Ignivara held his gaze for a heartbeat longer, the silence between them vibrating with the unspoken weight of their shared mission. Finally, she inclined her head not in submission but in the sharp, clinical nod of a soldier who had received her orders and was already mentally calculating the trajectory of their execution.
"Also," Rex said, his voice cutting through the stillness like a blade through silk, "the first thing you say in that room before a single word about Celestina, before a single detail about the Legion is a full, unvarnished account of the specific devastation the Legion's operations have inflicted upon the reincarnators over the last thirty years."
"And you will offer an apology for your personal role in that carnage."
Ignivara froze. The air seemed to thin.
To stand before the Academy and admit to being a cog in a machine of slaughter was to invite the very scrutiny she was trying to manage.
