Lysaria went silent.
Not the calm, composed kind of silent.
But the soul-crushed, ego-flattened kind.
Why did it feel like he had just pissed on her entire magical education... with a smirk and a dance?
She sat there, stiff as a statue, every word he'd said echoing in her skull.
Then why the hell didn't you cast a single damn spell when I kidnapped you?!
Gods.
The answer was both simple… and utterly humiliating.
Because she'd panicked.
Because she'd never been in an actual life-or-death situation before.
All her spellwork had been learned in velvet-curtained classrooms, not battlefields.
Her version of "danger" was a misfired levitation charm.
Not a masked lunatic smashing through guards and throwing her into a demon-carriage.
She'd frozen.
A prodigy—almost Rank 3—and she'd frozen.
Kael asked again, softer this time, "Lysaria…?"
She looked up at him, face pale.
So this was it?
This was the moment?
Not a secret confession.
Not a sudden proposal under the moonlight.
