Lucian stepped closer, his tone urgent. “You shouldn’t be speaking yet, Serena. Rest...”
Yet she raised a hand, silencing him before his concern could strangle her resolve. She turned to Killian, her features exposed and resolute. "You've seen it now. The truth I bled to show you. You know I wasn't lying. Lucian had no hand in Edward's death. It was the rogue. You saw through my eyes. You saw everything."
Her voice trembled, not with weakness but with the very intensity of her desire for him to believe, to embrace what she had gambled everything to reveal to him.
Killian's jaw tightened, his eyes dark as though he carried both the burden of what he had witnessed and the anger of having doubted her. He nodded his head in the barest of nods, an acceptance that did nothing to ease the str
