"Let her speak," Rex said.
The words were quiet, but they possessed a tectonic force. It was the first time he had opened his mouth since the name had been uttered, and the specific, heavy resonance of his voice acted like a gravitational pull in the room's existing silence.
He had calculated the effect with surgical precision: he didn't want the sharp, jarring cut of an interruption that would provoke more defensiveness; he wanted the low, settling quality of a landslide, something that reorients the entire landscape without having to scream for attention.
Every eye in the room snapped to him.
Rex was standing now. He hadn't made a grand, theatrical gesture; he had simply risen during the chaotic fracturing of the council, a slow, inevitable movement like a tide coming in.
