"Cedric," she said, "I followed Luca. Not Lucavion. Don't twist them together just because—"
"They're the same man," Cedric snapped—not loudly, but with a rawness that carved into the space between them. "And they always were. You just didn't see it."
The words sunk through her like icewater.
He wasn't wrong. Not entirely.
But he wasn't right, either.
Her throat tightened, frustration and hurt and anger all intertwining at once. Cedric wasn't accusing her of betrayal—she knew that—but the shadow of that implication felt close enough to sting.
Elara felt the heat in her chest spike—sharp, immediate, impossible to smother this time.
"So you think I'm blind?" she asked, her voice low but no longer steady. "That I followed him because I suddenly stopped remembering what he did to me?"
Cedric's posture tightened. "That's not what I said."
"But it's what you meant."
