Chapter 60: A Rumor With Too Good Timing

Cold crept into Lucian’s toes first, faint at the start, then spreading steadily upward, a chill that could only have come from someone of House Winter.

He kept his guard raised against Cecilia without letting it show too openly, aware of exactly who he was dealing with.

Cecilia wasn’t just another noble daughter trading barbs at a party. She was one of Orvis Academy’s recognized geniuses, having placed third out of every examinee during her entrance trials, and since enrolling, she’d climbed to second in her entire class.

That kind of trajectory meant real, consistent growth, even if she still sat one rank below Nora.

And right now, that same prodigy had decided, for reasons Lucian still couldn’t grasp, that she didn’t like him at all. Not a comfortable position to be caught in.

In the middle of his confusion, a second wave of cold reached him, distinct from the first.

This one wasn’t coming from Cecilia.

It came from Alicia instead, her expression darkening with something close to anger, clearly furious at how far her sister had let this go.

The standoff between Lucian and Cecilia stayed frozen there, held in place only by Alicia physically stepping between them.

Discomfort crawled up Lucian’s spine watching the two sisters spar like this, as though he’d somehow started the fight himself. Worse, if the argument escalated any further while he stood this close to it, he’d end up shouldering the blame regardless of whose fault it actually was.

His eyes swept the room, hoping against hope that nobody nearby had noticed the three of them causing a scene in the middle of a formal event.

Luck held, at least for now. Every noble and dignitary in earshot stayed fixed on the Emperor’s greeting from the balcony above, too busy applauding and murmuring their praise to spare a glance downward.

Lucian tried once more to reason with the two of them, directing his question straight at Cecilia this time.

"Lady Cecilia, if you’d be willing to explain, I’d like to know why you dislike me so much. We’ve only just met recently, haven’t we? Did I do something before that offended you without my knowledge?"

He genuinely wanted an answer. As far as he could remember, this was only their second meeting, hardly enough history to justify the venom she’d aimed at him.

Both sisters went quiet for a beat at the question. Then Cecilia’s eyes narrowed, sharp and unforgiving.

"So all those rumors going around really are true. You’re good at playing innocent, aren’t you? But underneath that harmless little face, you’re actually a pervert." Cecilia’s voice came out flat and cold as she said it.

"What?" Lucian could barely process what he’d just heard, the accusation landing somewhere between absurd and infuriating, but Cecilia wasn’t done yet.

"Why keep pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about? Isn’t that exactly why you got moved to that other Sarnel residence, the one where you’re stuck with just one servant now?"

There was an uncomfortable grain of truth buried in that. Lucian’s household really had shrunk down to a single attendant, Rumelia, despite the mansion itself being far too large for one person to manage alone.

It had happened recently, funding to his residence quietly cut back under the excuse of the family tightening its overall budget, as though House Sarnel were bracing for something bigger behind closed doors.

The cuts had left him able to pay for exactly one servant, and even then, Rumelia refused to accept the wages he tried pushing on her, using her own money instead to keep the house running, food included, no matter how many times he insisted.

None of that, though, explained where this particular rumor had come from.

Seriously, what is this. I’ve barely spoken to anyone outside my own household lately. Where is this coming from?

Lucian ran the accusation through his head again, searching for a source, and came up empty. He lowered his head slightly, turning the whole thing over in his mind.

Alicia cut in before he could form a real response.

"Lucian, don’t listen to my old sister. It’s just a baseless rumor."

Lucian caught the difference immediately, Alicia’s tone gentle and reassuring, standing in stark contrast to the ice in Cecilia’s voice a moment earlier.

"Rumor? How can you call it that, Alicia? Doesn’t the fact that Princess Helia herself broke off the engagement already prove something’s wrong with him?"

Cecilia said it like she was reinforcing an argument she’d already won, and the mention alone was enough to silence Alicia for a moment, clear proof the story of the broken engagement had already spread far wider than Lucian had realized.

Wait, why is Helia coming into this now? Has news of the annulment already traveled this fast?

Something else in Cecilia’s phrasing snagged Lucian’s attention harder than the speed of the rumor itself. She’d said Helia had ended the engagement.

Wasn’t I the one listed as the party who annulled it?

He remembered signing that letter with Gareth clearly enough. He was supposed to be the one who’d broken things off with Helia, not the other way around.

Being the one who ended the engagement meant something specific to how the public would read it, that whoever he’d been meant to marry had a flaw serious enough to walk away from.

Reversing that, painting him as the one who’d been left, flipped the entire narrative on its head, turning him into proof that something was genuinely broken about him, enough that his own fiancée had needed to escape it.

An outright engagement annulment was rare enough among nobility as it was. One involving a Pillar family and the imperial line directly made it almost unheard of.

"See, Alicia? He can’t even give you a reason why the princess called it off. And you already know she’d prepared her own invention specifically to help him qualify for Orvis Academy."

What Cecilia meant, Lucian understood immediately, was the Forgemaster entry path, the one where a candidate could earn a guaranteed seat at Orvis by presenting a Relic impressive enough to skip the standard exam entirely.

That path drew plenty of interest given how appealing it sounded on paper, but actually producing a viable Relic was brutally difficult. Most years, nobody managed to clear the Academy’s bar through that route at all.

And the invention Cecilia was referring to could only be one thing, the Pocket Orb, a Relic Lucian himself had built from scratch.

He’d given it to Helia on purpose, meant specifically as hers to use.

So why had the story flipped entirely, painting it as something Helia had invented and offered to him, when she barely understood the basics of Relic-crafting in the first place?

Every one of these rumors is aimed straight at me.

The pattern was too deliberate to ignore, each piece of it chipping away at his reputation, and the timing lined up far too neatly with the annulment itself to be coincidence.

"Lady Cecilia, where exactly did you hear all of this?"

Lucian’s gaze locked onto her fully now, serious in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to be a moment ago. He needed to know, without question, who was actually behind this campaign being waged against him.