By confessing it himself, freely, before anyone could reveal it, Silas transformed it from a damning secret into a disclosed mistake, and disclosed mistakes do not convict people.

The brothers had shared the same starting material — an old failure, a hidden shame — and made opposite choices with it.

Dorian had spent his life hiding things and weaponizing the hidden things of others.

Silas, in one hard moment, chose the light.

It did not make him innocent of carelessness, and he never claimed it did.

But it made him something Dorian could never be, which was a man whose worst secret could no longer be used against him, because he had set it down in the open where it lost all its power.