Page 111 of Legacy Elite

Rescheduling notice: leadership rotation, Thursday

Security: revised movement protocol, please acknowledge

Request for meeting — legal office (property review)

Request for—

I put it face down on the arm of the couch.

"Enough."

Both of them look up.

"Was that at us?" Torres says.

"That was at the concept of correspondence."

"Fair."

Luke takes another drink. "Falken sent me the summary from this afternoon. If you want to know where the Draeven position is going to land—"

"No."

He stops.

"I don't want to talk about the Council," I say.

"All right."

"I don't want to talk about the Fourth House."

"All right."

"I don't want to talk about who owned what two hundred years ago, or the deeds, or the review, or what my blood means." My voice has gone somewhere I didn't send it. "Do you know how many people talked to me today? Properly talked. Not Miss Miller. Not a title I haven't been given. Four. It was four."

Torres has turned round. He's got one arm up on the couch cushion by my leg.

"I want one hour," I say, "where nobody wants anything from me because of what I am."

Nobody says anything for a second.

Then Torres says, "We don't."

"Torres—"

"No, I mean it. That's not me being nice." He looks up at me. "I didn't know what you were. Nobody did. I was a foster kid in a bad school with a secret and you sat down next to me anyway on the first day, before any of this, when there was nothing to get." He shrugs one shoulder. "So there's nothing for me to want off you. There never was. I already got it."

And Luke — who has been very still — puts his glass down.

"I met you before you knew what wolf politics even were," he says. "I've been political about you since about week three, and you've been correct to hate it, and I'd like to say clearly that not one part of what I feel arrived in a records office." He looks at me steadily. "You were the most interesting thing on this campus when you were nobody, Jessica."

The room is very quiet.

I get up off the couch.

Torres tips his head back to watch me. Luke doesn't move at all.

And I cross the room, and take Luke's face in my hands, and kiss him.