The words hung in the air between them, heavy with the weight of his confession. Isabelle felt as though the ground had shifted beneath her feet, leaving her unsteady, disoriented. She had expected anger, defiance, maybe even resignation, but not this... raw, brutal honesty. It was as if he had laid his soul bare before her, exposing the darkest parts of himself, the parts he had kept hidden for so long.
Her first instinct was to deny it, to argue that she could never hate him, no matter what he had done. But the words caught in her throat, lodged there like a stone. How could she say that when she had felt that flicker of something close to it herself? When she had stood outside his cell, torn between love and betrayal, torn between the man she knew and the monster he had become?
