Page 121 of Legacy Elite

It isn't rage. That's the thing that frightens me. I've seen Ander Ardent furious — it's loud and it's cold. This isn't that. Whatever is happening on his face right now is something coming apart at the seams, and he isn't fast enough to get it under control.

"Ander," Luke says. Warning.

Ander looks at Soren.

"You couldn't wait," he says.

Soren doesn't let go of my hand.

"That isn't how it works," he says.

"Isn't it."

"You know it isn't."

"Don't."

And it's out of him too loud, and it rings off the shed wall, and even Ander looks slightly appalled at himself.

"That's not fair," I say.

Because it isn't.

"Nobody did anything, Ander. It's not a decision. It's not a—" I hold my wrist up. "This isn't a plan. Nobody arranged it. It happened in a field because Luke came to tell me something about lawyers."

Ander looks at the mark.

And he recoils.

Not much. A quarter-step, the sort of movement you'd make from a hot pan, and he covers it immediately, and every single person in this field sees it.

"Ander—"

"Don't," he says.

"Would you just—"

"Not now," Ander says.

And he goes.

Straight through the gate, through the door at the end of the equipment shed, and the door bangs off the wall and swings and doesn't latch, and the sound of it goes on for a while.

I don't go after him.

That's a decision. I feel it cost something, and I make it anyway — because I've spent long enough chasing that man's opinion of me around this campus. I'm not doing it now.

Luke says, very carefully, "I'll talk to him."

"Will that help?"

"No," Luke says, and goes anyway.

Which leaves the field, and the wrecked gate post, and me, and Soren.

He hasn't moved.

Through all of it — the shouting, the door, Luke leaving — Soren has stayed exactly where he was with my hand in his, and he hasn't looked at the shed once.