Morwenna fell silent. The air between them was no longer just cold; it was toxic, saturated with the unspoken reality of what Rex had just confessed.
She wasn't angry anymore; anger was a human reaction, a reaction born of hope that things could be better. What she felt now was something far more corrosive: the dawning horror of understanding.
"You made a calculation," she said.
Her voice was hollow, stripped of its authority, sounding like wind whistling through a tomb.
"Yes," Rex replied.
His tone was disturbingly pleasant, the casual cadence of a man discussing a successful investment.
"And the civilians, the people bleeding out in the street, the children whose lives you just shattered—they were part of that calculation."
Rex turned his head slightly, studying her profile. A shadow of something predatory flickered across his features, not quite a smile, but a tightening at the corners of his mouth that suggested a deep, private amusement.
