Aeliana felt… strange.
The room, the voices, the weight of her father's glare—none of it fully registered. It was as if her mind had split into two: one half replaying Madeleina's words over and over, the other fixating on Lucavion's unsettling ease as he had spoken.
Madeleina's voice still echoed in her skull. "She took and took and took—until there was nothing left of you!"
Aeliana's jaw clenched.
It wasn't true.
No—it wasn't that simple.
What else could she have done? What would Madeleina have done, if she were the one trapped in that sickbed? If she were the one who had spent years suffocating under everyone's expectations, unable to change anything, unable to be anything other than what they saw?
It was easy to speak from the outside.
Easy to judge.
Aeliana exhaled sharply through her nose, shaking off the lingering weight of those thoughts. Enough.
