"It was —" he stopped short with a sigh. How did you tell one of your best friends — your boyfriend, one of the people you were in love with — that you'd indirectly lied to them about such a huge thing? Ignis realized then that he was just as scared at his friends' potential anger at him, their hurt over him not trusting them with the complete truth, as he was about letting go emotionally. It was all so overwhelming, it was all entirely too much, and for a brief moment Ignis was angry about all of it. About no one ever telling Noct what his destiny might be. About leaving the entire mess on Noct's shoulders, expecting him to go along with fate, to accept it and just — die
But he couldn't think of that. Not that night.
And he was angry for himself, that no one had saw fit to warn him about the dangers they might face. Gladio might have been the Shield, but Ignis was just as much Noct's protector, he always had been, and when faced with Ardyn, and the Ring, and the end of the world, he'd been left to try to scrape the pieces together in a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. Oh, he'd chosen not to share that burden with Gladio and Prompto, that was on him, but if Regis or Cor or anyone had taken one bloody second to make even a vague warning, he could have at least steeled himself for it all. Prepared. They all could have.
"Ardyn was not what blinded me," Ignis confessed after another long silence, unable to look directly at Prompto. If there was going to be anger, he didn't want to see it. Not yet. "All of you assumed it was, and it was… easier, I suppose, not to correct anyone, than to talk about what I did."
There was another pause, then, "How much do you know about Noct's ring? The Ring of the Lucii?" he asked.