Page 119 of Legacy Elite

"That's the most annoying thing anyone has ever said to me," I say. "And I've had a very competitive year."

"I'm aware," Soren says, with a quick grin.

"When?"

He doesn't answer.

"Soren. When?"

"Soon," he says.

And I want to cry, but I let it go.

We walk back toward the shed and neither of us is right.

I know my face is wrong. I can feel it. My hair's come out of everything and my mouth feels used and there's a scrape down my forearm from the equipment rack that I did not notice acquiring.

Soren looks completely normal, except he doesn't, because I know him now. There's a set to his shoulders that isn't usually there and he hasn't said a word in ninety seconds and he keeps flexing his right hand.

Then he stops and takes my wrist.

"I did this."

"It's a scrape."

"It's a scrape with rust in it." He turns my forearm to the light, thumb bracketing the underside of my wrist, entirely clinical. "Get it looked at or I’ll find you and you won’t like it."

"Yes, Professor."

"Don't."

"Sorry. Yes, Evren."

"Absolutely not," Soren says.

And that's when Luke comes through the gate.

He's got his coat over one arm and his tie gone and the expression of a man who has spent four hours in a meeting room, and he says, "There you are, I've been all over this campus after meeting with the lawyers—"

"I was doing gates."

"You were doing what?"

"Gates. There's a gate. It's four feet." I turn toward him, and Soren's hand is still on my wrist, and Luke is already reaching for me the way he always does, hand coming to the side of my neck as he leans in—

And he touches me.

It hits like a struck match.

Heat goes up my arm and across my chest and detonates somewhere under my collarbone, and my whole body locks — my knees go, actually go — and there's a sound out of me that is not a word, and my wrist burns, one hard bright line of pain like a wire pulled tight under the skin.

Somebody's holding me up. Two somebodies.

Then it stops.

And the field is very quiet, and there are three men breathing hard, and I'm looking down at my own arm.

Three arcs.