Chapter 817: His Thought Process
Chapter 817: His Thought Process
After speaking with Sheila the previous evening, Liam had first considered handling the matter in the most direct way available.Sheila’s concern about Chris had not sounded foolish. That alone made it worth more attention than Liam wanted to give it. If she had been anxious over nothing, he could have dismissed it, given some practical statement, and gone back to avoiding the entire leadership problem.
But Sheila had not been worried because of pride or insecurity alone. She had been thinking ahead. She understood that the second-years’ surface unity could break under pressure, and she understood that Chris still had enough influence among certain students to become useful or troublesome depending on how the practical exam unfolded.
At first, Liam had thought he might need to identify the students who still rooted for Chris, the ones who wanted nothing to do with Sheila’s leadership, and whatever quiet loyalties remained hidden beneath the polite obedience of the last two months. He had also considered finding out what Chris himself had been doing lately. Whether he had been meeting with anyone, speaking to certain students, gathering support, or simply waiting for the right moment to become irritating again.
Then Liam decided that was too much work.
Not impossible. Merely not worth the time it would take if done that way.
Tracking multiple students, sorting their loyalties, observing their interactions, and identifying the shape of Chris’s remaining influence would have required patience, time, and a willingness to involve himself deeper in second-year politics than he cared to. Even with Nyxie, it would have been inconvenient.
The practical exams were already approaching, his own training remained a priority, theory exams waited in two weeks, Seraphina was now far too interested in his report, and he still had his own matters to handle. Spending days untangling Chris’s little circle sounded like stepping into a swamp to confirm it was wet.
So he had taken time to think of the easiest way to get what he wanted.
Eventually, he found it.
Lucian Kellor.
Lucian had been near Chris often enough to matter, but he had never felt the same as Logan. Logan, Chris’s other lackey, was simple in a way Liam found tedious. He liked proximity to power, liked being seen near it, and liked borrowing arrogance from someone higher than himself because he had none worth respecting on his own. Lucian was different. He still stood beside Chris, still followed him, still acted within that circle, but something about him had never settled into the shape of true loyalty.