Rex said nothing. His silence was not a refusal to answer but a predator's assessment, a cold, analytical void that mirrored the emptiness in Theo's eyes.
He watched the boy, not as a person, but as a phenomenon of collapsing grief and rising divinity.
"You did not even try to hide it," Theo said. The words were clipped and precise. "That is the part that I kept thinking about."
"You weren't careful... You didn't pretend to be anything other than what you are."
"You just walked into every corner of my life, and you dismantled it."
"You did it in front of me, and you did it without even bothering to look at me the way you don't look at furniture when you're rearranging a room."
Theo's voice remained terrifyingly level. There was no tremor of rage, no crack of sorrow.
It was the flat, mechanical delivery of a man who had rehearsed his eulogy and his revenge until they became indistinguishable.
