Chapter 138: He Ca
A gray-haired man stood beside him, dressed in a deep blue formal suit, his posture perfectly straight. His face was expressionless, and his gaze followed Vincent’s every movent.
Behind every face stood a family, an army, a stretch of land. The color of their skin, the way they stood, the way they spoke, the way they looked at others—all of it bore the imprint of the land that had shaped them.
As Ryan looked at these people, a heavy feeling suddenly welled up in his chest.
Everyone gathered here belonged to the Empire’s most elite generation. They were the carefully chosen young talents of every major faction, the finest and most gifted among those under twenty.
Ten years from now, these people might stand at the very peak of imperial power, or at the very least claim a place for themselves on the stage of the continent. He had even recognized a few faces among them from the original ga’s storyline.
Up until now, he had always carried himself with a certain ease, but at this mont, that ease tightened by several degrees.
The dance ended just then.
Ryan ca back to himself and realized that he and Ilis had already danced through three songs.
By noble etiquette, one could dance, but one could not monopolize the floor indefinitely.
He looked at Ilis. Ilis was looking at him as well. At the sa ti, they released each other’s hands, stepped back half a pace, and exchanged a light bow.
Then they turned and withdrew from the dance floor.
A new song began, and fresh pairs of young n and won stepped onto the floor hand in hand. Skirts began to spin, coattails to flare, and the warm golden candlelight continued to pour down from above, softening every face it touched.
Ryan and Ilis stood at the edge of the floor, moonlight slipping in through the open windows and falling over them.
“That is about enough,” Ilis said. “You have seen all the people you needed to see.”
Ryan nodded without speaking.
His gaze swept over the figures still turning on the dance floor, over Parker and Hayden by the pillar, over Marcus by the long table, over Shiloya at the edge of the crowd, and over that pale green figure beneath the column.
Vera was looking at him too.
Those gray-green eyes glead faintly beneath the moonlight, like mountains after rain. Their gazes t for a brief instant, and then she looked away and disappeared into the crowd.
Ryan withdrew his gaze and left the edge of the floor with Ilis, heading toward the little round table in the corner.
Allen was still sitting there.
The plates before him were empty, the bones from the roast suckling pig piled into a small mountain, with crab shells scattered all over the place. He was stabbing the last strawberry on his plate with a fork, and the mont he saw Ryan and Ilis returning, his eyes lit up.
“Oh, you’re back?” Allen set down his fork and wiped his mouth. “You danced pretty well, brother! I was watching the whole ti. Those first few steps were rough, absolutely tragic, but after that you got the hang of it fast. You really learn quickly!”
Ryan sat down beside him. Ilis did not sit. She simply stood at Ryan’s side, her eyes sweeping the room.
“You were still eating this whole ti?” Ryan asked.
“What else was I supposed to do?” Allen replied with perfect confidence. “I can’t dance, and nobody invited to, so what was I supposed to do besides eat? That roast suckling pig was incredible. If you had taken any longer, I would have started gnawing on the bones too.”
As he spoke, he jerked his chin toward the dance floor.
“Oh, and while you two were dancing, quite a few girls kept looking your way. Over there, see? The ones in pink, and that one in blue—they were staring at you forever, whispering together. They were probably trying to guess which family you belonged to.”
Ryan followed his gaze.
Several noble girls stood by a pillar, glancing over this way. When they saw him look back, one of them covered her mouth and laughed, another shoved her, and the whole group dissolved into giggles.
“See? See?” Allen clicked his tongue twice. “Brother, you’re about to beco famous. Your dancing was a little stiff at the beginning, but once you got into it, you really looked the part. With that bearing of yours, you seed more noble than the noble young masters.”
Ryan lifted the wineglass on the table and took a sip without replying.
On the other side of the dance floor, several highborn young ladies had clustered together, their magnificent skirts pressed close in a riot of erald, pale violet, and lake blue, like a bouquet in full bloom.
They held wineglasses and laughed with exaggerated gestures, their smiles perfectly polished, showing exactly eight teeth—not bold enough to seem improper, not restrained enough to seem cold.
But a closer look revealed that every one of them kept flicking their gaze toward the person in the middle.
A red-haired girl stood there.
She wore a wine-red gown that fell to her ankles, embroidered with dark golden patterns that glimred faintly when she moved. The neckline was cut just right, revealing a graceful stretch of pale neck adorned with a ruby necklace. The stone itself was the size of a fingernail, red as a fla frozen in crystal.
Her hair was a deep, rich red, like ripe maple leaves or embers on the verge of burning out, loosely pinned up behind her head, with a few stray locks hanging beside her ears.
Her figure was astonishingly full. The wine-red gown flowed down along every curve of her body, pulled tight at the waist before abruptly flaring below. She was doing nothing more than standing there, yet the people around her all seed to unconsciously lean toward her.
“Eleanor,” a gray-haired girl leaned closer, “what is it? You haven’t said a word for ages.”
Eleanor did not react.
Her gaze was fixed on the edge of the dance floor, on the figure in deep ink-blue walking toward the corner.
“Eleanor?” the gray-haired girl called again.
Only then did Eleanor co back to herself.
She drew back her gaze and let a polite smile rise to her face, a smile that was perfectly asured, neither distant nor overly warm.
“It is nothing,” she said. “I rely saw soone I know.”
“Soone you know?” The girl in the pale violet dress beside her imdiately brightened with interest, following the direction of Eleanor’s earlier gaze. “Who? A man or a woman?”
“Do not tell it is so young lord Eleanor has taken a fancy to,” another girl said with a laugh, covering her mouth.
“Really? Then point him out for us!”
The girls chattered noisily all at once. One rose up on tiptoe to look, another tugged at Eleanor’s sleeve. Eleanor let them fuss as they pleased, her smile never changing, though there was no real mirth in her eyes.
He had co.
Ryan Velt.
From the day her father told her she had been chosen to take part in the Starfall Ruins expedition, Eleanor had been asking herself one question.
Would he co?
Would he represent Saint Roland Magic Academy as well?
She did not know the answer, so in the end she simply stopped thinking about it.
She had taken a long leave from the academy, attending only one necessary assessnt. Other than that, she had stayed ho and trained.
Swing the sword.
Swing it again.
And again.
Every day from dawn to deep night, until her arms ached so badly she could barely lift them, until the hand that gripped the sword blistered, broke, and hardened into calluses.
She had forced herself to forget that defeat.
That defeat she had suffered to Ryan Velt during the Whispering Forest practical lesson.
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