"The intelligence needed to reach you before it reached anyone else." Rex said, "That's true regardless of what else is true."
"And what else is true," Valentina said.
"That there are forty-three dead reincarnators and a relay network that is still operational and a contact inside the Aurelian Compact whose identity you don't have," Rex said. "And that if the name Celestina Von Starlight reaches the wrong channel before you have time to manage it, it will not stay contained."
"It transforms into an institutional scandal. It raises questions about what the Von Starlight family was aware of and when they knew it."
"It becomes an issue that impacts Elizabeth, Helena, and your grandchildren in ways unrelated to their own actions."
Valentina was very still.
"I'm not telling you anything you haven't already thought of in the last four minutes," Rex said.
"No," she said quietly. "You're not."
