Page 153 of Legacy Elite

He didn't rescue me. I didn't need rescuing. He corrected a fact in a room where correcting it cost him something and nobody else was going to.

I sit through the rest of it with my ears roaring.

Because I didn't ask him to. I didn't look at him. There's nothing between us to send anything down — he's bonded and not sealed, I can't reach him and he can't reach me. He had every reason to keep his hands flat on that table and let it go past.

The request goes forward. It goes to the full Council with Hallam's framework attached and a note that the redaction authority is unresolved, which Wren says means three weeks minimum, and which is not a yes and is not a no.

I find him outside on the steps.

He's got his phone out. While I'm walking toward him it buzzes again and he reads that too and puts it away without answering.

"Soren."

"Miller."

"Don't do that. You haven't called me that in months."

He looks at me properly for the first time all day.

"What did they say?"

"I'm off the delegation."

"For today?"

"For the session." He says it exactly the way his father read out the consequence. "And there's a place I was going to have in the spring. That's gone as well, or it will be by Friday."

"Soren—"

"It isn't a catastrophe. Let's not make it one."

He comes to my suite at about nine.

I know it's him before he knocks.

I open the door and I don't say anything at all. I just put both arms around his neck and hold on. Soren doesn't move.

For about two seconds he stands in my doorway with his hands at his sides like a man who's been handed something breakable and given no instructions. Then one arm comes around my back, and then the other, and he takes my weight.

"Thank you," I say into his shirt.

"Jessica—"

"Don't ever do that again."

"Ah."

"I mean it." I pull back far enough to look at him, and I'm furious and my eyes are stinging and both of those are happening at the same time. "Twenty-two people, Soren. In front of your father's delegation."

"Twenty-three."

"Do not."

"Your father—"

"Won't shout. That isn't how it's done." He says it like weather. "Next time I'm in that house he'll be perfectly civil, and every person under that roof will know exactly what happened."

"That's horrible."