Rex approached the question with the same calmness he applied to most matters, embodying the demeanor of someone who had firmly established his viewpoint and was not inclined to alter it due to external pressures.

"Mara and Marceline are adults who understood their own situations," Rex said. "Their husbands understand their situations to the extent that they have chosen to comprehend them."

"The things that happen under this roof are not things I arranged without consent or without everyone involved making their own decisions."

"That is a very clear description of a situation that is actually quite messy," Elizabeth said.

"Most situations aren’t clean," Rex said. "The description doesn’t change the situation."

"It just describes it accurately."

Elizabeth looked at him. "Their husbands."

"What about them?" Rex said.

"They are going to raise children who are not theirs," Elizabeth said. "That is a consequence."

"That is not an abstraction. There are children involved now and two men who do not know what they are walking into, and you’re telling me the situation was clean because everyone who was present in this room made their own decisions."

"I’m telling you the situation was honest between the people who were in it," Rex said. "What the husbands know or don’t know is a decision Mara and Marceline made."

"That’s not a decision I made for them."

"You could have declined," Elizabeth said.

"I could have," Rex replied, his tone lacking any defensiveness. Elizabeth found this demeanor more challenging to counter than if he had reacted with defensiveness.

She sat down on the edge of the chair and looked at the window for a moment. Outside, Aethelgard had fully committed to morning now, the streets producing the sounds of a city that had remembered it had things to do.

"You’re not going to apologize for it," Elizabeth said.

"No," Rex said. "It wouldn’t be honest."

"You’re not even going to pretend to feel bad about it."

"No," Rex said. "That also wouldn’t be honest."

"Who cares anyway?" Rex laughed. "I get what I want, and you already feel it right?"

Elizabeth glanced back at him. He stood in the center of the room, fully dressed, his expression unchanged as usual—an expression that suggested he was effortlessly present in whatever space he occupied.

"You knew I was going to go down to that kitchen," Elizabeth said. "You knew they’d tell me."

"I thought it was likely," Rex said.

"And you left me to have that conversation without any warning."

"If I’d warned you," Rex said, "you’d have had a version of the conversation in your head before you had the real one."

"The version in your head would have been different from the real one in ways that mattered."

"This way, you had the actual conversation."

Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment. "That is an extraordinarily convenient justification."

"It’s the true one," Rex said.

She stood up again, which she appeared to do when she needed to do something with her body while her mind worked, and she crossed to the window and looked at the street below.

"There is something else I need to ask you," she said to the window.

"Spill it," Rex said.

She paused for a moment, and when she finally spoke, her voice carried the distinct quality of someone who needed to be precise, as if clarity were essential for her to express the thought.

"Last night," she said. "Neither of us was thinking about consequences."

Rex said nothing.

"I was not thinking about consequences," Elizabeth said, more specifically, in the tone of someone declining to speak for another person when they can only confirm their own state with accuracy. "And I need to know whether that’s something I need to address in the next few days or whether—"

She stopped.

"Whether it resolves itself," Rex said.

"Yes," Elizabeth said.

Rex moved to stand beside her at the window. He stood not too close to invade her space, but close enough for her to hear him clearly when he spoke quietly.

"Probably nothing," Rex said.

"Probably," Elizabeth said. "Not certainly."

"Not certainly," Rex agreed.

She didn’t say anything for a moment. She was looking at the street below as if she were paying attention, but her focus was elsewhere.

"And if it wasn’t anything," Elizabeth said. "What does that look like for you?"

"It looks like what it looks like," Rex said. "I don’t arrange for things to not exist."

Elizabeth turned to look at him. "That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only honest answer I have," Rex said. "I don’t know what it would look like in practice because the specifics would be yours to determine."

"I would not make that determination for you, and I would also not absent myself from it."

"Like the situation downstairs," Elizabeth said.

"Correct, Professor," Rex said. "Like the situation downstairs."

Elizabeth looked at him for a long time. "Please don’t call me that again... I keep remembering those scary moments."

"Bear with it."

She had the expression of someone who had followed a line of reasoning to a conclusion they did not particularly want to reach. Now, she stood at that conclusion, contemplating what to do with the fact that it was the inevitable outcome of her thoughts.

"That’s not something you’re worried about," she said. "The possibility."

"No," Rex said.

"Because you have two women downstairs already in that situation, and you are apparently fine."

"Because I’m not someone who responds to the possibility of a life by treating it as a threat," Rex said. "That’s a different thing from fine."

Elizabeth looked back out the window.

"Alexander," she said, and she said it not as a segue but as the word itself, just his name, in the voice of someone who was placing something they needed to keep visible.

"What about that, dumbass?" Rex said.

She was quiet.

"He’s going to keep carrying the key," Rex said, not unkindly. "You know that."

"He’s going to find another reason why now isn’t the moment to stop."

"And while he’s doing that—"

"Don’t," Elizabeth said.

Rex stopped.

She turned from the window and faced him, and her expression was not angry, but it was precise in the way of something that had been sharpened.

"Don’t finish that sentence," she said. "I know what you were going to say, and I know it’s accurate, and I am asking you not to say it all, please!"

Rex said nothing.

"I am going to manage the review process," Elizabeth said. "I am going to handle Lady Valentina and the intelligence and the name you’re holding."

"I am going to stay at the Starlight household for the next week, and I am going to tell Alexander something that is accurate enough to hold." She said each word with the flat delivery of someone listing things they have already decided on. "I am going to do all of that."

"I know," Rex said.

"And I am going to need you to not say certain things to me while I’m doing it," she said. "Because they are the kinds of things that are easier to act on when someone has said them out loud."

"And once someone has said them out loud, you can’t pretend they weren’t said."

Rex looked at her. "Hmph."

"All right," he said.

She held his gaze for a moment. Then she let out a breath that was neither a sigh nor a laugh, but something in between that had no precise name.

"I went downstairs for coffee," she said. "I came back with considerably more than coffee."

"The kitchen tends to do that," Rex said.

"I noticed," Elizabeth said.

She turned to pick up the document from the table and tucked it into her jacket. When she turned back around, Rex was watching her with his usual expression—the look of someone who was simply present and paying attention.

She became aware of how close they were standing. She had returned from the window without realizing it, and the room was small, while Rex was not a small person.

"Stop," she said.

"What the fuck...?" Rex said. "I didn’t do anything."

"You were about to say something," Elizabeth said.

"I wasn’t," Rex said. However, he was observing her with a particular intensity that conveyed multiple meanings without the need for words.

Elizabeth took one step back, which put her at a more professional distance, and straightened her jacket again, which was already straight.

"The review is this afternoon," she said.

"I know," Rex said.

"I’ll be at the Academy by the tenth bell," she said. "I’ll send word when Lady Valentina has confirmed the time."

"I’ll be there," Rex said.

She nodded once, which was the decisive nod of someone closing a meeting, and moved toward the door.

"Elizabeth," Rex said when she had her hand on the frame.

She stopped but didn’t turn around.

He came to stand behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him without him touching her, and he said, very quietly, close enough to her ear that the words were more breath than sound.

"The key has Alexander in the prison of guilt, and that’s going to be true for a long time," Rex smirked. "I’m not going anywhere."

He paused.

"Neither are you," he said.

Elizabeth stood very still.

The gooseflesh started at the back of her neck and moved down her arms in a slow, deliberate wave, the kind that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with something she was not going to name.

She did not turn around.

"I know, Rex," she said, and her voice was entirely composed, which was the achievement she was most professionally proud of in recent memory. "I just hope that we could find a way without having to do that again..."

"We’ll just see."