Chapter 476: 476. A Little Twist, But I Know Those Starlight Have An Insane Lore

Valentina stood up.

She was across the desk and moving toward him before he had fully finished the sentence. For a moment, Rex assessed the specific quality of her movement—the involuntary speed of someone who has had something touch a nerve that controls the whole system.

He remained exactly where he was, which he knew was the correct choice.

"How did you come by that name?!" she exclaimed, her voice losing its usual measured quality. Though not entirely stripped of control, there was enough tension for Rex to sense the underlying emotion.

"Kregg," Rex replied as he had anticipated. "Before he died, he entrusted me with the name, the document, and the ring, and then the engagement concluded."

"He confirmed it twice," Rex said. "Once under pressure and once voluntarily."

"That name," Valentina said, "is not a name that leaves this room."

"That’s why I came here first," Rex said. "Before Elizabeth, before the review, before anyone else."

"Because I know that you probably know who Celestina really is..."

She looked at him with the full force of an evaluation that was not the one she applied to students or to professional contacts but the one she apparently reserved for situations where the stakes had shifted into a register she took seriously.

"You know what that name means," she said.

"I know it’s a Von Starlight," Rex said. "I know she founded an organization that has operated for thirty years to eliminate reincarnators from Erosyne."

"I know she’s operating from a kingdom called Solmordia that doesn’t appear on public maps." He held Valentina’s gaze steadily. "I know that the name is the most sensitive piece of information I brought back from that canyon, and that how it’s handled in the next several weeks will determine whether it’s an asset or a liability."

Valentina looked at him for a long moment. Then she turned and walked to the window and stood with her back to him, looking at the water.

"The Key," she said. "Alexander told me it was lost in the canyon."

"Oh? He managed to tell you that, huh?"

"Well, guess what? It was destroyed," Rex said. "Not lost."

"I can explain the operational reason if you want it now."

"The Legion had it and was prepared to move it," Rex said. "Their relay network would have been notified before we cleared the canyon system."

"Retrieving the item was feasible; however, ensuring that it remained intact and secure during the return was not possible due to the timeline and the monitoring infrastructure outlined by Kregg." He paused. "The decision was made in the field."

"By you," Valentina said, still facing the window.

"Yes," Rex said.

"Not by Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth was not in the canyon at that point," Rex said.

Valentina was silent, processing the information as capable individuals often do: not with haste or theatrics, but through a sustained internal effort that remained concealed beneath the surface.

"Alexander was responsible for the Key at the time of its destruction," Rex stated. "He made an error. Since the incident, Elizabeth has been shouldering that burden."

He let a beat pass.

"If the review process focuses on Alexander’s mistake as the cause, Elizabeth carries it too," Rex said. "If the review understands the operational context, the decision to deny the Legion continued access to the artifact can be framed accurately."

Valentina turned around. Her expression had settled back into something more composed, though the composure was sitting over a different substrate than it had been when he entered the room.

"You came here," she said, "with the name that will determine how my family has to operate for the foreseeable future, with the intelligence that will define the next phase of the Legion investigation, with the account that protects my daughter’s reputation, and with a destroyed artifact that needs a political solution."

Valentina’s expression was neither anger nor fear, but it contained elements of both beneath a controlled surface that seemed to be working harder than anything Rex had observed from her during the briefing up to that moment.

"Who else heard it?" she said.

"No one," Rex said. "The exchange was private."

"The expedition team—"

"Your expedition team was not present for the final phase of the interrogation," Rex said. "The name was revealed during a one-on-one exchange, and Kregg selected his moment with great care."

’Even though that ice princess is there... I fucking bet she won’t tell her after what happened to her because of me.’

Valentina studied him with the intense scrutiny of someone weighing the truth of a statement, fully aware that the consequences of her decision could be significant. Then she sat back down, this time with deliberation, reflecting the choice of someone who understood that standing was not aiding her thought process.

"She is my sister," Valentina said.

She expressed it as if saying something that had remained unspoken for a very long time, and the quality of her words shifted from the professional tone she had maintained throughout the briefing. It wasn’t quite confessional. It was more like the careful release of a truth that had been held under pressure for so long that the muscles had forgotten what it felt like to relax.

’Fucking knew it.’

"And to confirm it even further..."

"She’s my half-sister," she added. "She was born eight years before me and has a different mother."

"My father acknowledged her but then took significant steps to ensure that acknowledgment remained hidden from the public record."

Rex said nothing.

"She was talented," Valentina said. "More talented than me, in several disciplines, and she knew it."

"Our father knew it and did not act on it in the ways she needed him to." She paused. "She left Aethelgard thirty-two years ago."

"I only received one letter. After that, nothing."

"And you knew she hadn’t simply left," Rex said.

Valentina looked at him.

"I suspected," she said. "Not the extent of what she had built. Not the scale of it. But I sensed the direction."

"Because you knew her," Rex said.

"Because I knew what our father’s choices had made her," Valentina said, and the precision in her voice had a different quality now, something older and more worn in it. "The reincarnators who started arriving in significant numbers twenty-five years ago—those who entered Aethelgard wielding power they hadn’t earned and claiming positions that should have taken decades to attain—she held strong opinions about what they symbolized."

"What they displaced. What they took from those who had dedicated their lives to building something, only to have a newcomer arrive and effortlessly surpass it." She paused. "While she wasn’t entirely incorrect about the displacement, she was utterly misguided about the solution."

Rex looked at her with the focused attention of someone carefully receiving information. ’Interesting...’

"Do you even know that forty-three reincarnators were eliminated," he said. "Over thirty years."

"I know the number," Valentina said.

"Ohh, I see how it is... You’ve been tracking her but didn’t tell anyone about it."

"I’ve been monitoring what I could from a distance, without having enough information to take action." She met his gaze directly. "Until now."

Rex held her gaze and said nothing.

"Rex Rexilion," her voice had the quality of someone who had decided a thing and was now delivering the result of that decision. "I need to understand your position precisely."

"You came to me with this directly, without going through standard review channels, without bringing Elizabeth into the room."

"You gave me the intelligence in full and held nothing back." She paused. "That is not the behavior of someone who intends to use this as leverage."

"But you are also not an honor student who does things without a reason, and I have been watching you operate in this institution long enough to know the difference between a person who acts on instinct and a person who acts on calculation."

’Huh. She’s quite keen about it.’

’So much for a grandma.’