The silence that followed was absolute.
Morwenna searched Valentina's face, looking for the lie, looking for the crack in the armor, and looking for the shadow of the enemy. She found nothing but the woman she had known for forty years, a woman who was as terrifyingly honest as she was formidable.
Slowly, Morwenna lowered her gaze. She looked down at the obsidian table, her eyes tracing the dark, reflective surface.
She said nothing. And in that silence, in the heavy, unsaid acknowledgment of the truth, the council felt the first real breath of stability return to the room.
Rex swept his gaze across the room, his eyes moving like a general surveying a battlefield after the smoke had cleared, looking for the wounds that hadn't yet begun to bleed.
"This network," he began, his voice cutting through the heavy silence like a scalpel, "is the very thing the Legion has been trying to dismantle for thirty years."
