Phaeld's Provocation
The banquet hall exploded into chaos before Jack could even process what had just happened.
Guests traded stunned, wide-eyed looks, positive they must have misheard.
Had Saria really just asked that raggedy dressed nobody to dance?
Had she lost her damn mind?
Low, disbelieving murmurs rippled through every corner of the room in seconds.
The young noble heirs clustered together, whispering furiously, convinced Saria had gone off the deep end. She was passing up an entire hall full of accomplished, blue-blooded talents for some worthless random?
The noble ladies, meanwhile, shot Saria looks of unfiltered contempt.
As far as they were concerned, she’d just voluntarily exiled herself from high society.
What she was doing was unforgivably humiliating. Dancing with a penniless commoner? The very idea was absurd.
Jack stood frozen under the weight of every mocking, disbelieving stare in the room, and he saw exactly what Saria was doing.
He knew, right then, that he couldn’t show even a flicker of fear.
Not for his own dignity, and not to let Saria’s well-intentioned move blow up in her face.
“Alright.”
With that thought, he gave a small nod and smiled back at her.
The two were just about to step onto the dance floor when
Phaeld finally snapped.
He stormed forward, throwing his arms out wide, his voice low and sharp with anger.
“Ms. Saria, with all respect—are you out of your mind right now?”
Saria’s tone was ice-calm. “I’m perfectly clearheaded, Mr.
Phaeld
. Is there a problem?”
“Damn right there’s a problem.”
Phaeld’s voice dropped to a heavy, menacing growl.
“That dance partner you picked? He’s just some random commoner who stumbled into a lucky break.
The only reason he’s even at this banquet is because the city lord took pity on him and extended a handout.
And you, Ms. Saria—you’re actually planning to dance with a man like that?”
He took a deep breath, his jaw tight with rage.
“Choosing him is a slap in the face to every single gentleman in this hall.”
Saria almost laughed out loud at the sheer audacity of the claim. She fixed him with a cold, unimpressed scoff.
“Oh, so I’m not allowed to pick my own dance partner now?
And on top of that…”
Her voice cut like a blade.
“I’m supposed to care about your little hurt feelings? Your father might have the standing to make that kind of demand. You don’t.”
Jack glanced over at Saria, taken aback by how brutally unforgiving her words were. A quiet jolt of surprise ran through him.
Her status was way higher than he’d guessed.
Phaeld’s father was the Bloodmoon Marquis, for god’s sake—even Lord Lawrence treated the man with the utmost deference.
Even if Saria was exaggerating a little, the fact that she dared talk to
Phaeld like that meant she outranked him by a mile, no two ways about it.
Sure enough,
Phaeld’s face went dark as pitch the second she finished speaking.
He stared daggers at her, his mouth opening and closing for a few seconds, but he couldn’t summon the guts to fire back.
Then his gaze snapped to Jack, who was standing next to Saria looking completely unfazed, and white-hot fury boiled up in his chest.
He ground his teeth so hard the sound was audible, and snarled directly at Jack.
“Jack, what kind of spineless coward are you? Hiding behind a woman’s skirt?”
Jack sighed quietly when he heard that. He’d known this kind of confrontation was coming sooner or later.
He’d been prepared to get targeted the second he walked through the banquet doors, anyway.
And
Phaeld had a point, too. If he kept letting Saria fight his battles for him, even if she didn’t mind, he’d never be able to respect himself.
He stepped forward immediately, squaring up to
Phaeld
, his voice cold and steady.
“Mr.
Phaeld
, you look like you’re in a pretty foul mood. Is it
‘cause you don’t have a dance partner?”
Phaeld froze. Then pure rage twisted his features.
Because Jack had hit the nail right on the head. He didn’t have a partner.
Virtually everyone at the banquet had locked in their dance dates weeks in advance.
Phaeld
, though, had set his sights on Saria from the very start.
Out of every noble woman in the room, Saria had the highest rank, the most talent, the most everything.
If he could dance with her, he’d be the undisputed star of the entire event, no contest.
And then she’d gone and picked Jack instead.
Now
Phaeld was the only grown man in the whole hall without a partner.
For someone as obsessed with saving face as
Phaeld
, that was unendurable. It was the whole reason he’d stormed over to stop their dance in the first place.
“Jack. Do you have the balls to face me one-on-one?”
Phaeld smacked the hilt of the longsword strapped to his hip, spitting the challenge out like venom.
Jack’s brow lifted. He replied, no trace of politeness in his tone:
“Only if you promise not to run home crying to your daddy the second you lose. Then I’d be happy to.”
“Arrogant little shit!”
Phaeld let out a cold, harsh laugh. He’d just unlocked a new combat skill, and was convinced his power had jumped a whole tier.
He put his odds of beating Jack at a solid ninety percent.
The two were standing on the edge of a full-blown brawl, seconds from drawing weapons, when a smooth, authoritative voice cut through the tension from across the room.
“You two certainly have enough fire between you to light the whole hall ablaze.”
Jack and
Phaeld both turned. There was Lawrence, walking down the grand staircase with a faint smile on his face, his tone carrying the unmistakable weight of authority.
“Lord Lawrence!”
Every guest in the hall bowed immediately the second they saw him.
Lawrence gave a small, acknowledging nod, then turned his gaze back to Jack and
Phaeld
, that faint, unreadable smile still on his face.
“This is a celebration I’m hosting tonight, not a gladiator arena.”
“Lord Lawrence, if you’re determined to let garbage like him stay here, then what’s the point of any of us even bothering to attend?”
Phaeld jabbed a finger straight at Jack, his voice sharp with indignation:
“My father spent decades bleeding on the battlefield for this Kingdom, fighting his way up from nothing so our family could stand above lowborn commoners like him.
He would never stand for seeing the legacy he built for our generation dragged down by having to associate with trash like this.”
Phaeld’s words landed exactly how he’d wanted them to. Heads nodded in agreement all across the hall.
Under the Eternal Law, the divide between social classes was rigid, uncrossable, absolute.
Nobles born into families like
Phaeld’s could look down on commoners like Jack openly, without a single ounce of shame or hesitation.
“
Phaeld
!”
Lawrence’s tone sharpened all at once, cutting through the murmurs.
“Jack barely even awakened his profession a few weeks ago, and you’re already demanding a duel with him?
Is that the kind of conduct befitting a noble heir?”
Phaeld’s mouth hung open, but no words came out.
He’d awakened his profession years before Jack, and the resources his family poured into his training were more than Jack could ever hope to see in a lifetime.
“Fine.”
Lawrence clapped his hands once, turning to
Phaeld with a measured look.
“One month from now. By then Jack will have had enough time to gain proper combat experience. You two can settle this in a formal, supervised duel. Does that work for you?”
“I don’t care when it is, as long as I get to beat the shit out of him.”
Phaeld agreed instantly, terrified Lawrence might backtrack on the offer.
Jack thought it over for half a second, then nodded his agreement too.
Truth be told, if he fought
Phaeld right then, his odds of winning were next to zero.
But every week that passed, he was only getting stronger.
By the time that duel rolled around, he’d have a real fighting chance.
“Good.”
Lawrence clapped his hands again, a satisfied smile on his face, formally acting as witness to their agreement.
“Jack. Come with me.”
Lawrence gestured for Jack to follow him up the stairs.
Jack was more than ready to get out of that suffocating, gawking crowd, but he still glanced over at Saria first, silently checking if she was alright with it.
Saria gave a small nod, then leaned in close to his ear and murmured so only he could hear:
“You still owe me that dance, by the way.”
Jack followed Lawrence up to the second floor, into a small, private sitting room.
It was one of the spaces Lawrence used for off-the-record conversations.
Lawrence settled into an armchair, looking up at Jack standing in front of him with that same faint, unreadable smile.
“My apologies. It seems tonight’s banquet hasn’t been the most welcoming for you.”
For all his words sounded like an apology, there wasn’t a single trace of guilt on his face.
It was clear Lawrence didn’t think the conflict between Jack and
Phaeld was even remotely a big deal.
Or maybe, in his eyes, a commoner like Jack getting jeered at by a bunch of nobles was just par for the course, nothing worth getting upset over.
“Not at all, my lord. For you to have stepped in and defused that situation, I’m already in your debt.”
Jack bowed slightly, his voice polite and even.
Lawrence nodded, idly twisting the coffee cup on the table in front of him, his tone calm and unhurried.
“One month from now. Do you honestly think you have any real shot at beating
Phaeld
?”
Jack paused for a second, thinking it over, then answered honestly:
“Of course I do.”
“Naive.”
Lawrence rapped his knuckles lightly on the table, his tone edged with faint exasperation.
“
Phaeld’s father is the Bloodmoon Marquis. His family has more resources at their disposal than you could possibly imagine. You’re a commoner by birth. What do you possibly have to compete with that?”
He sighed, shaking his head slightly.
“The reason I pushed your duel back a month is that right now, you wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against him.
Give it a month, and at least you’ll have a fighting chance.”
Jack’s first reaction to Lawrence’s words wasn’t gratitude. A faint, prickle of unease crept up his spine.
Was the city lord really as kind and well-meaning as he was making himself out to be?
Staring into Lawrence’s unreadable, steady eyes, Jack had a quiet, creeping feeling that there was a whole lot more going on here than met the eye.