The next brother was not a storm's calm; he was the gleam that made people tidy their collars. Fulgrim of Chemos—the Phoenician—arrived like a blade that had recently been polished. Beauty clung to him the way gravity clings to worlds. His armour wore the Palatine Aquila like a thesis. He had the look of marble deciding to move.
He set up an easel in a high room where the light behaved, and asked, very softly, if the Princess would sit. She did, and found she could keep so very still when stillness was asked well.
He painted in patient layers. A narrow brush caught the exact curl where shadow recognises cheekbone; a wider one recovered the mute sheen of the halo that gave no heat. He ground Chemosian mineral into his pigments until whites learned to glow and blacks learned the habit of depth. He studied her eyes for a long time.
"Why so long?" Aurelia asked without moving her mouth.
"They change," he murmured. "Not in colour—in intention. It is like painting a sky that thinks."
She asked about Chemos then. He hummed—a note that sounded like he was filing an edge while he spoke. "There is little to recommend it to a child. Mines and foundries. Dust. A ledger that always read 'insufficient' until we taught it a different sum."
"Did you work in the mines?" she asked, tilting her head before she remembered not to.
"Still," he said, gesturing her back into place. A minute went by. He did not look at her when he answered, as if the truth preferred to be spoken to the canvas. "Yes. We all did."
"Father said you rose," she said. "Ranks upon ranks."
That drew out the smile that made his brothers call him arrogant. "Of course I rose," he said, warmth and steel braided in the words. "If a thing can be done well, why should it be done poorly? If I must pull a cart, let it be the straightest cart on the road. If I must lead, let the column learn to love the right angle."
She chuckled. "Dorn called you a peacock."
Fulgrim laughed—genuinely, this once—and shook his head. "Beloved Rogal cannot be bothered to understand sentiment dressed in purple. We agree to disagree."
"What should he understand?" she asked. The brush paused over a bead of light.
"That striving is not vanity," he said. "Vanity is wanting eyes. Striving is wanting the truth. People can be better than they are. Not because I say so—because it is within them like breath."
"For you, perfection is the work of living," she said.
He stopped painting then, and in the hush the Palace made for rare moments, he allowed himself a small, unguarded smile—neither smug nor staged. "Perfection is not a throne to sit on," he said. "It is the road itself. If there is any meaning, it is in taking the next right step."
"Can everyone do that?" she asked. "Can I?"
"Only if you work," he said, and the corner of his mouth remembered arrogance just enough to be charming.
"I am proud of you," she said after a while—of Chemos turned from famine to industry; of statues that made stone confess its grace; of a legion that learned to wear excellence like a uniform.
The brush hung in the air. For the breadth of a heartbeat, the Phoenician hid behind the canvas. When he looked around it, his voice had resumed its polish. "Do not move," he said, the way a man says thank you when thanks would be too bare.
She apologised. He pretended not to hear, and painted the apology where the light gathers at the corner of an eye.
He spoke again, quieter. "A brother of iron taught me to make metal remember its first fire," he said, not naming Ferrus but tasting the friendship in the admission. "You will meet him. He will see you clearly. He always sees clearly—even when it hurts."
"Does perfection hurt?" she asked.
"It costs," he said. "That is not the same." And he set a final stroke that turned pigment into presence.
When the sitting ended, he packed his brushes with ritual neatness. "Another tomorrow," he said.
"Until the line admits it is right," she echoed, and he inclined his head as if saluted by an equal.