"Dumb."
The word escaped me before I could stop it.
Lucian went completely still, as though the air itself had pressed a pause on him. His gaze did not harden, and he did not pull away from me, he simply stared, caught somewhere between surprise and the weight of the memory he had just exposed.
I looked down at my hands, my fingers tightening together in my lap.
"She must be lucky," I said, my voice quieter than I expected. "To be the one you loved so much that you were willing to break every rule for her. To be the one who mattered so much that you would trust a fairy with her life."
A small breath slipped out of me, "That you were willing… to be this dumb."
He still didn't move. And somehow, the silence he gave me weighed heavier than any response.
I forced myself to keep going.
"You don't do things like that for someone unless you've already given them everything inside you," I whispered. "You don't tear your own future apart unless you're trying to save someone else's."
