Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 858: Lady…

Valeria still hadn’t spoken.

The silence had stretched—not long, not painfully—but just enough for the weight of uncertainty to settle in the air.

She didn’t look away from Jesse.

Couldn’t.

Those orange eyes were relentless. Not loud. Not cruel. But exacting. They searched through her words, her breath, her hesitations—measuring not what she said, but what she didn’t.

And Valeria?

She didn’t have an answer.

Not one that fit.

Not one that didn’t feel like a lie.

So the silence lingered.

Until—

“Oh,” said one of the noblewomen, a Lady from House Vilene, tilting her head with an air of cheerful finality. “So that’s how you became friends with Lucavion.”

There it was.

Simple. Unquestioning. Delivered with a tone that carried no suspicion, no curiosity—only certainty.

Valeria blinked.

Her throat caught.

“Yeah…” she coughed, soft and a little too quick. “Like that.”

It didn’t sound convincing.

It didn’t sound false, either.

Just… unfinished.

And Jesse?

She didn’t move.

Didn’t smirk. Didn’t react like the others—who, relieved to have a clean label for something they didn’t understand, were already nodding as if that explained everything.

No. Jesse stood very still.

Unblinking.

Boring into her.

Not as if she were trying to prove her wrong.

But as if she knew Valeria didn’t believe it herself.

Like she was waiting.

Jesse’s voice came quiet—measured. But the words rang like a knife turned gently on its edge.

“So,” she said, “Miss Valeria is Mister Lucavion’s friend?”

The phrasing was deliberate. Careful. Wrapped in civility, but not without bite.

Valeria hesitated. Not long. Barely more than a breath.

“…Yes,” she said.

Soft. Controlled. But in the way a truth sounds when it’s finally acknowledged out loud.

Jesse’s lips curled—not quite a smirk. Not a grin.

Just a smile.

“Is that so?”

Her gaze didn’t leave Valeria’s. And in that gaze, something settled. Or perhaps… stirred.

But before anything else could be said, another voice—curious and unguarded—floated in.

“So then… what kind of person is he?”

The question was light, meant to reset the tone. But it carried genuine intrigue.

And why wouldn’t it?

They had all seen Lucavion today.

The man who had stood, unflinching, before the Crown Prince. Who had moved like smoke across the arena. Who had spoken in a way no one should have—to Lucien, no less—and walked away untouched.

“He’s… strange,” someone else added. “Not just his demeanor, but the way he holds himself. It’s like he’s watching everything without letting anything in.”

“There’s something foreign about him,” said another. “Not in blood, but in manner. Like he didn’t grow up under the same rules we did.”

“He acts like a charlatan,” one of the older nobles offered, frowning. “But he fights like someone who’s survived a war no one told us about.”

“And he’s smart,” another girl cut in. “Quick with words. But also insufferable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so… unreadable.”

They weren’t mocking. Not really. If anything, there was a strange reverence in the way they spoke—like describing a creature they didn’t quite believe belonged to their world.

Valeria listened quietly.

And each word felt… familiar.

Because they weren’t wrong.

He was strange. Witty. Unyielding. Disruptive.

He did have a way of speaking that made you question things you’d long accepted. He refused to play by the rhythms of noble society—not because he didn’t know them, but because he didn’t care to follow them.

That’s what she had noticed back then, too.

That oddness.

That freedom.

He was insufferable.

And yet—

She didn’t mind it.

“He was like that then as well,” she said softly, answering their words now. “Always half out of reach. Always saying just enough to get under your skin—but never more than he meant to.”

A ripple of nods passed through the group.

Then came a voice, airy and amused: “Ah… it must be hard on Miss Valeria, then. Dealing with someone like that.”

There was a pause.

And Valeria—

Her mouth curled up.

She didn’t mean for it to.

She didn’t even notice, at first.

It wasn’t a smirk. Not a court-trained smile. Not a reaction forged from politeness or posturing.

It was something quieter.

Softer.

Like muscle memory stirred by a name.

Like remembering something without needing to speak it aloud.

Just the trace of a feeling—

The flicker of a moment—

Unbidden.

Unexplained.

But there, all the same.

******

Jesse didn’t say anything right away.

She couldn’t.

The voices around her had drifted off into lighter threads of conversation—court gossip, training rotations, and the subtle one-upmanship of pedigree politics—but Jesse’s thoughts remained pinned to the words Valeria had just spoken. They hung there, fragile and echoing.

He was like that then as well.

Always half out of reach.

Always.

That word stuck more than any other.

She hadn’t known.

Not really.

Lucavion had always been—was—an enigma. Sharp, elusive, cutting through silence like a blade through mist. But she’d assumed, maybe arrogantly, that she’d known him in ways others hadn’t. That their bond, as strange and wordless as it was, had been singular.

But the way Valeria spoke of him…

Not fondly. Not longingly.

Just truthfully.

And that was worse.

Because there was a steadiness in her voice, an intimacy born not from distance, but from proximity—the kind of understanding that didn’t come from titles or assigned duties, but from time.

Time spent.

Time shared.

And she knows how he speaks. Jesse could hear it now. The casual cruelty. The too-clever jabs wrapped in nonchalance. The silence that said more than anything else. She’s dealt with that too.

And somehow, the image—Lucavion being himself around someone else—dug a strange ache into Jesse’s ribs. Not jealousy, not yet. But the early press of something unsettled.

Because now… she was imagining it.

Lucavion, in some old Arcanis town. Standing on a broken balcony somewhere above the sea, throwing careless barbs into the wind while Valeria looked up at him with that calm, unreadable expression. A conversation held in riddles and dismissals, threaded with the kind of familiarity that didn’t need explanation.

And worse—Valeria understood it.

She didn’t flinch at his arrogance.

She didn’t bite at his mischief.

She knew how to parse him.

Jesse had clawed her way through those moments—biting, spitting, calling him out when he got too clever for his own damn good. She’d struggled with him. Argued. Almost hit him, more than once. Because Lucavion tested her.

And now she realized: he probably tested Valeria too.

And she didn’t break.

She passed.

Jesse folded her arms. The warmth of the banquet felt too tight around her throat now, like a room that had grown one size too small.

What else don’t I know about you…?

Lucavion never spoke of his past. Not really. He dropped hints like traps. Let you think you’d uncovered something when really, you were dancing around the edge of some abyss he didn’t want you seeing into. He gave you fragments, never the whole.

And Jesse had accepted that. Because back then, she didn’t need to know him. She just needed to survive.

But now?