Novel Full Chapter 871: I just made sure
Chapter 871: I just made sure
“What would you do if everyone else just smiled and stayed silent because speaking up would inconvenience them?”
He wasn’t angry. Not now.
He was asking.
Genuinely.
Painfully.
Would you still tell me I should’ve waited?
The silence that followed wasn’t accusatory.
It was intimate.
It held weight.
And regret.
And the pieces of a world that wasn’t fair enough to hold truth and comfort in the same hand.
Toven looked down at his boots. Caeden exhaled through his nose, something unreadable behind his eyes. Elayne’s mouth was drawn tight—not in defiance, but in thought. And Mireilla…
She looked straight at him.
Her jaw locked.
But her silence said what words couldn’t.
Because the truth hurt.
And sometimes it hurt more because it was right.
Lucavion let the moment hang.
ChatGPT said:
Toven was the one who broke the silence this time—quiet, uncharacteristically serious.
“…We get it, Luc.”
Lucavion turned his gaze toward him slowly.
Toven wasn’t smirking now. He wasn’t folding it into a joke. He just looked… older. Just for a moment.
“We get why you said what you said. Why you had to. But it didn’t start there.”
Caeden nodded, arms folded across his chest, expression unreadable. “You provoked him.”
Lucavion didn’t flinch. But the shadow behind his eyes deepened.
“You stood in front of the entire hall and called out Reynald’s lies. But before that, you were the one who refused to show him respect. You came at him like a blade already drawn.”
“And that moment on the terrace,” Elayne added, arms tight across her ribs, “You accused him first. We weren’t even sure what happened yet, not fully. And you made it public. That’s what turned it into a storm.”
Mireilla spoke then, her voice even, but edged. “Then Priscilla got involved. Testified. Things were still balancing—barely. Until Lucien himself stepped in to defend Reynald. That’s when everything tipped.”
She tilted her head. “If you hadn’t provoked Reynald… none of that would’ve happened.”
Lucavion’s eyes slowly slid from one face to the next. Each word they spoke was logical. Understandable. Strategic.
And entirely beside the point.
His glare turned colder.
“Why?”
Mireilla frowned. “What do you mean why?”
Lucavion took a step forward. His voice was low, but it struck like the crack of a whip in the hush of the courtyard.
“Why must I stay silent?”
They stilled.
“Why should I shake hands with someone like that?” he asked again. “Because it’s cleaner? More convenient? Because playing nice with scum like Reynald makes it easier for the rest of you to be accepted?”
No one answered.
He continued.
“I won’t do that.”
His voice was steady. Not raised. But beneath it ran a fury so sharp it felt cold.
“I don’t care about his crest. I don’t care about his alliances, or who stands behind him, or how many noble sons and daughters think he’s worth protecting.”
He pointed a finger toward the empty banquet hall behind them.
“All of that—every laugh, every toast, every word of carefully filtered charm—it’s built on silence. Silence from people who know, and choose to pretend they don’t.”
Lucavion’s mouth tightened.
“I won’t.”
Toven shifted, uneasy. “But we were making progress.”
Lucavion looked at him, and the fire in his eyes was almost pitying.
“Progress built on swallowing our voices isn’t progress,” he said. “It’s assimilation. And that’s not what I came here for.”
Caeden was watching him now with something closer to understanding—reluctant, but real.
ChatGPT said:
Lucavion’s jaw eased—just barely—as he took a half-step back, the weight in his stance shifting from confrontation to clarity.
“I’m not saying you should’ve done what I did,” he said quietly. “I’m not asking you to burn your bridges or bare your throat.”
His eyes swept across them—measured, but not distant.
“I know what that night cost us. I saw it in the glances, in the way the room pulled back from you. That wasn’t by accident. That was calculated.”
He let the words settle, and then—
“But don’t twist that into thinking I don’t care.”
His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“Every step I took tonight, I knew exactly what it would do. Who it would affect. You, most of all. And still—I did it.”
He inhaled. The night wind tugged at the edges of his coat, pulling shadows from the corners of his frame.
“Because there are things more dangerous than social exile. Things worse than having a few nobles cut ties.”
He paused.
“You all need to understand something.”
They looked at him now—properly. No longer with just the burn of protest, but with the weight of something colder creeping in. Lucavion’s voice dipped low.
“The faction that surrounds the Crown Prince? It’s called the Blood Faction. That isn’t just a name.”
Elayne blinked. “We… we’ve heard of it. Briefly.”
Caeden nodded slowly. “Our history instructor mentioned something—an offhand comment. Nobility loyal to the idea of bloodlines being divine right.”
Lucavion’s eyes hardened. “That’s the sanitized version. The Blood Faction isn’t just about classism. It’s about purity. Old blood. Magic that comes from lineage, not merit. Power inherited—not earned.”
He looked each of them in the eye, one by one.
“They believe commoners can be tools. Occasionally assets. But never equals.”
Toven swallowed, visibly unsettled now.
Lucavion didn’t pause.
“And Lucien—the Crown Prince himself? He’s not just part of it. He built it. Refined it. You think Reynald’s condescension was harsh? That’s just the curtain. Lucien has entire circles built on blackmail, debt webs, whispered coercion. His strength isn’t just in his magic. It’s in how well he makes you forget you have a voice.”
Elayne drew her arms around herself, the fire in her earlier gone to embers.
“But… we’re not involved in that,” she said slowly. “We’re just students.”
Lucavion’s gaze snapped to her. Sharp. Sad.
“Do you think that matters?” he said. “Do you think he sees that distinction? A common-born prodigy is still common-born. And that makes you dangerous. Not because of what you’ve done. But because of what you could become.”
Caeden’s fingers curled loosely into a fist. “So even if we stayed quiet…”
“He’d find another reason,” Lucavion said. “Another excuse to put you in a smaller room. Another moment to remind you of the ceiling he wants built above your heads.”
Mireilla’s brow furrowed. “You’re saying we were already enemies.”
Lucavion nodded. “I’m saying you were already threats.”
A silence followed—different from before. Not bitter. But shaken.
And finally, Lucavion spoke again—quieter this time.
“I didn’t drag you into this.”
He looked down.
“You were already standing in the fire. I just made sure they saw it.”
———A/N——–
We have finally finished the majority of the moving out; it was quite hectic with the end of my internship and this coming all at the same time.
Though I didn’t move my pc yet, since we don’t have any internet connected for now, that is why I am working outside most of the time, and damn, isnt it expensive? Also, it is way too hot…
Also, my Laptop is really slow since I spent most of my budget on my PC….I guess I should have been smarter with my money…
Sorry for the rant anyway.