoo into his skin. She felt these enormous gutters that had been built into her skin to pour blood and suffering into it. And, as if by extension, she was in pain herself. It hurt her to know that, one day, he had suffered so much and that, even today, he had to suffer from it. It hurt her to think that he had never told her in the three years that they had known each other, in the three years that they had lived together in this little room in this little shabby house.

In the end, she realized bitterly, she knew very little about Alistair, only what he had been willing to confide in her and, with her terrible inconsistency, she had never thought of asking him more. Perhaps she had the feeling that he would not want to say things that she herself did not feel capable of saying. Who was Alistair De Saule? A fallen noble? Where did his title of nobility come from? Was he rich? Had he been? Did he have a family? Where did he come from? Why had he decided to stay with her, a poor street scumbag, in such a pitiful home, pursuing the insane dream of solving cases?

Why did he always look so dark? Where did this terrible look come from, this way of looking at people so cold, this scrutinizing look that seemed to be searching for a weak point to hit them? What was hidden behind this sad face?

She didn't even know his precise age, or what he was doing in the street when she found him, wandering like an abandoned wretch. He looked like he was twenty-five years old, at most, and yet they had been together for three years and he hadn't changed or aged an inch.

But, she thought, suddenly, she hadn't changed anymore. How old was she when she met Alistair? She had never known her exact age, she only knew for sure that she was around seventeen. So she must have been around fourteen at the time? No, it couldn't be! She wasn't that young then! Things didn't add up.

To tell the truth, she didn't exactly remember ever being fourteen in her life. Hadn't she always been seventeen? She wasn't sure anymore. Alistair had never asked her any questions or made any comments, so she had never responded.

A new thought arose in her mind, chasing away the others. Was Alistair his real name? He had announced it to her, with his title of nobility, with an assurance which was enough, at the time, to convince her. But what if he had lied to her? Could he have wanted to take advantage of her? Impossible, in three years, he would have had the opportunity to do it before. She had nothing to give him that he couldn't have gotten himself.

What if they were just two madmen wandering in an eternal dream where neither one aged, where they only went around in circles without ever learning more about the other, like a comedy with characters fixed in a single role? How long had they known each other? A month, a week, years? Could she trust her memory, when it was constantly failing?

She didn't know what was true and the realization sent a shiver down her spine.

And yet, despite all this, she did not dare, she did not want to venture into his mind, to violate these sacred lands which should belong only to him, and to no one else. She couldn't have done that, she felt. Because the truths he hid from her should only be revealed through his words. He alone had the power to lift the veil. Not her or anyone else.

And it was clear that he hadn't felt the need to do so until now, that keeping her in the dark hadn't bothered him. Then came a final question, harder than all the others. Who was Lucy Moon for Alistair De Saule? Perhaps she had never really mattered to him, since he had told her nothing, since, during what had been three years in her disturbed mind, he had revealed nothing to her, he had never been more interested in knowing who she was, what she was doing there, where she came from. He only knew the scattered information that she had let slip but he had asked her nothing, nothing at all. Deep down, without daring to broach the subject, she had hoped that he would end up questioning her, that he would finally cross this limit that she burned to see him cross.

It was as if Alistair preferred to look away from anything that might have distressed his vision too much. As always with him, silence was better than painful words. Because Alistair always hid, because Alistair always remained silent, placing a leaden blanket over his thoughts and his past to forever conceal its contents. She was looking for someone to come and find her in this distant tower where she had established her secrets, shining in everyone's view so that people would want to pick them up, he kept them within himself, stifled them like smoke of a fire that he didn't want anyone to see. He surrounded this secret garden with brambles to dissuade curious people from approaching it.

In the end, how much had they been hiding? How many times had they said nothing, stuck in a sort of dialogue between deaf people?

She was a detective and she had enough of all these secrets, all these dissimulations, these unsaid things.

Then she let that mutilated hand fall and, seized by an impulse, she rose on her tiptoes and, without fearing the bogeyman, the monster with the dark shadow that populated childhood nightmares, without fearing his steely gaze and the cold that still emanated from them, she wrapped her arms around him in a hug. She felt Alistair who at first wanted to step back, surprised to see her still advancing towards him, without fear, to see the young girl, the young girl he thought he had scared forever, chased away, seize him in the heat of her blue dress, blue, blue like the sky, blue like the eyes of the one he had loved. Blue that sounded like freedom. Blue that sounded like life. A blue of melancholy, which she returned to him, the blue of sorrow, which she allowed him. The blue that he had pushed away for so long, to lock himself in the gray of perpetual suffering, of regret, of remorse, of flagellation.

Blue was such a beautiful color, so sad and sweet at the same time. A bruise that hit him so violently, destroying his retinas, burning his throat, his lips, his entire body. It was the blue of mourning, the one he never wanted to accept. He didn't deserve it. And, in his entire body, like a wave breaking, a blue wave, so blue, a feeling that he had not felt for a long time, a feeling that he had not allowed himself to feel. He lost himself in the glaucous light of the small room, he drowned in the blue skirts like clouds of vapor. His gaze wandered into her hair, curly, disordered, brown, which fell over her shoulders in cascades, in waves of the same color as the dust that the twilight brought up. She smelled good, she smelled like life, she smelled like the sun whose rays she caught as they passed through the window. She smelled like running through the fields. She smelled like the tree where he once climbed and where he hung ribbons. A ribbon for hope. The tree found itself adorned with thousands of pieces of fabric that the wind gently moved, like a myriad of comets, shooting stars on which one had to make a wish, transforming the solitary tree in the middle of the fields into a bright torch.

He found it again, this lost feeling. This feeling that had seized him at the end of his other life and at the beginning of this one. It was there, like a friend who had long disappeared and who finally joined him, who greeted him, showing that he had never forgotten him. He had never forgotten him. He had never left, simply muffled but always there to watch over him. And, today, he presented himself before him, he bowed before him, and he advanced with cautious steps to offer him his present. His gift, sadness.

For the first time in his new life, he cried. He cried as he had done as a child, full of incomprehension and doubts, he cried as he had done on the threshold of adulthood. He let himself cry again. A single tear, solitary on his cheek, which flowed and flowed, like wax from a candle that time has worn out. He cried a tear that was going to wash up against the sea of ​​Lucy's hair.

To the anger which protects, to the anger which defends, which prevents one from sinking, which activates the body, the mind, which makes one suddenly get up, which allows one to forget what truly hurts the heart, which inflames so much that the one manages to chase away the humid surge of depression which wants to come and drown us under its melancholic waves, this anger is finally followed by sorrow. He had avoided it for so long! And this grief hurt, it really hurt, it hurt even more than anger, than rage, since it left no escape, no outlet to relieve this surplus of feelings, of "self". It hurt, and it felt good too, it felt good. Like the merciful moon that shines its rays into the cold night, which refuses to abandon humans to the deep limbo of solitude. The moon which, more than the sun, becomes a confidant, who listens to the whispers and the tears, filled with solicitude. This same Moon that had dared to embrace him. Yes, this Moon was smiling at him at this moment.

"Will we tell each other everything, soon, one day? Shall we say? Will we say the words, the words that hurt and that we don't want to say?"

Alistair bent his hurricane gaze on her, his gaze which also resembled the rays of the lunar star. A slight smile appears on his face, like a sudden wave appearing on the water, disturbing the dreary tranquility.

"Yes. Yes. One day we will say, we will say everything. I promise you. When the moment comes, I will tell you and you will know who I am."

"We are detectives Alistair. We know well that everyone hides a secret, a secret inside them, like a nucleus, a seed around which they have grown. We also know that secrets are not easily told, they are discovered. It's a very slow investigation, the discovery of the other. I sometimes fear reaching the end because then there will be nothing left to hide."

"The time for secrets is almost over. But not yet, not yet. I need more time, more time to put all the pieces together."

Lucy nodded. She also couldn't reveal everything. Not when what she believed to be her truth was still a lie. She didn't know if she would ever be able to speak. She still wanted so much to stay like that, to remain Lucy Moon. And maybe she would get there, maybe she would manage to embody forever who she wanted to be.

Alistair, for his part, internally, thought that, with the time he asked for, he would rather try to find the simplest way to break away from her. Yes, the Moon could not afford to be swallowed up by the eclipse he represented. She would have been able to resist it, probably, she would have wanted to do it, without a doubt, but he didn't want to, even more than ever. With this liberation that she had given him for a few moments, he had understood that this young girl, Lucy Moon, still had a lot to do, more, better, than what he intended to accomplish. He would not chain her when her destiny was to fly, to fly light as a feather, blue in the azure sky.

"Lucy," he asked, "where are you from?"

"I don't know, I don't know anymore. Where was I born? I remember the streets, I know that I was an orphan, I know that I have no parents. I know that everything I have never known is the misery and horror of these ugly roads. I know that a good part of my life, the gray part, the dark and forgotten part, like a drowning that I don't want to remember, I was only surviving, not living. I think I managed to live again, at one point, I think it happened through someone and the gift of a ribbon. So, I was Lucy Moon, I was in the streets, I had a dream in my heart and this same heart on the edge of my chest, which pulsed to explode and made me fly with its beats, fly in the air, towards heights that I had long forgotten. And I decided to continue flying. I did small jobs, here and there, to earn money and finally stay up there forever, with the birds. I didn't even see the work during all this time, only the blue of the sky that I could see every day, the leaves of the trees that were moving, and the beautiful green light that the sun gave them. I know that I have no parents, I know that I have never known anything other than here, London, but sometimes I dream of the Northern Lights on frozen lands and of arms that were dear and who held me. I like to dream, but in the end, I only spend my life dreaming."

Alistair nodded, lost in the sea of ​​memories that Lucy had unleashed.

"I grew up in a place where the sky was never visible and the world, covered by clouds, was as cold as a grave. Before long, I never felt the heat. Do you see the horn that I keep and that you want to dig out to make a drinking vessel? It was... It belonged to the first woman who was truly my mother. I wonder what she must think of me today."

"Was your mother a unicorn?"

"... No."

"That's a shame."

They remained silent, amid the debris of two lives that they had not yet put together. But, as this rubble of existence surrounded them, they thought, they thought of the image they would see when this puzzle was finally completed.