Rex went quiet. This wasn't the pause of a man who was offended.
It was the pause of a grandmaster looking at a chessboard, deciding which piece to sacrifice to win the game. He let the anger simmer in her eyes, letting the tension stretch until it felt like it might snap the very air between them.
"Kregg told you the only thing that mattered was identifying the most dangerous person in any room," Rex said, his voice calm, almost instructional. "You came to this island looking for Tremor."
"You thought he was the apex... The reports all pointed to Tremor as the primary threat: the dragon attack you've deployed, the geological shifts, and the transition of the Underlayer."
"You all assumed the storm was the man in the stone armor."
"It was misdirection," Ignivara whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of fury and dawning horror.
