Chapter 77: The Twilight Before The Crown (12)
Vaelira’s fingers closed gently around Lucien’s palm, her touch warm and grounding.
It wasn’t urgent or demanding, just steady.
That small gesture was all it took to pull him out of the fog.
Like a tether to the present, it pulled his thoughts away from unraveling.
Lucien blinked, his shoulders sinking as if he had just remembered how to breathe.
“Lucien,” Vaelira said, her tone more direct now, all softness replaced with steady concern.
“What’s wrong?”
He turned toward her, slowly.
She wasn’t someone you could lie to, not easily.
She read him too well, always had.
Even when he tried to hide behind silence, she saw the cracks before he did.
So he didn’t lie.
Not fully, anyway.
“That girl,” he said, voice low, eyes drifting back toward the moonlit ballroom floor, “the one dancing with… she was the nurse. The one who treated me after the Aptitude test.”
Vaelira’s expression didn’t change much, but her brows lifted just slightly in recognition.
“Oh,” she murmured, taking in the information.
“I didn’t realize.”
There was a pause.
She waited for more.
It didn’t come.
“Is that all?”
She asked, tilting her head.
Lucien exhaled through his nose and closed his eyes briefly.
A flicker of hesitation passed over his features before he decided to offer more.
“…I think I know the guy too,” he added.
“Leonardo.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Think?”
“I’m not sure if it’s really him,” Lucien admitted.
“Or maybe I’m imagining things. There’s just something about the two of them. Something familiar. But it’s all jumbled.”
Vaelira gave him a look, both puzzled and faintly amused.
“You’re not making any sense right now.”
“I know,” he said with a faint, humorless chuckle.
“Believe me, I know. I’m not trying to be cryptic. It’s just… things aren’t lining up. The pieces, they’re not where they’re supposed to be.”
She looked at him in silence for a long second before turning her gaze away, toward the glowing marble tiles reflecting the moonlight.
When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, almost cautious.
“Should I be worried?”
Lucien glanced at her.
There was no edge in the question.
No accusation.
Just concern.
Honest, open concern.
He sighed.
“I don’t know.”
Lucien offered a small, crooked smile.
Then the lights dimmed, the music faded, and a voice, nasal, amplified, and positively full of itself, rang through the chamber.
“...By the sacred pillars of tradition, and in the name of unshakable excellence, I bid your ears to attention!”
A man had stepped onto the central platform, his entrance timed with practiced theatricality.
Dressed in a lavish violet tailcoat embroidered with so much gold it looked like an attempt to blind the front row, the speaker raised a goblet and grinned like he had just walked out of his own portrait.
Lucien’s smile vanished.
Vaelira’s expression flatlined.
“Here we go,” she muttered under her breath.
“Esteemed guests! Brilliant scholars! Noble progeny of power and pedigree!”
The man boomed, voice rich with unearned grandeur.
“It is with boundless pride and thoroughly justified self-assurance that I welcome you to the hallowed halls of Twilight Crown Academy!”
Lucien winced.
‘That was the opening line?’
The man continued, undeterred and oblivious to the growing discomfort he was sowing like seeds across a field of suffering.
“This Academy, your Academy, is not merely a school, not merely an institution of learning. No! It is the very crucible of civilization’s refinement! The apex of generational wisdom, a bastion of the Empire’s brightest, and a sanctum where mediocrity dares not enter!”
Vaelira’s lips parted in silent protest, as if physically rejecting the man’s voice.
“I think I’m going to vomit,” Lucien whispered.
“Hold it in,” she whispered back.
“There’s gold thread on the floor.”
“And you, our radiant students,” the speaker pressed on, “you are not children. No! You are heirs to destiny! Architects of tomorrow! Polished gemstones to be set in the crown of our great Empire!”
Lucien twitched.
“There it is again.”
“I’m going to punch him with a gemstone,” Vaelira deadpanned.
The speech spiraled on, like a wheel stuck in pompous mud.
The man waxed poetic about 'ancestral honor,' 'academic purity,' and something he called the 'flame of elitism,' which, given the context, he somehow intended as a positive trait.
Every other sentence seemed to contain a gratuitous use of words like ennobled, gloried, or pedigree.
He spoke as if he were personally responsible for the invention of education.
Lucien’s ears began to buzz from sheer secondhand embarrassment.
A few students near the back had long since tuned out and begun checking their nails or looking for exits.
Even some nobles looked like they regretted not bringing earplugs.
“And so,” the speaker finally concluded, voice taking on a dramatic gravitas, “as the stars above bear witness and the marble beneath your feet echoes your steps, know this: You are bound by duty to uphold the Pride and Prestige of Twilight Crown Academy. In every stride, in every syllable, in every sacred breath you take within these storied halls!”
A tense silence followed, no one quite sure if it was actually over.
“You are dismissed for the evening!”
The man declared with a flourish.
Relieved applause broke out, not from appreciation, but from the sheer release of being freed.
Lucien and Vaelira were already halfway across the hall, cutting through departing students like fugitives fleeing an explosion.
“Before he opens his mouth again,” Lucien said, not looking back.
“Agreed,” Vaelira said, speeding up.
They exited through the massive archway just as the man began to clear his throat again.
Lucien flinched.
“Nope. We’re done.”
The cool night air embraced them like a mercy.
“Polished gemstones,” Lucien muttered.
“I’ll polish his gemstone with my boot,” Vaelira said, her voice flat.
Lucien barked a laugh, a real one this time, abrupt, bright, and entirely unplanned.
Vaelira blinked at him, surprised by the sound.
Then, after a beat, she let out a breath and chuckled as well.
A low, melodic sound, genuine and freeing.
“Glad to see you laugh again,” she said softly.
Lucien glanced at her, warmth creeping into his expression.
“…Yeah,” he replied, quieter.
“Me too.”
***
The ballroom’s chaos slowly faded behind them, swallowed by thick stone walls and long, lantern-lit corridors.
The night air was still cool and fragrant from the manicured gardens outside, but the deeper into the Academy grounds they walked, the more the sounds of laughter and clinking glasses gave way to silence.
Their footsteps echoed softly across the marble floor, in sync yet unrushed, as if neither of them wanted to reach the end of the walk just yet.
Lucien glanced sideways.
Vaelira’s eyes were forward, her arms folded behind her back in a loose clasp.
She still wore that delicate dress from earlier, that shimmered like dusk itself, but her expression was softer now, unguarded.
The kind of face you only wore when you were no longer performing for a crowd.
He almost didn’t want to break the silence.
But then.
“So,” she said, her voice light but tentative, “what now?”
Lucien raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re officially a student now,” she said, offering a side glance and a faint smile.
“Twilight Crown Academy. Elite institution of brilliance and legacy and, apparently, gemstone metaphors. What are you planning to do with that?”
He let out a short breath, not quite a laugh.
That question.
It should’ve been simple.
But it twisted something in his chest instead.
‘What am I planning to do?’
His thoughts immediately went somewhere dark, to the boy with the wrong face and the girl with the perfect smile, and stayed there longer than he liked.
‘I want to stab someone through the ribs and twist until they stop smiling like that.’
That was the honest answer.
But that kind of truth didn’t belong in a quiet corridor beside a girl like Vaelira.
Not tonight.
Not now.
“…I’m still figuring it out,” he said at last.
Vaelira looked over at him with a raised brow, as if catching the pause, sensing the distance between thought and reply.
But she didn’t push.
“Same,” she said, with a small shrug.
“I don’t really have a plan either. I used to think I had to. Like, if I didn’t already know what I wanted to be, I’d fall behind everyone else.
But lately… I don’t know. I think maybe it’s okay to not have the answers right away.”
Lucien turned his head slightly to study her profile.
There was a sort of fragile honesty in her voice, the kind that didn’t ask for pity but still left itself exposed.
Her smile stayed, but her fingers fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve.
He smiled faintly, the corners of his mouth twitching upward.
“We’ve got time,” he said.
“Maybe too much of it.”
Vaelira let out a quiet laugh.
“You make it sound like a prison sentence.”
“Maybe it is,” Lucien mused.
“But at least we’re doing time together.”
That earned a real smile from her.
“Poetic.”
“Unintentionally,” he replied.
They came to a stop in front of Lucien’s door.
The hallway was empty now, lit by low golden sconces flickering gently against the polished stone.
Vaelira turned to him, expression unreadable at first.
Then she tilted her head and gave a small, tired nod.
“You should get some sleep before the sun rises.”
Lucien looked at her for a moment.
Her energy from earlier had dimmed just a little.
Still bright, still standing, but dulled at the edges, like a candle burning low.
There was something uneasy in the way her eyes drifted from his to the floor, just for a second.
Maybe she felt it too, the weight of stepping into a future they hadn’t chosen, with goals they hadn’t dared name aloud.
But she didn’t say it.
And neither did he.
“Yeah,” Lucien murmured.
“You too.”
Vaelira nodded again, offered him one last glance, and then turned away.
Her footsteps faded into the silence, swallowed by the corridor.
Lucien watched her go, hand still on the doorknob, and didn’t move until she disappeared around the corner.
‘Time to figure it out’, he thought.
Then he stepped inside.
