Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 729: First Princess (2)

Her gaze, steady and silent, met Lucavion’s with the chill of polished steel. No warmth. No malice. No amusement. Just the eyes of a woman used to reading men like ledgers and moving kingdoms like chess pieces.

Not once did they flicker to his crest, or his coat, or the chamber around him.

They stayed fixed.

On him.

And yet, there was no intent behind them. No obvious aim. No anger. No curiosity.

Just the void of calculation.

’Just like Thaddeus,’ Lucavion thought.

He’d seen it before—more often than he liked.

Duke Thaddeus, the old warhawk of the North. A man whose words could start conflicts before swords were drawn. His eyes were always the same: unreadable. His tone, measured. His presence, absolute.

And Madeleine.

The Duke’s headmaid—at least in title. But in function? She was far more. One of the coldest strategists beneath silk hair.

Her smile never reached her eyes, and her eyes never told you what she wanted.

If not for his knowledge from the novel….Well, it would be hard to read her….

But then again.

Now, here it was again.

That same mask.

That same stillness.

’Poker face,’ Lucavion mused, watching her. ’The look of someone who never lets you see what piece they’re about to move—because they’re already thinking three turns ahead.’

Selienne Lysandra was no different.

She wasn’t here to greet him.

She was here to assess him.

To seize him—if she could.

Her eyes didn’t plead or pressure. They simply observed.

Not as if she were deciding whether he was useful.

But as if she were confirming that he already was—and that the only thing left was the matter of leverage.

He had no doubt the same calculations were being written behind that gaze. Quiet, seamless thoughts stitched together like fabric:

Is he loyal?

Can he be bought?

Will he bow?

And—

If not… how do I make him kneel anyway?

Lucavion let his smirk rise just a fraction. Just enough to show he’d recognized the game.

Selienne was the first to speak.

“Where is my greeting?”

The words were not cold—but they held no softness either. They were measured, precise, and spoken with the exact weight required to test the air between them.

Lucavion blinked.

Then, quite suddenly, he shook his head once, a half-laugh catching in his throat.

“Ahem… I am sorry… Your beauty made me nearly breathless.”

He offered the line with the most disarming sincerity he could muster, knowing full well how rehearsed it sounded—and how deliberate he meant it to be. The weight of the moment had not escaped him. But neither had the opportunity to turn the table slightly. To make her respond.

Selienne didn’t react for a full second.

Then, her lips curved into a smile.

But it did not reach her eyes.

“Nearly,” she echoed, voice smooth as ink on glass. “How near is it?”

Lucavion coughed lightly, his hand brushing past his collar.

“Ahem…”

He straightened, expression settling back into its composed, razor-edged balance.

“My apologies, Your Highness,” he said, this time bowing properly—no dramatics, no overplaying it. Just the right dip of the head, the right cadence in his tone. “I welcome you to my chambers. It is both an honor and a curiosity to host the First Daughter of the Empire in such private fashion.”

Selienne didn’t respond immediately.

But that smile lingered—still shallow, still unreadable. Still not reaching the place where truth lived behind her eyes.

The game had begun. But it wasn’t just chess.

It was diplomacy.

Measured, surgical, and soaked in the quiet gravity of two minds probing each other’s fault lines.

Selienne took a step closer.

And Lucavion?

He stayed precisely where he was—waiting to see which mask she chose to wear first.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Selienne let the silence stretch just long enough to register. Long enough to taste the tension in the air, to let her presence weigh down the space with deliberate poise.

Then—

“I accept your greeting,” she said, her tone calm and sovereign. “And return it in kind.”

She offered no bow. Only words. But in this setting, they were enough.

“Mister Lucavion,” she continued, her eyes narrowing just slightly, “I’ve been reading your name far more often than I’d expected to this early in the term.”

Her voice, though pleasant, moved like a scalpel. Clean. Dissecting.

Lucavion gave a shallow nod, just enough to acknowledge the overture. “Then I suppose I should be flattered that Your Highness chose to read between the lines.”

“Flattery,” she echoed, voice dry. “A convenient shield. I wonder how often you use it.”

“When the blade isn’t worth drawing,” he said simply, his eyes sharp but not aggressive. “Some opponents fall faster to wit than steel.”

Selienne studied him for a breath longer, then stepped further into the room, the hem of her robe gliding softly across the polished floor. Her gaze wandered—not in distraction, but in quiet claim. Observing the room, the layout, the scent of cooling flame, the lingering mana that hadn’t fully dispersed.

She knew.

Of course she knew.

But she said nothing about it.

Instead, she stopped near the projection glass and turned back to him.

Selienne’s crimson eyes lingered on the faint smudge of soot along the archway—the only real sign of the earlier exchange. She didn’t comment on it. She didn’t have to.

Instead, she turned back, her expression unchanged, the weight in her gaze heavier now. Not in anger. Not even disappointment.

Just… claim.

“Apparently,” she said, tone edged with glass, “someone was summoned here before me.”

The statement was soft. But not subtle.

Not a question.

Not a curiosity.

A judgment.

Lucavion didn’t flinch. He didn’t let his shoulders tighten or his eyes shift. But internally, he catalogued it—the precise way her words twisted around protocol like a velvet noose.

She hadn’t said how dare you. She didn’t need to.

This was the First Princess of the Empire.

And he, a commoner, had received someone else first.

As if they mattered more.

As if she was second.

Lucavion let the silence hang for a breath—long enough to recognize the tension, not long enough to let it settle into guilt.

Selienne’s fingers brushed against the edge of the armrest, her nails too perfectly shaped to make a sound. Her expression remained still—but her voice, when it came, slipped beneath the skin like frost.

“You seem to not know your priorities,” she said softly, almost conversational. “Taking in someone from a mere Marquis family… Khaedren Varn, before….”

There it was. The jab—not at Khaedren, not at Lucavion directly, but at the choice. At the hierarchy he had disrupted, however briefly. And it wasn’t just a statement.

It was a demonstration.

She knew. Not just who had arrived. But what house, what rank, and why it mattered.

Lucavion inclined his head faintly, acknowledging the depth of her insight—without apology. “There are those,” he said evenly, “who arrive at the door before they’ve earned the right. And others…” his gaze flicked to her, “who deserve the grace. As Your Highness must surely know.”

Selienne didn’t respond.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t smirk.

Lucavion continued, tone low, casual—calculated. “I am, after all, a mere commoner. I can hardly go against the wishes of the empire’s strongest faction, now can I?”

That did it.

Her eyes narrowed.

Not a glare. Not outrage.

But that kind of narrowing that said don’t think I didn’t hear you.

He’d drawn blood—not by bragging, not by challenging. But by playing the role of the obedient peasant just long enough to imply something sharper.

Lucien’s faction is stronger.

The message, beneath the mask of humility, was unmistakable.

And the fact that he’d said it so cleanly, so deliberately?

It told her something else.

That he knew.

Not just the power structures.

But their cracks.

Their tempo.

Their reach.

And that—coming from someone with no noble blood, no official backing—was the kind of dangerous awareness that made most lords twitch in their chairs.

Selienne didn’t flinch.

But her reply came quieter, slower.

“Apparently,” she said, her tone clipped, “it was far too heated for a mere… ’courtesy.’”