"Let me ask you clearly."
His hand didn't lower. His voice didn't rise.
But the words struck like arrows.
"Do you testify, here and now, before these guests, that the Daughter of the Crown—Priscilla Lysandra—is lying? And that the heir of House Crane, Reynard Crane, did not commit the act of harassing a lower-ranked noble?"
The silence stretched, no longer empty but expectant.
A thousand eyes watched.
Some wide with fear.
Some narrowed with calculation.
Some waiting—hungrier than ever—for blood.
Lucien stood, unmoving.
But something in him had shifted.
The easy elegance he wore like silk was still there, but beneath it—fracture. Not panic. Not doubt. Just the smallest crack in the glass of his conviction.
He had been mocked.
He had been named.
And now—
He was being cornered.
Lucien Lysandros did not take orders.
He gave them.
He did not answer.
He shaped.
But still… he had no way to step backward.
Not now.
Not here.
Not after that name.
Not after that gaze.
