Page 157 of Legacy Elite

And then the seal takes.

It goes through the middle of me like a struck note, it's every part of me that has been straining toward this man arriving at once and settling.

He drops his weight onto his forearms and stays there, over me, shaking, with his face in my hair.

"Hey," I say.

"Give me a moment."

"Take two."

Afterwards, I lie there staring at the ceiling and feeling him through our bond. He's here. In the way Luke is there and Torres is there.

Soren's thumb moves once, slowly, on my hip, and I drift off.

Chapter twenty-two

Jessica

Hallam is going to sink it, and he's going to do it politely, and he isn't even going to enjoy it.

"My position hasn't changed," he says. "The third-party review comes first. All of it, completed, before any access begins. I understand that's unwelcome. I'd rather be unwelcome than have this Council hand somebody a collection it hasn't read."

"How long is that?" Wren asks.

"Difficult to estimate. Four months. Possibly six."

Six months.

I sit there with my hands flat on the table and do not say anything.

Six months is Thursday becoming June. Six months is a Council with a different mood in it. Six months is however long it takes for whoever cut a bridge to think of something else.

And he's not wrong. That's what makes it unbearable. He's making the responsible argument and about a third of this table is nodding.

"May I ask a practical question," Caspian Ardent says.

Wren nods.

"Councillor Hallam — how much of that collection does the review actually affect?"

Hallam pauses.

He's a lawyer. He knows precisely where that question is going, and he answers it honestly anyway.

"A minority," he says. "Perhaps a fifth."

"So the proposal is that Miss Miller waits half a year to read four-fifths of a collection that concerns nobody living." Caspian turns his hand over. "I've supported every safeguard in this framework. I'll go on supporting them. I can't defend making her wait six months for the part of it nobody has any interest in but her."

"There's an argument about coherence — you don't read a collection in pieces—"

"There is, and it's a good one, and it's an argument for scholars." Caspian sits back. "This Council has spent the better part of a year establishing that this woman is descended from that family. Whatever we eventually decide about restoration — and I'd remind everyone I've argued for going slowly on that since April — those are two different questions. Her status is a matter for us. Her history is hers."

Nobody has an answer for that.

"For the record," Faris says, "I agree with Councillor Ardent, which I'd like noted as a rare event."

Somebody laughs.