Lucian turned his head, his gaze locking onto hers. The chaos of the battlefield, the shrieking of the wind, the distant, muffled explosions of mana, and the rhythmic, heavy thud of Corvus struggling against his icy shackles seemed to recede into a dull, distant roar.
In this tiny, fragile pocket of silence, there was only the girl beside him and the terrifying truth in her eyes.
He didn't try to offer a warrior's platitude. He didn't tell her it would be fine or that they were winning.
To do so would have been a lie, and they were past the point of lying.
"Me too," he said.
The admission slipped from his lips with a startling, effortless honesty that caught even him off guard. For weeks, Lucian had been a master of compartmentalization.
