Lucavion let the quiet settle, molding it with the ease of someone who had done this a hundred times before. Every word he spoke after that felt chosen—not for meaning alone, but for rhythm. The girls didn't even realize how he was pulling them in. His tone was soft enough to sound harmless, amused enough to sound human, yet every line drove the conversation exactly where he wanted it.

He didn't shout. He didn't threaten. He simply talked—and with each sentence, the temperature of the corridor dropped.

"No evidence…" he had murmured, almost to himself, and even that had weight. The words echoed against the marble, rolling back like the whisper of a blade being unsheathed.

When the black flame appeared at his fingertip, it was small, deliberate—just bright enough to draw their eyes. The air bent around it, shadows trembling in its wake. And as he spoke—about truth, memory, the way people rewrite what they can't face—his voice filled every space their fear left open.

Priscilla watched him carefully, half-still from the ache in her body, half-still because she couldn't look away.

He's not even angry, she thought. He's performing.

That realization sent a strange shiver through her. Lucavion wasn't fighting them—he was directing them. The entire corridor was his stage, every pause calculated, every smile a cue. The girls didn't even know when they stopped speaking back; they were simply responding to him now, caught in the tempo he'd set.

'He's controlling their emotions,' she realized. 'He's shaping what they feel.'

Even when his words turned sharper, cutting closer to the Crown Prince himself, he spoke like a man reciting poetry—soft, deliberate, impossible to interrupt. And when he smiled at her, just briefly, she caught herself thinking something she shouldn't.

He'd make a fine actor.

The thought almost made her laugh—quiet, bitter. Because it was true. His presence filled the hall with the same energy as a stage: attention magnetized, silence thick with anticipation.

She found herself admiring him in a way she hadn't expected to. Admiring how effortlessly he did this, how easily he turned chaos into order, humiliation into theater.

'Maybe…' she thought, 'maybe it's fine to let him handle this.'

It was a fleeting thought—dangerous in its warmth. The kind of thought born from exhaustion and relief. Because for once, someone else was doing the talking. Someone else was forcing them back.

Lucavion stepped closer now, his tone lowering to that quiet rhythm of control. "You were there," he told them. "You saw what happened when your prince decided to vouch for his friend."

His voice softened further, almost kind. "And when I showed him what lying looked like on record."

The words cut through the girls like a blade drawn in silk. They stiffened, color draining from their faces. Even the air felt heavier now, carrying that unspoken implication—that everything here, every word, might already be recorded.

It was terrifying, and brilliant.

And Priscilla found herself thinking again—maybe I can trust this. Maybe he knows what he's doing. Maybe I can let him—

Then his tone changed.

It was subtle, but she caught it—the slight shift in cadence, the flicker of something sharper behind his calm.

He turned, glancing at her, and when he spoke again, it wasn't to the girls.

"Miss Princess," he said lightly, "I'm going to leave their punishment to you."

Her breath caught.

The command dropped like a stone into still water, and the ripples it left tore through every fragile assumption she'd just made.

Lucavion didn't look at her with pity. Or admiration.

He looked at her as if to say: You made me work for this.

And not for free.

Priscilla stared at him, her heart still racing from the adrenaline, and for a moment she couldn't understand what he meant. Then she did.

He was giving her the choice—yes—but it wasn't mercy. It was debt.

Everything he'd done here, every word, every act of control—it wasn't kindness. It was exchange. He had created a scene for her, a victory that looked like salvation, but it came with a silent question hanging in the air: What will you do with it?

She felt it then, the twist of humiliation behind her ribs.

How foolish she had been—to think she could leave it to him. To think someone like him, someone who turned every room into a stage, would fight her battles for free.

Lucavion had given her back the power to act—but it was also a demand: stand, or stay beneath me.

'Is this what you expect from me?' she wondered. 'To fight only when you allow it? To act only when you decide the scene?'

Her pulse thundered in her ears. The pain in her side flared with it, grounding her back in the present—the torn sleeve, the dust still in the air, the girls trembling before them.

The silence between them stretched, taut with meaning.

Lucavion's eyes met hers again, and this time she understood. He hadn't just silenced her enemies. He'd tested her.

And she had almost failed.

The silence in the corridor was unbearable. The air still buzzed faintly from the shatter of mana, the faint residue of Lucavion's spell lingering like a scent—sharp, metallic, deliberate.

Priscilla stood motionless, still feeling the pulse of his presence across the space between them. His gaze held her like a hand—steady, weighing, expectant.

That fire inside her hadn't gone out. It burned in a strange rhythm, not wild, not consuming—just… present. Breathing with her.

She wanted to be grateful. She should have been.

He'd stepped in when no one else had. He'd stopped the spell that would've broken bone. He'd turned humiliation into victory, words into shields.

And yet—

'Why… does this feel wrong?'

It wasn't anger. Not really. But something in her bristled under the weight of that look. Like he'd peeled back the layers of her silence just to see what she'd do next.

She could still hear his voice—"Miss Princess. I'm going to leave their punishment to you."

The phrasing sounded polite, but the meaning wasn't.

It wasn't a gift. It was a trial.

'He's testing me again…'

Her pulse stuttered once, sharp and hot. The fire stirred beneath her skin, restless, like something coiled too long suddenly remembering how to move.

'Why does he do that?'

She had seen the same eyes back at the banquet—cold, discerning, curious.

The same look when he'd said those words on the terrace.

"Do you think you'll achieve anything? Make a mark? Or will you keep bowing, just deep enough to be ignored?"

He was doing it again. Pushing. Watching.

And the worst part was that it worked.

Her stomach knotted. She hated the thought of owing him anything. She hated that his gaze could make her feel smaller and sharper at the same time.

The girls were still there—pale, trembling, trying not to meet her eyes. Their arrogance was gone, replaced by the brittle quiet of fear. They looked ready to flee but too terrified to move without permission.

Lucavion remained exactly where he was, as if time itself were waiting on her decision.

Priscilla's body ached, every bruise throbbing under her clothes, but she straightened anyway. Her hand dropped from her ribs. She could feel her heart pounding through her fingertips.

She turned toward the girls.

Their gazes darted up, then down again.

For a moment, she didn't speak. She simply watched them, the same way they'd watched her earlier—measuring, waiting for weakness. The taste of iron lingered in her mouth, faint and bitter.

She could have hurt them. The thought came easily. A simple push of mana, a precise flick of control—she could make them feel even half of what she'd felt these last weeks. She could make them remember.

Her fingers twitched once. The fire flared.

But then she looked at Lucavion again.

He wasn't smiling anymore. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes—those dark, patient eyes—watched her with quiet intensity. Not to stop her. Not to save her.

To see.

And that irritated her more than the pain, more than the insults, more than the bruises still spreading beneath her uniform.

'I'm supposed to be grateful,' she thought, bitterness rising in her throat. 'I'm supposed to thank him for helping me.'

But she didn't want to be grateful.

She wanted to be seen for something other than helplessness.

The fire beneath her ribs surged again. This time, she didn't try to suppress it.

She took a step toward the girls. The sound of her boot against marble echoed faintly through the hall. They flinched as if struck.

"Get up," she said quietly.

The braid girl hesitated, her breath shaking.

"I said—get up."

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