Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1098: A Careful Answer

”Where are you heading?”

Elara looked at Selphine.

For a moment, the books in her arms seemed considerably more conspicuous than they had several breaths earlier. Selphine stood near the central staircase with one hand resting against the strap of her satchel, her expression composed in that familiar way which revealed very little by itself. Yet her eyes had already moved over the introductory circulation text, the notebooks beneath it, and the loose collection of copied diagrams tucked between their covers. When her gaze returned to Elara’s face, a faint warmth gathered beneath Elara’s collar, followed by the unpleasant awareness of moisture forming near her temple.

It was ridiculous.

She had grown up beneath far more dangerous attention.

Before Elara Valoria had become a disgraced name spoken carefully behind Lorian doors, she had been the future Duchess of House Valoria. Her childhood had included seasonal banquets, royal receptions, engagement gatherings, visits from other great houses, and enough ceremonial dinners that she had learned to recognize the difference between a question and an inquiry long before she understood most of the politics surrounding either. Adults smiled at children while asking about tutors, siblings, gifts, illnesses, and friendships, though the information they actually wanted frequently sat several meanings beneath the words.

Her mother had taught her to hear those meanings.

Her tutors had taught her how to answer without giving more than she intended.

Five years away from those halls had dulled neither skill.

”The Western Library,” Elara said.

Selphine’s eyes returned briefly to the books. ”You are studying again?”

”There are several things from today that I would rather review while they are still fresh.”

A perfectly acceptable answer.

It also happened to be true.

Selphine gave a small nod and stepped away from the stairwell as Elara continued toward it. For several paces, she walked beside her without adding anything, and that silence proved considerably more uncomfortable than another question would have been. Selphine rarely filled empty space merely because it existed. When she stayed quiet, she was usually thinking.

Elara descended the stairs at an even pace.

”Circulation?” Selphine asked after they reached the lower landing.

”Partly.”

”The introductory text?”

Elara glanced at the book. ”Foundational texts define their terminology more carefully. That makes them useful when comparing different traditions.”

Selphine absorbed that without visible reaction.

”Lorian traditions as well?”

”Where the material includes them.”

Another silence followed.

The corridor ahead had become busier since dinner, with students moving toward study halls, training rooms, and evening examinations while servants guided small stacks of floating books between buildings. A pair of Magicians’ Block students passed them in the opposite direction, their conversation low enough that Elara caught only something about resonance matrices before they disappeared toward the stairs.

Beside her, Selphine adjusted the strap of her satchel.

”Earlier, Lucavion mentioned recognizing one of those methods.”

There it was.

Elara kept her attention ahead. ”He did.”

”Did that make you curious?”

It had.

Far more than Selphine needed to know.

”Of course. His understanding of formal theory is uneven, yet certain principles appear familiar to him before he can place the terminology around them. That is an interesting contradiction.”

Selphine looked toward her.

Elara could feel the attention without returning it.

She had chosen each word carefully, though none of them were false. That had always been the safest method. A fabricated answer required maintenance; a narrow truth required only discipline.

”And you stopped me when I asked about his old teacher,” Selphine said.

”He was uncomfortable.”

”You noticed.”

”Yes.”

Selphine accepted that answer more easily than Elara expected. She simply looked forward again and continued walking, leaving the observation behind as though it had been enough.

That made Elara more conscious of it.

Selphine had already understood something from the exchange earlier. Perhaps only that Lucavion’s past interested Elara. Perhaps more. Asking directly would only sharpen her friend’s curiosity, so Elara let the matter remain suspended between them and shifted the books slightly higher against her chest.

They passed through the residence doors and entered the covered walkway connecting the block to the western gardens. Evening air slipped between the stone arches, carrying the scent of damp grass and the first hint of approaching rain. Along the path, mana lamps were beginning to brighten one after another, pale circles forming across the paving stones as the sky darkened above the Academy towers.

Selphine’s next question came several steps later.

”Reilan is not with you?”

Elara turned her head.

Selphine was looking toward the path ahead.

”He is busy tonight.”

”I see.”

”He had several things of his own to handle.”

Selphine’s fingers tightened once around her satchel strap before relaxing.

The movement was small enough that Elara might have missed it several days ago.

Tonight, she noticed.

Perhaps because Selphine had begun asking about Reilan rather often.

His training. His Academy placement. How long he had served House Caerlin. Whether he intended to enter any of the Martial Block evaluations beyond those required of him.

Nothing improper.

Nothing particularly remarkable when each question stood alone.

Together, however...

Elara kept the thought to herself.

”I wanted some time alone,” she added.

This time Selphine looked at her.

”Alone time?”

The words contained neither accusation nor amusement. Selphine simply repeated them, as though she were considering the answer from another angle.

Elara met her gaze.

”Is there a problem with that?”

”Of course not.”

Selphine said it easily.

Then she looked ahead again.

That should have ended the matter, and outwardly it did. They walked together beneath two more arches while the evening traffic thinned around them, their footsteps joining the softer sounds of wind moving through the hedges beyond the columns. Yet Elara could feel that Selphine remained curious, just as surely as she knew Selphine could probably feel the care behind her answers.

Neither of them mentioned it.

Friendship did strange things to secrecy.

Had Selphine been another student, Elara would have redirected her without a second thought. Had she been a political opponent, the entire exchange would have been simpler still. One protected information from an opponent because information possessed value. One maneuvered around strangers because strangers had earned nothing more.

Selphine occupied a considerably less convenient position.

She was her friend.

That word had arrived quietly during the past weeks, without ceremony and without Elara deciding when exactly it became true. Eveline had originally placed Selphine and Aurelian near Elowyn Caerlin for reasons of her own, and neither knew the identity hidden beneath the chestnut hair and altered mana signature. Even so, what had formed afterward belonged to them rather than Eveline. Meals, dormitory conversations, shared irritation, small favors, warnings given beneath ordinary sentences—those things accumulated until Elara found herself caring about the difference between withholding something from Selphine and deceiving her.

Tonight she wanted the former.

She wanted one evening whose purpose belonged to herself until she understood it better.

At the junction ahead, the path divided. The right-hand walkway curved toward the Magicians’ Annex while the longer western route crossed the gardens toward the library.

Selphine slowed.

”I need the Annex.”

Elara stopped with her.

For a moment she wondered whether that had been Selphine’s destination from the beginning or merely where she had decided their conversation should end. With Selphine, either possibility seemed plausible.

”I should go before the registry closes,” Elara said.

Selphine nodded. Her gaze rested on Elara for another brief moment, then moved toward the books.

”Enjoy the quiet.”

”I intend to.”

”Good night, Elowyn.”

”Good night.”

Selphine turned toward the Annex.

Elara watched her walk away until the dark green trim of her uniform disappeared beyond the next column, then released a slow breath through her nose and resumed toward the gardens.

The cool air felt considerably better once she was alone.

She brushed one finger near her temple and found the faint dampness she had suspected earlier.

’How embarrassing.’

A few questions from Selphine had managed to make her sweat.

Eveline would have enjoyed that far too much.

Still, she had preserved what mattered. Selphine knew she was going to the Western Library, knew that Lucavion’s strange familiarity with Lorian theory had attracted her attention, and knew Reilan had other plans tonight. Everything beyond that remained inference, and Selphine possessed enough social sense to understand when a friend had chosen to keep something private.

Whether she would remain satisfied with inference was another matter.

Elara’s thoughts returned briefly to the way Selphine had asked about Reilan.

The questions were becoming a problem.

Not because Selphine had discovered anything. If she had, the conversation would have been very different.

But from what Elara could infer after spending quite a bit of time around her, Selphine possessed the irritating habit of remembering inconsistencies until enough of them accumulated into a pattern, and Reilan’s public history offered more than Elara would have preferred.

A knight attached to an obscure coastal barony should have been unremarkable beside the heirs, prodigies, and political figures filling the Academy. Reilan was not. His discipline showed. So did the quality of his training, the ease with which he navigated noble environments, and the occasional habits of someone who had spent his life considerably closer to a ducal household than House Caerlin’s history could comfortably explain.

Elara knew all of those things because Cedric’s life had revolved around hers for years.

Selphine knew none of them.

Which meant she was working backward.

Elara’s mouth tightened faintly.

’I’ll need to be more careful.’

Fortunately, Reilan was hardly the only person at the Academy with a history that did not fit neatly inside his uniform.

For now, curiosity remained only curiosity.

The Western Library appeared beyond the garden.

Its tall windows glowed amber beneath the darkening sky, while narrow runic lines traced the stone around its entrance with a faint silver shimmer. Compared with the larger Central Archive, the building possessed a quieter dignity. Students passed through its doors in pairs or alone, most carrying texts beneath their arms, while several translucent messenger wisps floated above the steps with returned volumes suspended inside their pale bodies.

Elara tightened her hold on her own books.

Her attention shifted naturally toward the evening ahead.

She had originally described tonight as tutoring.

That remained true, though her preparations had expanded beyond anything required for a simple lesson.

Lucavion’s weakness in formal magical education was obvious enough. He could recognize structures through intuition and experience, could solve practical problems in ways that sometimes embarrassed students with far stronger academic foundations, yet established terminology repeatedly slowed him down. Runes, auxiliary sequences, formal spell architecture, historical classification—his knowledge existed in uneven islands separated by stretches of almost startling ignorance.

Teaching those gaps would be useful.

Elara wanted something else as well.

Earlier Lorian terminology had stirred memories in him.

That changed the lesson.

Inside the notebooks against her chest were several paired definitions, one written according to modern Arcanian convention and another drawn from older Lorian texts. She had copied basic circulation diagrams and altered certain pieces deliberately, changing the direction of one pathway, shifting the placement of an anchor, or using an older notation where newer students would expect standardized runic shorthand.

She wanted to see what he corrected.

More precisely, she wanted to see when he corrected it.

Would the shape feel wrong before he understood why? Would an old term produce recognition? Would his hand move before memory supplied the reason? Perhaps nothing would happen at all, and the fragments she had noticed earlier would prove too weak to reproduce deliberately.

That possibility disappointed her more than it should have.

Elara crossed the garden more slowly.

The younger Lucavion had once occupied a very specific place inside her memory, though much of that place had been built from the worst night of her life. His name had become tangled with humiliation, accusation, betrayal, and everything stripped from her afterward. For years she had possessed little reason to question the shape of that hatred.

Then Luca appeared.

Then the Academy.

Then fragments.

Every new piece made the old picture less stable.

She wanted to understand what remained underneath.

The thought carried a different weight tonight because Lucavion had agreed to let her look.

He could have dismissed the tutoring with another joke. He could have treated his academic weakness as something unimportant beside his combat ability. Instead, he had accepted.

That mattered.

Perhaps it meant only that he wanted to pass future examinations.

Perhaps curiosity had caught him as well.

Elara suspected the truth rested somewhere between those possibilities and several others neither of them had named.

The library doors opened as she approached.

Warm air replaced the evening chill, carrying the familiar scents of parchment, leather bindings, old wood, dust, and mana ink. The lower reading floor stretched beyond the entrance beneath rows of suspended lamps, where students occupied long tables in quiet clusters. Translucent index wisps drifted between the shelves, their pale bodies brightening whenever someone whispered a catalogue request into one of the brass terminals.

Elara moved through the hall toward the reservation desk.

An older librarian sat behind the crescent-shaped counter, her gray hair secured in a severe knot while thin lenses rested low upon her nose. Several slips of parchment hovered near one shoulder, shifting positions as entries appeared across them in lines of blue light.

The woman looked up.

”Evening.”

”Good evening.”

”Reservation?”

”Yes. Private Room Four.”

The librarian extended her hand.

”Student card, please.”

Elara shifted the books into one arm and reached inside her coat. Her fingers found the slim Academy card, smooth and faintly warm from the identification enchantment woven through it.

She drew it out.

Elowyn Caerlin.

Her thumb rested against the false name for a brief moment before she placed the card upon the counter.

”I reserved the room earlier today.”

The librarian pressed it against the registry crystal.

Pale light spread beneath Elara’s fingers.