The pain was unbearable.
Leon felt his body tear apart in slow motion, caught in the eruption of Eleanor's suicidal explosion. It wasn't just the physical agony, the searing of flesh, or the shattering of bone, it was the shame, the failure, and the regret that cut deeper.
In the eye of that dying storm, time stretched. Long enough for thoughts he hadn't wanted to face.
'I hesitated.'
He hadn't admitted it before, not even to himself. But when Eleanor emerged from the Basilisk, wild-eyed and trembling, he'd flinched. Somewhere inside him, he'd seen her not as an enemy, but as a broken comrade. A girl who had fought beside them. He didn't know what pushed her to this, what she had suffered to fall so far. Maybe he never would.
But in that moment, he'd held back.
He'd tried to spare her.
And now Elizabeth was going to die.
'Some protector I turned out to be,' he thought bitterly, as the light swallowed them both. 'What kind of boyfriend am I if I can't even protect my woman?'
