Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 807: Another Male Lead

The ballroom pulsed with music again, the kind of music designed to erase—soft strings and elegant flourishes meant to smooth over the cracks in everyone’s memory. A subtle performance of forgetting. The nobles returned to their masquerade, their laughter deliberate, the tinkling of glasses a little too crisp, too frequent. Everywhere Priscilla looked, she saw masks being reapplied—stitched on with silk and obligation. And yet none of them came near.

She stood alone.

Not ostracized.

Not quite.

Just… noticed. Marked. A line drawn around her that no one dared step over. Even the women she had once dined with weekly were suddenly caught in deep, spontaneous conversations across the room. No curious glances. No whispered invitations. Just space.

’So this is the price.’

It shouldn’t have surprised her. She had felt the fracture the moment her voice broke the air between Rowen and Lucavion. The moment she sided not with the Empire, nor with silence, but with something dangerously close to truth. The air was thinner here—colder. The kind of cold that didn’t touch skin, only status.

And still, beneath the weight pressing along her ribs, beneath the nerves whispering of Lucien’s wrath to come, she felt it again—that quiet thrum in her blood. Thrill.

She hadn’t bowed. Not to her brother. Not to Rowen. Not even to fear. And there was a part of her, sharp-edged and secret, that had been waiting for this.

Daring for it. Wanting to know if she could be more than the Crown’s ornament.

’What is this…’

Her gaze slid over the ballroom, taking in the subtle shifts—the way conversation flowed around Reynard and his ilk now like water avoiding rot, the way Lucien hadn’t moved in several minutes, frozen in a coil of political paralysis.

She turned slightly, glass still in hand, and then—

A presence.

It was subtle. Not loud or sudden. But undeniable. The shift in pressure. The unmistakable brush of awareness. Someone was walking toward her—not with the clumsy insistence of those seeking relevance, but with calm certainty.

She barely had time to turn when a voice greeted her—silky, deep, and soaked in amusement.

“It was quite a fun show.”

The words drew her eyes sideways.

And there he was.

Blue hair, immaculate and flowing just long enough to frame his face like something out of a painter’s dream. His eyes—shiny gray—glinted like polished steel under soft light. A color that didn’t catch emotion, but reflected it. And that smile… not warm, not cruel. Just perfectly curved, the kind of smile worn by men who were never told no.

Arrogance—pristine and deliberate—clung to him like cologne.

He looked at her with that same unshaken smile, the kind meant to disarm, to say I’m not a threat—all while hiding the knife in plain view. It was the smile of an old friend, or at least someone who had once played the part. And for a moment—just a flicker—Priscilla almost returned it.

Almost.

Because once, long ago, she might’ve smiled back without hesitation. Might’ve laughed. Might’ve let the warmth of his presence dull the jagged edges that court life carved into her spine.

If it were before.

Before the silks and duties. Before the betrayals and quiet dismissals. Before she learned the shape of power wasn’t always brute force—but condescension wrapped in affection.

’If it were before… when I was still innocent.’

But she wasn’t.

And now, looking at him—at the easy posture, the glint in his gaze, the confidence soaked into every syllable—she could see it.

Clear as crystal.

He wasn’t here to comfort.

He was here to assess.

To prod. To judge. To smile with the same dismissive indulgence Lucien wore when he thought no one could challenge him.

Behind the polished veneer and artful charm—

He looked down on her.

Just the same.

She didn’t respond at first.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t flinch.

Her lips stayed still, the line of her mouth held tight as her fingers rested on the glass stem. Her eyes, however, never wavered from his.

And then—

He tilted his head slightly, mock confusion feathering through his expression.

“Come on, what is with the face?” he said, voice still smooth as silk. “Why are you looking at me like you saw a ghost?”

Her gaze narrowed—not sharply. Not in challenge.

In recognition.

The ghost, after all, wasn’t him.

It was the part of herself that might’ve welcomed him.

Might’ve believed him.

She drew a breath.

And then, in a voice low but steady, she spoke his name.

“Thalor…”

Thalor smiled.

Not the playful kind offered between allies. Not the warm kind meant to comfort or disarm. It was the slow, indulgent curl of lips that belonged to a man who had never doubted he’d be recognized. Who knew his presence left impressions like a signature seared in wax.

“Oh… took you long enough to recognize me.”

His voice lingered in the space between them, velvet wrapped around thorns.

Priscilla didn’t answer right away.

Her fingers tightened just slightly around the stem of her glass, the pressure grounding her. There was no mistaking that name. Not here. Not anywhere in the Empire.

Thalor Draycott.

The name alone could split silence. A lineage carved from steel and strategy, feared in courtrooms and whispered about in the arcane halls of the Tower. The Draycott Dukedom—rulers of the South—had never been subtle. And Thalor, their prodigal heir, had never needed to be.

He wasn’t just a mage.

He was the mage. The chosen disciple of the Master of the Magic Tower. A boy whose natural affinity for magic hadn’t just drawn envy—it had reshaped curriculum. A genius, yes, but more than that—a symbol. Of dominance. Of inevitability.

Wherever he stood, people looked.

Wherever he walked, power followed.

And now he stood in front of her, head slightly tilted, silver-gray eyes gleaming like moonlight on a dagger’s edge.

Thalor’s eyes gleamed a little sharper at her silence, though the smile never left his lips. If anything, it deepened—just slightly. Like he was waiting for something he already knew would come.

“What?” he said, tone lilting, amused. “Cat got your tongue?”

The air between them tightened. The music swelled in the background, but none of it reached her ears.

Priscilla didn’t sigh. Didn’t flinch.

She looked him dead in the eye and said, quietly but without falter, “I don’t have anything to talk with you.”

It wasn’t a lie.

It was armor.

Because what could she possibly say to Thalor Draycott?

The prodigy. The heir. The man born with stars braided into his fate, who had once laughed beside her under the garden trees—only to speak her name later like it was something sticky and unfortunate caught on his shoe.

She could still hear it.

Not shouted. Not meant for her to hear at all.

But whispered, offhanded, behind the draped curtains of the music hall at the Winter Revue.

“Priscilla? Pretty enough, sure—but if it was not for father’s insistence, do you really think I would care about a wastrel like her? I have not intention of sullying our blood.”

She had frozen in place.

Thirteen years old, dressed in imperial silk and hope. Her hands had trembled, even then. And she had smiled when he passed her later that night, as if nothing inside had shattered.

’How can I talk to someone like you, Thalor, when every time I look at your face I remember the first time I stopped believing in dreams?’

She had liked him once.

Something of adolescence.

Before she understood what those emotions could cost.

Before she knew the difference between admiration and affection—between proximity and meaning.

He had been her first love.

Most likely the last as well.

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