The cheering had faded. The nobles dispersed like shadows chased by light.
But Seralune still stood where the duel ended—alone now—her golden battle-gown dimmed, her thoughts louder than the silence around her.
She touched her neck.
The skin was smooth again, healed by her Luxthread's innate regenerative pulse… but her body still remembered the sensation.
A line of heat.A phantom blade of mana.A breath away from her throat.
She had not seen him cast the spell. Not fully.
She had seen his eyes.
In that moment—before the redirected arc, before the deliberate fall—he had looked at her not with hatred or defiance… but calculation.
And then, in a motion too fluid to be hesitation, he lowered his attack.
He'd let her win.
Or more accurately:
He chose not to kill her.
Understanding the Cost
Ari's performance—brilliant but imperfect—had fooled most.
The nobles, the council spectators, even the herald scribes who recorded combat arcs in runes of witness—they all saw a close duel with a graceful finish.
But Seralune was trained to read more than spells.
She was a Vastelune, born from centuries of radiance and scrutiny. She was raised not only to wield Light, but to recognize when it bent to deception.
He was faster than he looked.He never committed to the killing strike.He aimed true, then shifted. Not to miss… but to graze.
It wasn't mercy from weakness.It wasn't pity.
It was something far more dangerous to a royal bloodline:
A calculated gift.
He had spared her—not just her life, but her legacy. Her image. Her throne's integrity.
If she had bled before the court—if even a single drop had stained her collar—the whispers would have begun immediately.
"The Crown can be pierced.""A Vastelune, wounded by a Threadless.""What else can fall?"
But none of that had happened.Because he had made sure it didn't.
A Blush, and a Question
She inhaled slowly. Her cheeks were warm.
No. Don't blush. He's a commoner.He's a mystery, yes. Powerful, yes. But he has no bloodline.He has no Thread.He is beneath the Crown.
So why was her heartbeat wrong?
Why did her memory keep circling that single instant—the eye contact, the second of decision, the spell that curved away from fatality?
"He looked at me like I was…" she whispered, voice trembling just slightly, "…worth sparing."
The blush deepened.
Not out of embarrassment.
But out of something much harder to admit.
Gratitude.
And perhaps, an unwilling curiosity.
Later that night, behind her silken veil canopy in the royal wing, Seralune sat in solitude. The soft humming of floating sigils surrounded her like stars.
She summoned a glyph to replay the battle—a personal echo-recording inscribed from her own perspective.
She watched again.
Watched him falter.Watched him feint defeat.Watched the magic bend, not break.
She paused the memory before her spell struck him.
"You could've ended me," she whispered to the frozen echo of Ari's face.
"But you didn't."
A pause.
"Why?"
And quieter still, her hand brushed her collar, over the place the magic had almost touched.
"You absolute fool…" she murmured with a reluctant, delicate smile.
And then—a quiet, involuntary laugh.
And finally—a second, longer blush.