Page 78 of Legacy Elite

Falken doesn't ask why. He doesn't ask what for. He sits down and folds his hands and says, "I expected you would."

"Great. When?"

"You won't."

I sit down without being invited.

"Say that again."

"Not this term. Very possibly not this year." He says it without any softening at all. "I'm not going to authorize it.”

"Last year I was there for a week."

"Yes."

“And now suddenly the answer is no?"

"Last year," Falken says, "nobody knew who you were."

And that shuts me up, because it's true.

"The Council investigation is open. Your legal position is undetermined. And your presence in that particular building, while both of those things are true, is not a question I'm prepared to answer on my own authority."

"So ask them."

"I intend to. Eventually. And I will tell you what they say, because I gave you my word about that and I've kept it." He puts the pen down. "But not this month, and I won't pretend otherwise to make this conversation easier."

I sit there.

"It's the only intact piece of their home that's still standing," I say.

Falken looks directly into my eyes.

"Yes," he says. "It is."

Luke's suite is on the corner of the corridor with the two big windows and he opens the door before I knock, because of course he does.

"You're furious," he says.

"I'm fine."

"Jessica."

Right. Yes. The bond.

I come in and put my bag down and I'm already three sentences into it — Falken, his refusal, the council, the whole ridiculous recital — and I get about halfway through before I notice that Luke has gone very quiet.

And down the bond, under everything, there's a thread of him that isn't agreement.

"Don't," I say.

"I haven't said anything."

"You were about to agree with him."

Luke pauses.

"He isn't wrong," he says.