Reynard stood frozen. Not visibly. No tremble touched his fingers. No sweat marred his brow. He still looked every bit the refined noble son—the crest of House Crane gleaming proudly on his collar. His mind fractured in a dozen directions. He actually dragged her in. Lucavion’s voice still echoed like a dagger dropped on stone. And Priscilla—gods-damned Priscilla—had chosen to answer. That was the part he couldn’t comprehend. Not the witness from the terrace. That old man could be buried later. Not even the crowd’s whispers, rising now like an uncertain storm. The daughter of a commoner. The living embarrassment the Crown quietly tolerated but never endorsed. The discarded bloom. He had expected her to stay silent. Like she always did. Like she was meant to. She had no power, no faction, no noble backing. And that... was enough. ’Did they plan this beforehand?’ ’No. That’s impossible. There was no way they could’ve known the banquet would turn this direction. Unless... unless this bastard knew me. Knew how I would act. Knew I’d take the bait.’ His fists clenched behind his back. Too many eyes on him now. And not the reverent ones he was used to. They didn’t see the wounded noble anymore. They saw hesitation. Cracks. Doubt. Lucavion had flipped the script so violently it was all Reynard could do to keep his posture from shattering. He glanced—briefly—to Davien and Lyon. They’d denied the event under oath just minutes ago. And now... a princess had spoken against them. Even if she was a half-shadow in the court, her word still bore weight. It was the chain no noble could tug without drawing blood. A flicker passed behind Reynard’s eyes. ’Daughter of a whore she may be... but she’s still a daughter of the Crown. And that means I can’t fight back. Not directly. Not without risking everything.’ He couldn’t lie anymore. And he certainly couldn’t call the princess a liar without implicating himself in a far worse sin. The silence pressed harder now. People were watching. Waiting. Reynard could feel the air tightening around his lungs. This wasn’t just a misstep. This wasn’t a stumble on the ballroom floor he could laugh off with well-practiced charm. This was a rupture. A tear in the script. And worse— ’He’s going to skin me alive,’ Reynard thought, bile rising in his throat. Lucien wasn’t known for patience. He was known for precision. He tolerated no failure. And certainly not this. To lose control of the narrative was one thing. To lose it in public, at the Academy, and have a royal witness testify against his faction? Unsurvivable—depending on his mood. ’This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ Reynard’s mind screamed. ’It was a simple discrediting. A commoner. An upstart. That’s it. And now...’ The tension had crested into something volatile. He could feel it in the way the nobles had stopped whispering. In the way his own name, once murmured with reverence, now hovered like a guilty echo. ’He played me. That son of a—’ A voice cut across the hall. "What are we doing," it said, "in front of our guests?" He hadn’t spoken yet. Lucien Lysandra had arrived with no trumpets, no flame-ribboned fanfare—but the room bent anyway. The silence shifted the moment the guards at the double doors straightened their posture. The conversations, no matter how gilded, died without resistance. And every noble head turned, not from obligation, but instinct. Because presence didn’t need volume. It needed legacy. And Lucien wore it like a second skin. The red of his eyes, glacial and unflinching, swept the banquet hall as he entered—half a beat slower than expected. Deliberate. The kind of pause that made lesser men feel watched even when his gaze hadn’t touched them yet. Every fold of his black-gold robes moved as if choreographed by sovereign will. Even the light obeyed him—casting shadow and shimmer with unnatural precision. The crest of the Lysandran line gleamed cold on his shoulder: a lion crowned, claws dipped in blood. He made no speech. No grand announcement. And the room re-remembered who ruled. Lucien took his seat not at the high table—but one step above it. A raised platform carved for one, not many. It wasn’t arrogance. It was clarity. The Academy was under the Empire, and the Empire’s next breath sat precisely where it should. Everything was as it should be. ’The heir of House Crane will handle the matter,’ Lucien thought, sipping once from a crystal goblet brought to him by a steward who hadn’t dared meet his eye. ’He was trained for this. Coached. Warned. A simple disciplinary dressing—some verbal cornering, a reminder of station—and the boy will be dismissed for what he is.’ He hadn’t even needed to glance toward the stage where Reynard stood. That’s how beneath his concern the issue had seemed. A ripple, not a storm. Lucien’s hand paused mid-lift. The goblet did not reach his lips. Across the hall, Lucavion was speaking. And worse—the girl was answering. But the mana under his skin flared like a tide striking marble. His aura didn’t expand—it compressed. Gravity shifted around him. The air turned sharp. He watched as Priscilla stepped forward. Not by mistake. Not by chance. Not in fear. And Lucien’s gaze sharpened, slow and excruciating, like a blade turned over in a gloved hand. The thoughts did not burn. ’You dare to speak when I told you to remain unseen. You dare to raise your voice, not for your bloodline—not for your House—but for a nameless nobody with gutter lineage.’ He inhaled once. Measured. The wine on his tongue turned to ash. ’You stand beside him now? After all I gave you?’ She wasn’t a sister. Not really. She was a broken footnote the court had agreed to forget. Her mother had been the scandal, her birth the compromise, her existence the exception Lucien had chosen not to erase. Deferential invisibility. He stared as her voice cut through courtly silence. As her words made nobles shift. As her stance breathed new life into Lucavion’s fire. Lucien’s eyes narrowed. Not wide with fury. Not twisted in rage. That was the center of it all. Not loyalty to Lucavion. He watched Reynard unravel. Watched the air thicken around the noble boy’s shoulders. The doubt. The shift. The loss of control. ’So this is how she wants to play.’ The thought wasn’t bitter. Amused in that quiet, surgical way Lucien reserved for miscalculations—just before he rearranged the board. ’You think this will undo me?’ He exhaled once, softly. The breath of a man unbothered. ’This situation is not a crisis. It is a draft. And I—’ he rose smoothly, fingers adjusting the edge of his collar with casual grace, ’—am the editor.’ There was no tremor in his movement. He didn’t need to demand attention—he simply took it. The moment he stood, the room reacted. A ripple of silence. Heads turned. Bodies shifted in unconscious alignment, as though gravity itself had reasserted a hierarchy they’d momentarily forgotten. Lucien stepped forward, slow and measured. The sound of his boots on marble was softer than the collective breath of the banquet. He didn’t need force. But low. Chilling. Inevitable. "What are we doing..." he said, his tone laced with bemusement, "in front of our guests?"