Princess Priscilla Lysandra.
In the novel, her na carried the cold elegance of ice ford under pressure—beautiful, sharp, and out of place.
Lucavion rembered the footnotes. The casual ntions. The whispers around her title. No one ever truly spoke of her in the narrative—not directly. Just enough was scattered for a reader to piece her together like a portrait sketched in candlelight.
But he had paid attention.
And what he rembered, what the novel implied but never quite spelled out, was far more brutal than the pretty imperial image suggested.
She wasn't ant to be there.
Priscilla's mother was a commoner. Not so secretly noble-born daughter hidden in a village waiting to be discovered. No. She was actually a commoner—a healer's daughter from a southern border province, raised among herbs and wet markets, the kind of woman who might've sung folk songs to keep the wolves away.
And the Emperor?
He had t her once.
The novel was vague—intentionally. A passing whim during an imperial inspection. A single night born of royal indulgence. The kind of encounter the Empire didn't question. Kings did what kings pleased.
Usually, such dalliances ended in silence. The won were paid off. Moved. Forgotten. And if a child ca from it, they were hidden—raised in a quiet corner of the realm with a stipend and a na that ant nothing.
But this?
This was different.
Because Priscilla wasn't the result of an accident, nor was her mother so naless concubine scribbled into the margins of a scandal.
No.
The Emperor had loved her.
That single, silent truth sat buried beneath the palace's golden veneer like a blade under silk—never spoken aloud in the novel, never expanded. But Lucavion rembered the way it bled through the dialogue, the implications between lines, in the way the Crown Prince spat her na, and the way his mother spoke of "those who steal what was never theirs."
The story never gave readers the whole picture. It didn't explain why the Emperor had loved a healer's daughter from the provinces. Whether it was a spell, or a rebellion against the constraints of imperial marriage, or sothing more hauntingly simple—like peace. Like choice.
But what it did reveal, in fleeting, bitter fragnts, was this:
The Emperor did not cast Priscilla's mother aside.
He brought her.
Ordered her, publicly and irreversibly, to be summoned to the capital. Not as a passing mistress. Not as a hidden sha.
But as a consort.
It had been an act that set the court ablaze.
Lucavion rembered one scene in particular—a council eting—where an aging duke muttered how "a crown should not rest near wildflowers," and another noble responded with forced laughter, "Yet so weeds take root too deep to pull."
Those were not the words of n discussing a brief indulgence.
Those were the words of a political structure threatened.
And the loudest opposition?
Ca from the Empress.
The First Wife.
The Crown Prince's mother.
Lucavion could still see the image the novel painted so cleanly—her face pale with restraint, her fingers clenching the edge of her sleeve during a formal gathering, a single vein twitching at her temple as Priscilla's na was uttered in court.
The Empress was no fool. She had ruled beside her husband for decades. Her lineage was pure. Her position, absolute.
Until she ca.
The southern girl with no noble blood, no pedigree, no na the Empire recognized.
And yet… she was loved.
The novel never described it outright, but the resentnt radiated through every line the Empress spoke in private. Through her cold interactions with her own son. Through the silence that hung between the imperial siblings.
Lucavion rembered a single passing mont in the book -- quiet corridor and an overheard hushed conversation between the Crown Prince and his mother.
The Crown Prince stood like a statue—flawless in posture, unreadable in expression.
And the Empress, cloaked in crimson and shadow, stood beside him, her voice cold enough to freeze glass.
"A lowborn has no place in the palace."
She said it without raising her voice. But the hate behind it didn't need volu.
"I endured the rchant's daughter. I even turned my eyes from that songstress from the East. But her—"
The Empress's tone turned acidic. "That whore ca out of nowhere. No na. No nobility. Nothing. And yet she word her way into his heart."
Lucavion had rembered the pause in her voice. That slip. That barest crack in her tone that reeked not just of disgust—but of jealousy.
Because it hadn't been political, not really.
It had been personal.
"Don't forget, my son," she said, her voice tightening like a snare. "What is ours is not to be taken. Not by bastards. Not by commoners. Not even by blood."
That line had stayed with Lucavion.
Not even by blood.
Because it was the turning point. The mont the heir—the Crown Prince—looked at his half-sister not as a nuisance… but as a threat.
From that day forward, everything that surrounded Priscilla was a quiet battlefield. She wouldn't die. No, that would've been too crude. Too suspicious. Instead—
She would be suffocated.
Every connection she ford, subtly cut.
Every retainer that swore loyalty to her, manipulated or bribed or broken.
Every public mistake magnified. Every success minimized.
And when her one opportunity arrived—the Academy—where she might've stood on equal ground, where rit and politics mingled among the elite youth of the Empire…
She was thrust into it carrying the weight of humiliation.
The scandal of the Prominence.
Fabricated.
Orchestrated.
And perfectly tid.
Lucavion could already see how it would've played out if he hadn't intervened.
Whispers would've followed her to the academy gates. Nobles would've laughed behind silken sleeves. Even those sympathetic wouldn't dare associate. Professors, bound by factional loyalty, would cast her as a cautionary tale.
The unwanted girl.
The half-blood princess who failed to protect her own.
Her days at the Academy would be filled with quiet exile. Her nights with paranoia.
And all the while—the Crown Prince would smile.
Because the Academy was his stage.
And she?
She was the tragedy he'd written long before the first class bell rang.
But Lucavion knew sothing else the novel had foreshadowed.
Soone was coming.
Soone who would never miss such an opportunity.
'Heh…..'
Soone he needed to get ready to face.
She would not miss such a good pawn.
Naturally.
She was far too clever for that.
In the story, it was never spelled out in flashing ink or dramatic prose. But for anyone reading between the lines—for anyone who watched the patterns rather than the plot—it was obvious.
Soone who drew paths.
And Priscilla?
She would make the perfect piece.
A discarded royal. A girl too dangerous to keep close, too disgraced to be embraced by the mainstream factions. But still a princess. Still a na with imperial weight.
Lucavion rembered the subtle arcs in the novel. How she first appeared not as a villain, but as a poised presence in the academy's political councils. Calm. asured. Polite. She was the one who offered guidance when no one else would. The one who extended a hand to those left behind.
And in ti?
She always collected the broken.
Priscilla's isolation, her anger, her sharpness—'she' would fan those embers. Not cruelly. Not even manipulatively at first. But inevitably.
Because to soone like 'her', every broken piece had potential.
And Priscilla?
She had been forged in a palace of silence and polished spite.
She wouldn't beco 'her' friend. No.
She would beco her instrunt.
The perfect villainess.
Cold. Regal. Vengeful. Smart enough to play her role, and tragic enough for the story to bla her when it all fell apart.
That was the role the novel carved out for her.
Not because she was cruel.
But because cruelty was the only armor she had left.
And if Lucavion hadn't stepped in—if he hadn't cracked the mask early—
She would've worn that armor with pride.
He could see it now. The threads still forming. The shadow of her waiting at the edge of the academy's political battlefield. The perfect queenmaker, polishing the dagger she would sheath in Priscilla's hand.
Lucavion's eyes narrowed, a quiet breath slipping past his lips.
'Isolde…We will et soon.'
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