[He knows she's spiraling and hurting as much as he is, and that the truth of what he felt would only hurt them more, but...

They've been hiding in these shadows for so long. They've assumed the feelings of the other for so long. If admitting everything would help paint the truth, no matter how painful it is, then so be it.

So there is a heavy pause before he speaks again.]

That's what I started to believe...and for a brief time after I left, I did think it might have been.

[That the words and lies were true. But if she could think the same of him, then it only makes sense that he would, too. For those doubts to take hold and sink in.]

But then... I would think if it were a lie, then it had been the most beautiful lie that I wished were true. Because it had to be true.

[He had his doubts. And there was a time when he looked back and wondered if she really had used him like the lies told him. If she hadn't had genuine feelings for him, that it was all to use him as a stepping stone to power. To their king.

But whenever he did look back, all he could see were her bright eyes, he smile, her laugh, her warmth, her voice—and he could not find any lie in it. It only changed the longer she stayed in Dhalmekia, but before those changes, before things got twisted—no, it wasn't a lie. It couldn't have been.

Or so he so desperately believed.

But now—]

Wasn't it?

[—it'll be his turn to question her.]