Page 125 of Legacy Elite

Not deliberately. There's a corridor behind the long room and a doorway that isn't shut, and I'm going past it with my coat over my arm when I catch Ander's voice, low and clipped, and then a second voice I recognize from a round chamber.

Caspian.

I should keep walking. I don't.

"—not the political question," Caspian is saying. "The political question is being handled by people who are paid to handle it. I'm asking about the other one."

"There isn't another one."

"There is, and everybody in that room this afternoon knew there was." A pause. "Linnea deserves clarity."

"Nothing has changed."

"Ander."

"Nothing has changed."

"Three of them," Caspian says, quietly. "Yesterday there were two. Your father's asked me twice this week what I think, and I've told him twice that I don't know, and I'd very much like to stop lying to my brother about my own nephew."

Silence.

"Your responsibility isn't only to yourself," Caspian says. "That's all. That's the whole of what I came to say, and I've said it badly, and I'd like it noted that I argued for the Miller girl in the chamber last week and I'll do it again."

"I know you did."

"Then think about it. Not tonight. Think about it properly." Something shifts — a hand on a shoulder, maybe. "And speak to the girl. Whichever girl. Both of them, ideally. They've each got exactly as much information as I have, which is none, and neither of them deserves that."

I get about ten steps down the corridor before the door opens behind me.

"You heard that," Ander says.

I turn around.

"Some of it."

"How much?"

"Enough."

He stands there in the corridor with his coat in his hand and his jaw clenches, and I watch him decide.

"Fine," he says. "Say it."

"Say what?"

"Whatever you've been holding since yesterday. You've been carrying it around like a hot plate. Say it and let's be finished."

And that — after three days of not here and I have somewhere to be — is what finally does it.

"Okay," I say. "You're angry at me."

"I'm angry at this."

"You keep saying that while looking directly at me."

"Because you're the one standing there!"

"Yes! I am! I'm standing here because I have been standing here for a year and a half while you decide whether that's acceptable to you—"