Page 126 of Legacy Elite

"That's not what this is."

"Then tell me what it is, Ander, because from where I'm standing you've spent three days pretending I don't exist because a mark appeared on my arm that I didn't ask for—"

"Because I watched it happen," he says.

That stops both of us.

"I watched it happen," he says again, quieter. "You understand that? I stood twenty feet away and watched it come up on your skin, and I knew — before Draeven said a word, before either of them moved — I knew exactly what it was and exactly what it meant. And I've known since your first year what it means about me. And I have spent every single day since deciding that it doesn't."

"And how's that going?"

"Badly," Ander says. "Obviously."

He puts his coat down.

"My whole life was already mapped out," he says. "All of it. House Ardent. The years abroad, then the seat, then the work. What I'd be doing at thirty. Who I'd be doing it with." He looks at me. "Linnea. Nobody ever sat me down and told me that. Nobody had to. Our families have worked together for six generations, and she's the most competent person I've ever met, and it made sense, and everybody could see it coming from about a mile off."

"And you wanted it."

"I don't know," Ander says.

He says it flatly, and it's the most honest thing I've ever heard out of his mouth.

"That's the real answer. I don't know, because nobody ever asked me, and I never had to ask myself." His hand goes out at nothing. "But it was mine. I'd had my entire life to make it mine. I knew what came next."

"Until me."

"Until this."

And he catches it. I watch him catch it, half a second after he's said it, and he doesn't take it back.

"I've spent my whole life being told what House Ardent requires of me," he says. "I'm not handing that over to fate so it can start issuing a different set of orders."

And for a moment — genuinely, for about a second and a half — I understand him completely.

Oh.

And then the rest of it arrives, which is that he's still being an absolute arsehole about it.

"Right," I say. "So which orders am I?"

"What?"

"You just named two things that get to tell you what to do. Your House." I hold up a finger. "And fate."

"That's not—"

"And when you say fate, Ander, you're looking at me."

He goes very still.

"You keep talking about this like it's a demand," I say. "Like there's a document. Like somebody's at your door with a form. And every single time you say it, you say it to my face."

"Jessica—"

"So say the rest of it. Go on. Say what you actually mean, which is that I'm the thing that showed up and wrecked it."

"I didn't say—"