Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1042  WHO IS YOUR WIFE!

Lucavion ate with unhurried ease, as though sliding into their meal were the most natural thing in the world. He lifted his fork, gestured loosely between them, and spoke as if connecting thoughts that had been forming from the moment he arrived.

“So,” he said, “you two met today and were placed in the same group?” His eyes flicked first to Elowyn, then to Valeria. “Then it must have been the Combat Awareness Trial.”

Valeria nodded once. “It was.”

Lucavion’s lips curved into a small, knowing smirk. “With the two of you in the same group,” he murmured, “I imagine it was a breeze.”

Both girls narrowed their eyes at him, almost in perfect simultaneity—yet neither saw the other do it.

Elowyn’s reaction was quiet, analytical.

Valeria’s was instinctive.

The warmth in her chest rose before she could fully brace against it. It was only a casual compliment, nothing poetic or grand, but hearing it from him—him—still struck a place she wasn’t prepared to acknowledge. She swallowed once, steady enough not to betray the flicker of emotion.

But the narrowing of her eyes had a second reason, one she felt like a whisper under her ribs.

The way he said it.

The soft certainty in his tone.

The lack of surprise.

The way he didn’t question Elowyn’s strength at all.

It implied familiarity.

Recognition.

Knowledge.

As though he already knew what Elowyn could do.

As though her performance today aligned with something he expected.

Valeria studied him carefully, then allowed her gaze to drift toward Elowyn for only a heartbeat before returning to him.

‘How does he know?’

Elowyn had not behaved like someone startled by his sudden arrival. She had not stiffened, had not scrambled for composure. Her calm felt practiced—not in the noble sense, but in the “I have dealt with him before” sense.

Lucavion noticed nothing and everything at once, his expression relaxed as he ate, but the glint in his eyes remained too deliberate to ignore.

Elowyn had not behaved like someone startled by his sudden arrival. She had not stiffened, had not scrambled for composure. Her calm felt practiced—not in the noble sense, but in the “I have dealt with him before” sense.

Lucavion noticed nothing and everything at once, his expression relaxed as he ate, but the glint in his eyes remained too deliberate to ignore.

Valeria lifted her drink in an attempt to mask her thoughts, though the question pulsed quietly in her mind:

When did he meet her?

How much does he know?

And why does he speak as though her abilities are already familiar to him?

She lowered her cup slowly.

This wasn’t jealousy or at least she thought that she knew the difference, and she classified it as a deep, rooted curiosity, sharpened by the subtle awareness that Lucavion rarely formed connections without reason.

He had gone out of his way for Valeria once.

He had unsettled Elowyn somehow.

And now, without hesitation, he acted as though both were figures he understood.

It unsettled her.

Valeria set her cup down and took a steady breath, trying to gather her thoughts into something coherent. The dining hall hummed quietly around them—clinking cutlery, low conversations, the soft whirl of ventilation wards—but her focus stayed entirely on the two people sitting at her table.

Lucavion’s presence always demanded attention. Elowyn’s quietly held it. Together, they created a pressure she hadn’t anticipated, as though some thread connected them that she couldn’t see.

The feeling twisting in her chest wasn’t sharp, but it wasn’t comfortable either. She refused to call it anything without understanding it first. Whatever it was, it nudged her forward with a subtle insistence. She needed to know.

She turned to Lucavion with a calm she didn’t entirely feel. “How do you know her?”

Lucavion paused mid-bite—not long, but long enough to show the question surprised him. His eyes slid to Elowyn, then back to Valeria, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Now that’s a pointed question,” he said lightly.

Valeria didn’t flinch. “Answer it.”

Elowyn glanced down at her bowl, expression composed but attentive. Lucavion, of course, found her directness amusing. His smirk deepened just slightly, though his eyes softened into something more thoughtful.

“I never said I knew her,” he replied.

“But you spoke as if you did.” Valeria held his gaze, searching for the slightest shift.

Lucavion lifted his fork again, tapping it once against the rim of his plate as though the motion helped him gather his next remark. His gaze flicked between them, settling on Valeria with a familiar mixture of amusement and challenge.

“Our little Lady Knight,” he said, voice almost affectionate in its mockery, “has learned to pick up the finer details of speech? I thought all you knew was how to swing a sword, uphold your family name, and chase honor.”

The jab was light, but it landed. Valeria felt the smallest flare of irritation—less a spark, more the lingering warmth of an old habit. He always did this. Pushed, teased, provoked. Not cruelly, not dismissively, but with the kind of deliberate pressure meant to test whether someone would break or sharpen.

Her lips curled into a quiet sneer. It wasn’t anger. It was the recognition of an old rhythm—one she hadn’t expected to fall into again.

‘He’s challenging me,’ she thought. Not hostile, not harmful. Just him. The same way he had always been.

If it had been years ago, she might have bristled more. Might have stiffened her spine and snapped back with something clipped and defensive. Not now. Not after what she’d lived through. Not after what she’d learned.

“People grow,” she said, meeting his gaze without hesitation.

Lucavion’s fork paused mid-air. His expression shifted just enough to show that he’d heard more in those words than she intended to reveal. “That is good to know,” he murmured, voice lower, less amused.

Valeria didn’t give him the chance to steer the conversation.

She leaned in slightly—not enough to seem confrontational, but enough that he understood she wouldn’t be deflected by teasing or by half-answers.

“So,” she said, steady and clear. “Answer my question.”

Lucavion blinked once, then set his fork down, fingers brushing against the metal with unhurried precision. His black eyes lingered on her, searching, measuring whether she would keep pressing or fold under a softened smile.

She didn’t fold.

The air between them tightened—but not with hostility. With something more controlled. More personal. Elowyn watched the exchange with careful neutrality, but Valeria’s attention remained fixed on Lucavion alone.

“How,” she repeated slowly, “do you know her?”

Lucavion sighed through his nose, the smallest hint of amusement tugging at his mouth as though her persistence both annoyed him and pleased him.

“…Of course you wouldn’t drop it,” he said quietly. “Still as relentless as ever.”

“Answer it,” Valeria replied.

Lucavion didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his gaze drifted sideways toward Elowyn—calm, unhurried, almost lazy in how effortlessly he shifted the weight of the moment.

Then he looked back at Valeria with a faint smile that made her feel as though she had stepped directly into a trap she hadn’t seen coming.

“You do realize,” he said, gesturing with a subtle tilt of his head toward Elowyn, “that the person you’re interrogating me about is sitting right here?”

Valeria froze.

Her mind stuttered over the simple truth of that sentence. In her fixation on Lucavion’s answer, in her determination to understand the connection he implied, she had somehow forgotten the most obvious detail.

Elowyn was sitting at the same table.

He continued before she could form a response. “And the way you’re speaking…” His lips curved into a sharper smile. “You sound like a wife confronting her husband about an affair.”

Valeria’s soul left her body.

He went on, pleasantly unaware—or entirely aware—of the chaos he’d triggered. “I didn’t realize our relationship had reached that stage.”

For one terrifying heartbeat, Valeria had no thoughts. None. Her mind simply blanked.

Then everything hit her at once.

Elowyn was right there.

Lucavion had said that.

Out loud.

And she—Valeria Olarion, trained knight, disciplined daughter, capable fighter—had walked into it without realizing.

Heat rushed up her neck, flooding her cheeks with a force that could have melted mithril. She felt it rise all the way to her ears, no matter how hard she tried to hold her composure.

“W–WHO IS YOUR WIFE!”