Shock! The one who waltzed with Queen Dreamlan was human—thunder crashing into a moonlit garden!

Unbelievable! The Fana Family fielded a human—mad folly or a net cast long ago?

Scorching! The queen’s rival in love—the thief of the human candidate’s heart—may be a lovesick First Generation Elf, asleep for a thousand winters!

First time unsealed: ultra‑close angle of a ballroom slip, petals flying—full record in the Kababak Gazette!

Adelaide saw the last two titles, and her smile froze like lacquer in frost. She slid her finger across a sigil‑etched slate, a stone phone glowing like a pond at dusk, and flicked the headlines away.

The first ball was half a month past, yet the stir it sparked burned like dry grass in wind. Instead of dying down, the fire licked higher.

That didn’t mean the Fana Family suddenly turned dark horse. Their votes doubled, yes, but they still looked like lanterns dwarfed by the bonfires of the Carne and Illuin Families. Yet public gaze was a different sky entirely, full of circling stars.

These days, the Elven Realm’s front pages were a single tide of ink: Queen Dreamlan, Adelaide, the “mysterious Elf,” and that misaligned kiss, rippling like koi in a crowded pond. Wild guesses—tame or outrageous—stormed the tea houses, a flock of sparrows shrilling on every branch. The heat drew commentary from every hill and river.

Among them, Lady Silan of the Carne Family bought a full page, a war banner of words snapping in the wind. She blasted the inexplicable human for showboating and scolded Fana for letting her run wild on the sacred Flower Dancer stage, demanding they both be stripped from the rite like weeds from a garden.

On the other side, pro‑Fana papers answered with drumfire. They called Adelaide’s selection proof of Fana’s forward mind, and let smoke signals rise between the lines, hinting at Her Majesty’s favor. Lady Silan’s reply cracked like a temple bell: Queen Dreamlan had been awake but a few decades; dragging her into politics was sacrilege, and should draw the law like a drawn blade.

So the two sides crossed swords with words for two weeks. Lesser families swooped in like starlings, pecking and clamoring, and the fever climbed to new peaks like dawn over mountains.

Yet in that wind‑whipped sea of opinion, the Illuin Family sat like an island of ice.

In theory, Illuin leaned neutral, not fire‑and‑water like Carne and Fana, but still a rival to Fana. Silence felt off, a drumbeat missing from the procession. Old Elf pundits, a thousand winters in their bones, guessed and parsed, their arguments flowing like spring water in stone channels.

What they didn’t know: silence isn’t stillness. It’s the held breath before the arrow flies.

Half a month later, Adelaide walked an evening bamboo path, the stalks whispering like green rain. Her heels tapped the stone slabs, drip‑drip like a steady shower. She scrolled the slate, but her blood‑red eyes drifted past the words like a boat past reeds.

Not because she suddenly noticed the sneaky echoes that tailed her whenever she left home. No—what pricked her skin was their vanishing, a chorus cut off like cicadas gone mute.

In other words, the paparazzi hunting for a big scoop had melted away, a stream diverted underground.

The eerie shift didn’t alarm her; it loosened her chest like mist leaving the pines. By the calendar in her head, the timing fit like a key in a lock.

She didn’t stop. She let the path carry her until a figure stepped into the lantern‑dim ahead, a shard of moonlight on the stones.

Adelaide looked up, let a gentle, poised smile bloom like tea, and bowed. “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Bingxia.”

Bingxia—first named to Adelaide by her clan leader—was the current head of the Illuin Family, an elder root among the oldest living Elves. Her face matched her name. Sun‑gold short hair lay crisp as cut wheat. Angular lines carved her features into a cool, androgynous beauty. That beauty wore frost: brows without curve, lips without arc. Then her deep violet eyes burned through, twin coals in winter snow. It was as if a god forgot to carve her feelings, then set two flames to carry her soul.

Mm. In person, the pressure hit like a glacier’s shadow. No wonder so few reporters dared bring questions to her door.

If the meeting with Queen Dreamlan had been a lake—smooth on top, all currents below—this gaze was a spear point. Just holding it pressed on the ribs like a heavy book.

These First Generation Elves are all flint and oil, Adelaide muttered inwardly, a cat arching under a stranger’s hand. Outward, she combed flat the itch of being measured from crown to heel, and kept her smile bright as porcelain.

Her calm without meekness put a small ripple through Bingxia’s violet eyes.

Then Bingxia offered her hand, pale as carved jade. “Good evening, Miss Adelaide.”

If Illuin sentries hadn’t swept the paparazzi away like leaves, this single scene would have swallowed headlines for days. A handshake was human etiquette, a bridge laid from one shore to another. An Elf—head of a major house—taking that step was a banner of goodwill. Her next words sealed it like wax.

“I’m here to invite you to join the Illuin Family.”

The words cut clean, a blade dipped in water. Her tone stayed level, but the iron under it brooked no refusal. The headline value flashed like lightning, enough to drop a weak‑hearted shutterbug.

Adelaide, with a heart that did mischief now and then, only raised a brow, playing at fluster like a feather in a breeze. “That is… quite the surprising invite.”

She said it while their hands met, warmth against marble. Inside, the water was still. She had read this weather long ago.

Before the ball, she knew her support wouldn’t surge like a spring flood. Her aim was never to hoist the Fana Family in one tide. The Flower Dancer election is solemn, braided tight with politics. A single misaligned kiss can’t turn mountains.

That didn’t matter to her. She only had to be the brightest lantern under the dome, the star every neck craned to see.

Yes, support follows banners and camps. But that didn’t stop her from dimming every other dancer to ash with sheer presence. Then every family would be forced to look her way, a hawk’s eye finding the one moving fish.

In short, someone would come to poach.

As she’d foreseen, Bingxia went on. “I know you want the Savia Rose. Wear this badge in public, and the Illuin Family will back you a hundredfold more than Fana.”

She opened her palm. A cloth brooch lay there, forget‑me‑nots stitched in dew‑blue, a small sky cupped in her hand.

“I hope you’ll give this invitation real thought, Miss Adelaide.”

Bingxia held her gaze, a bowstring drawn and waiting.

As she said, one of the ruling powers had thrown an olive branch across the stream. Resources and influence beyond Fana’s stood before Adelaide like a laden table. The Savia Rose stopped being a far star; it glittered like a shoreline within reach. The price was a simple one: take the brooch.

Yet faced with a deal no rain cloud shadowed, Adelaide didn’t reach. She let the moment breathe, then shook her head like a leaf refusing the wind.

Bingxia’s eyes widened a fraction, a crack through the ice. It wasn’t new fondness for Fana that stayed Adelaide’s hand, nor any deep belief in Fana’s creed.

Truth was, she had no plan to reject Bingxia. It was just that…

“I’ve got… a better proposal.”

Her words fell soft, a pebble plinking into a pond. Bingxia’s brow tensed by a hair, and she listened, still as pine.

“I don’t think the best move is me leaving Fana to join Illuin. On the contrary, the best move is Illuin dropping its own candidate and, together with Fana, backing me.”