Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1040  His Name Between Them (3)

“Something like that,” she said quietly.

The words were light, but Elara could feel the weight beneath them. There was more—more than Valeria was willing to reveal, more than she was ready to shape into neat sentences across a dining table. A story with uneven edges and shadows she hadn’t yet decided how to share.

Elara didn’t press. She simply watched her, reading the subtle tension in the girl’s shoulders, the way her fingers tightened around her cup for a heartbeat before easing again. Valeria wasn’t lying. She wasn’t deflecting, not exactly. She was choosing her timing.

And Elara understood that instinct well.

‘You’re telling me the surface… but not the whole.’

‘I know that pattern. I’ve lived it.’

Despite the quietness of the moment, her pulse felt heavier, as if each new detail Valeria offered was reweaving the outline of a stranger Elara thought she already understood. Because whatever had happened in Andelheim wasn’t simple companionship. It had left too many marks on Valeria’s voice, too many pauses in her sentences, too much caution in her eyes.

A bond had existed there—unusual, unplanned, and deeper than Valeria was prepared to name.

Elara lifted her spoon and stirred her cooling soup, giving the illusion of casual calm even as her thoughts sharpened.

‘She isn’t avoiding the truth. She’s protecting it.’

‘From me? Or from herself?’

Valeria set her cup down and looked up, meeting Elara’s gaze with a steadiness that felt practiced, like someone drawing a thin veil over a half-opened door.

“Let’s say, he was the one who pestered me…” she repeated softly, “and I let it happen. That’s all.”

Valeria’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly as she spoke. The veil of composure she usually carried—polished, disciplined, knightly—thinned just enough for something softer to break through. A small smile, unguarded and quietly radiant, touched her lips. It wasn’t the polite curve she used with nobles, nor the strained restraint she’d shown under their scrutiny. This was something warmer, unpolished by court etiquette, drawn up from a memory she hadn’t expected to resurface.

Elara noticed instantly.

And strangely… the sight unsettled her.

Not in a jealous way—nothing so sharp or obvious. More like a subtle tug beneath her ribs, a ripple of something she couldn’t quite name.

‘She smiles like that when she talks about him…?’

‘Why? And what does it mean?’

For all of Elara’s efforts to remain calm, a flicker of tension threaded through her spine. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even fear. It was simply the ache of realizing that Lucavion, in someone else’s memory, was something different from the cold, calculated figure she had known.

‘Of course he would be different to her… He approached her. He chose how to appear.’

‘But still… seeing her smile like that feels strange.’

Before she could sift through those thoughts further, Valeria exhaled softly and continued, as if tugged forward by a memory she hadn’t fully processed in years.

“We spent most of the time between rounds together,” she said, fingers brushing lightly against her cup. “Those breaks were long as I have said before. Initially it was even for multiple days—and the city was unfamiliar. Having someone to talk to made it easier.”

Elara nodded slowly. “And you learned a lot from him at that time?”

“Yes.” Valeria’s answer was immediate, steady. “You may not know it—he appears as a charlatan most of the time—but he’s… a rather challenging person when he speaks.”

Elara’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth.

Challenging.

Not unpredictable.

Not dangerous.

Not manipulative.

Challenging.

Valeria went on, her gaze drifting momentarily toward the window as though she were watching the past play itself out. “His way of thinking is unorthodox. Often frustrating. But being around him meant constantly questioning my own assumptions… my values… the things I thought were fixed.”

Her voice lowered with a kind of reflective warmth. “Between his teasing and his endlessly annoying nature, talking to him was surprisingly fun.”

Elara felt her breath slip quietly out of her lungs.

Fun.

The word lingered—fun—and Elara’s chest tightened before she could stop it. Not sharply, not painfully, but with a quiet pressure that made her breath slip unevenly for just a heartbeat.

Because the moment Valeria said it, Stormhaven rose unbidden in Elara’s mind.

Not the heat of the desert wind.

Not the clash of steel against chitin.

Not the chaos of that expedition.

But him.

The way he had appeared in her life back then as Luca—

smiling too easily,

speaking with that same disarming confidence,

glancing at her with an intensity she could never quite decipher.

How he’d sat across from her at that small inn table with a bowl of tidecrawler stew, wearing a name that wasn’t his and an identity she couldn’t see through.

How she hadn’t known he was Lucavion at all.

How she’d let herself relax.

Just a little.

‘And now here she is… smiling because he did the same to her.’

Elara forced her spoon down gently, the motion controlled. She didn’t want to show anything—not confusion, not discomfort, not the faint sting of remembering how easily he’d slipped past her guard before she even understood he was dangerous.

Valeria continued speaking, unaware of the storm stirring behind Elara’s expression.

“He had a way of shifting perspective,” Valeria said, her tone steady. “Sometimes in ways I didn’t appreciate, sometimes in ways I needed. Even now, I remember the way he challenged my thoughts without ever raising his voice.”

She laughed softly—small, genuine, warmed with nostalgia. “Between his teasing and that infuriating smugness, our conversations were… enjoyable.”

Elara kept her face composed, but it cost her.

‘Enjoyable.’

‘Challenging.’

‘Fun.’

They were the same words she herself might have used for Luca—

before she knew who he really was,

before the Recorder incident,

before she understood the weight of the name Lucavion Vale.

‘So he did it to her too.’

‘Approached. Inserted himself. Made himself familiar.’

And then left.

Valeria spoke of those days with unclouded clarity. No bitterness. No latent anger. No trace of betrayal.

But Elara’s memories were different.

When she thought of Luca—Lucavion—she remembered warmth mixed with unease, teasing mixed with something she couldn’t define, trust mixed with a growing suspicion she ignored until it was too late to ask for answers.

Seeing Valeria smile softly while recalling him felt like pressing on a bruise she didn’t know she still had.

Elara inhaled quietly, steadying herself.

Valeria turned back to her, unaware of the shift beneath Elara’s calm expression. “I suppose… it was a short chapter in the long run. A brief connection. But meaningful, at that time.”

Elara nodded, giving the smallest acknowledgement she could manage without letting her voice tremble. “It sounds like it.”

Inside, her thoughts coiled tightly.

‘Meaningful. That explains the way she looks when she talks about him.’

‘But she still doesn’t know what he really is… or what he’s capable of.’

‘She didn’t see him in Stormhaven. She didn’t see the parts he keeps hidden.’

Elara forced her shoulders to relax.

Whatever Valeria felt for Lucavion—fondness, nostalgia, recognition—it didn’t change the truth. He had approached her too. Worn her down. Made himself comfortable in her life without giving her the tools to understand him.

And now…

Now she could see the imprint of that same habit written quietly across Valeria’s smile.

Elara stirred her soup again—not because she needed to, but because she needed something to ground her hands.

“I see,” she said softly, carefully. “Thank you-”

She didn’t get to finish.

A shadow fell across the edge of their table. Not heavy, not looming—just enough to shift the air around them, like a change in pressure before a storm. Elara’s posture remained still, but her fingers curled subtly beneath the tablecloth. Valeria’s shoulders also stiffened, the soft warmth in her expression freezing mid-melt.

Then a voice—smooth, amused, unbearably familiar—broke the space between them.

“A short chapter in the long run… That’s disappointing to hear.”

A pause, deliberate and faintly wounded.

“I’m quite sad now. Is this what you think of me?”