Page 30 of Legacy Elite

Sophia makes a face at me from the door that I will be dealing with later.

Then it's the two of us, and Faris is putting papers into a case, and I don't wait.

"You did this."

"Which part?"

"The recommendation."

"I was one of four faculty consulted. So — a quarter of it, approximately."

"I want it changed."

"There's nothing to change. It's advisory."

"Then what's it for?"

"To tell you what your teachers think." She closes the case. "You appear to have received the message. Which suggests it worked."

"I'm not going to govern anybody."

"That may not be entirely your decision."

Fuck that.

"See, that's the part I don't get." I put my bag down, because apparently we're doing this. "You're the one who stood in Falken's office and said nobody had proved anything. You wanted birth records. You wanted the boring answer. You were the only person in that room who wasn't already halfway to crowning me."

"I was."

"So how do you get from prove it to she should learn to run a country?"

"Because they are unrelated questions."

She turns and gives me her full attention, which is a thing I would honestly rather she didn't do.

"I do not know what you descend from. Nobody does. What I know is that a great many powerful people believe you might, and that belief has already changed where you sleep, who writes to you, and how many people look up when you cross a courtyard." A small pause. "Influence is not a title, Miss Miller. It is the ability to affect other people's lives whether or not you intended to. You have some."

"I don't want to affect anyone's life."

"That is not a qualification. That is a preference." She lets it land. "You object to inherited authority. I remember your essays."

"You gave me a seventy-one."

"You survived it." Something almost moves at the corner of her mouth. "You spent an entire year arguing that rank should never substitute for competence. If rank is being handed to you, I would have thought competence would suddenly interest you enormously."

I open my mouth.

And then I close it, because — damn it.

Damn it.

She's used my own essay on me.

"That's not fair."

"It's entirely fair. It is simply inconvenient." She picks up the case and walks out.

By the time I get back to the residence I have been vertical for eleven hours and I am beat.