Page 26 of Legacy Elite

"You'll be in a room."

"I'll be in a hall. With trestle tables."

Renzo shrugs when I get to him. "All of them. He said the point is to try things. I intend to be extremely bad at four and find out which one I'm not bad at."

Which is, annoyingly, the correct approach.

Torres reads his without any expression. "Protection." Then, before I can react: "Not because of you."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to say something."

"I was about to say something, I wasn't about to say that."

"It's the only one of the five I've already done. I just did it badly and for the wrong people." He folds the page into his pocket. "I'd like to see what it looks like done properly."

Mine has a third page the others don't seem to be reading as hard.

Preliminary Recommendations. Advisory only. Based on first-year performance and faculty evaluation.

Leadership & Governance — Priority Recommendation.

And underneath, in normal type, Diplomacy & Community.

Sophia has it out of my hand before I finish reading it twice, because Sophia has never respected a boundary in her life.

"Oh my God," she says. "They're training you to be a princess."

"They are absolutely not."

"Jessica, it says priority."

Declan takes the page off her without comment and hands it back to me.

Torres bumps his shoulder against mine as we start walking. He doesn't tell me it's fine, or that plenty of people would want it.

"You didn't ask for it," he says.

"No."

"Yeah." He looks straight ahead. "I'm sorry."

The training arena smells like rubber matting and old sweat and it is the first place all morning where nobody looks up when I come in.

Professor Voss is standing in the middle of it with his arms folded, wearing the same shirt he wore every day last year, watching second-years file through the doors with the expression of a man counting livestock.

His eyes land on me for about a second and a half.

"Miller."

"Professor."

"Your hands are down."

I haven't done anything yet. I've walked eleven feet.

"You came through the door with them down," he says, and moves on.