The silence that followed Rex's declaration was not empty; it was a pressurized vacuum, a heavy, suffocating weight that seemed to pull the very air from the lungs of everyone present. Apollo's gaze was a physical force, a searing interrogation of her soul.
He looked at Ignivara as if searching for the blood of the innocent still staining her hands, his eyes tracing the lines of her face for any sign of a lie.
Ignivara did not flinch. She met his gaze with a terrifying, crystalline clarity.
She didn't offer the soft eyes of a penitent or the hardened stare of a defiant soldier; she offered the raw, naked honesty of a woman who had looked into the abyss and finally understood the shape of the monster staring back.
"I know the price of my presence in this room," she said, her voice cutting through the tension like a shard of ice. "I know that my very breath here feels like an insult to those you have lost."
"I am not asking you to find my presence comfortable."
