Chapter 52 Bickering and Banter

Chapter 52 Bickering and Banter
"Enough"

Ravelyn’s jaw didn't just drop; she genuinely had to check if she was hallucinating. The sudden, nauseating shift from a bloodthirsty, poison-peddling lunatic to a fragile, weeping little bird was so fast it practically gave her whiplash.

Lucius stood like a concrete wall between them, his golden shield slowly dissolving into a heavy, suffocating aura of pure celestial authority. His eyes were wide, tracking the blood on Seraphine's face before snapping directly to Ravelyn.

"Step back, Ravelyn," Lucius commanded, his deep voice carrying the rigid weight of an inner sanctum officer. He didn't just look angry; he looked personally insulted that a lower-ring initiate had dared to paint his pristine sector with high-noble blood. "You are really fearless. Raising your hands on an angel during an assignment. You should be killing the Vorath, not making a ruckus. It is against the council laws."

Seraphine smirked inwardly, "I knew Lucius still had a thing for me." She thought as she giggled.

Ravelyn crossed her arms tightly, her eyes narrowing into cold, bitter slits. The sheer sight of his immaculate uniform and his high-and-mighty tone made her stomach turn. She hadn't forgotten, not for a single second, that this was the guy who had dragged her away from her life, hauled her to this academic hellhole without her permission, and upended everything she knew.

"Oh, save the holy lecture for someone who actually gives a shit, Lucius," Ravelyn snapped, her voice sharp and dripping with pure resentment. "You want to talk about council laws? Why don't you talk about your little girlfriend over there ordering a customized dose of black-market Aether Rot poison to dissolve my core while I was unconscious? Or does the inner sanctum only care about rules when a shadow witch fights back?"

Lucius froze. The word shadow witch hung heavily in the air, a reminder of everything he was supposed to despise. He looked at her? at the dark, volatile aura clinging to her shoulders, the exact kind of magic he had been trained from birth to eliminate. By all accounts, he should have felt disgust. He wanted to feel disgust. Yet, as he stared into her defiant eyes, that same undeniable, infuriating pull yanked at his chest, a magnetic gravity that defied all logic and made him hate himself to his very core. He loathed how much he wanted to step closer, how much he wanted to protect something so inherently dark.

He forced his expression into a rigid mask, drowning his self-hatred in pure, authoritative anger. "What are you talking about?"

"I was defending myself!" Ravelyn yelled, pointing a finger at the weeping angel. "She literally just stood there and bragged about it. She explicitly told me she doubled the prescription for the next time she poisons my drink. So excuse me if I decided to re-edit her perfect face before she got the chance!"

Seraphine let out a loud, broken gasp from the dirt. "Lucius, she's lying! She’s just a paranoid, gutter-born Wraith who wants to tear us apart!"

Lucius took a heavy step forward, his white boots crunching on the stone as he reached out, his large hand gripping Ravelyn’s wrist to physically restrain her. "Ravelyn, calm down and tell me exactly—"

"Don't touch me," Ravelyn hissed.

The contact sent a violent jolt through her system. With a sharp, practiced twist of her forearm, she wrenched her wrist out of his grip, stepping back with her chest heaving. She absolutely detested when people touched her without her permission, especially when she didn't initiate the contact. It made her skin crawl worse than Seraphine's snobbery.

Lucius’s jaw tightened. Her instant repulsion clearly stung his celestial pride, fueling the war raging inside his own head. Refusing to let an initiate dictate the boundaries of an interrogation, he stepped right back into her space, his fingers wrapping firmly around her upper arm to pull her away from the pillar. "I said, listen to me—"

"She said, get your hands off her."

The air didn't just turn freezing; it completely died.

A thick, suffocating cloud of jet-black Aether violently erupted from the shadows behind Ravelyn. Before Lucius could even register the spike in dark energy, Kieran materialized out of the smoke. With complete, agonizingly slow nonchalance, Kieran reached out and firmly gripped Lucius’s wrist, forcing the angel's hand off Ravelyn’s arm with a strength that made the commander's leather glove groan.

Lucius jumped back a half-step, his golden aura violently flaring in an aggressive defensive response.

Kieran didn't even blink. He smoothly stepped into the space right beside Ravelyn. With an entirely arrogant, possessive casualness, he rested his heavy, gloved hand perfectly on her waist, pulling her back against his side just enough to make his protective stance glaringly obvious to everyone in the clearing.

Lucius’s eyes dropped instantly to Kieran’s hand resting on Ravelyn’s waist.

A raw, terrifying wave of pure, unadulterated anger boiled straight up to the light commander’s face. His knuckles turned white as he clamped his hand back onto the hilt of his sword, his breathing turning ragged. He looked like a man watching someone else play with a prize that belonged to him. He desperately wanted to claim he was just angry about sector security, but the sheer, agonizing jealousy rolling off his shoulders was too loud to hide. He hated that Kieran was touching her. He hated that she wasn't twisting away from the demon the way she had violently twisted away from him.

"Take your hands off her Kieran," Lucius spat, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low vibration that sounded entirely unhinged for a holy officer.

"Now why would I do that, Commander?" Kieran purred, a slow, incredibly toxic smirk cutting across his face as he deliberately leaned his head down closer to Ravelyn's. His icy eyes glinted with absolute amusement as he watched the angel literally lose his mind. The little princess is under me. If she wants to rearrange a few holy feathers because someone tried to poison her, I am entirely obligated to support her extracurricular activities."

Kieran looked down at Ravelyn, his smirk widening. "Though I must say, Princess, you really did a number on her robes. Pink really isn't her color anyway."

Ravelyn shrugged his hand slightly, though she didn't push him away entirely. The heavy, grounding chill of his Aether was actually keeping her burning core from exploding, and right now, anything that annoyed Lucius was a win in her book. "She has terrible taste in general. And her acting skills are even worse."

Behind Lucius, Seraphine’s jaw practically hit the mud as she watched the two boys completely ignore her existence to posture over a lower-ring Wraith.

"Lucius, look at them!" Seraphine shrieked, scrambling to her feet as she tried to wipe the dirt from her face. "They are actively mocking the inner sanctum right in front of you! Execute them both!"

Lucius didn't move. He kept his golden, furious stare entirely locked on Kieran’s hand, his chest heaving as the high academy horns blared once more in the distance. The battle was still raging, but the real war was standing right in front of him on the cracked stone path.