Page 79 of Legacy Elite

"Oh, fuck you."

"Would you like me to lie to you? I can do that. I'm extremely good at it."

"I'd like you to be my mate who takes my side."

"I am on your side," Luke says. "That's why I'm not taking it."

I turn around and look at him.

He's leaning against the back of his couch with his arms folded, and he doesn't look smug about it, which is somehow worse, because Luke looking smug I can fight.

"Explain," I say.

"You go to Lufgard," he says. "You take a car up the road with two members of faculty. You walk through the hall, you look at the fireplace, you get cold, you eat a sandwich, and you come home. Four hours. Nothing happens." He tilts his head. "Now tell me what that is."

"It's a visit."

"It's a visit," Luke agrees. "Now tell me what somebody with a photograph of it calls it."

I open my mouth.

And nothing useful comes out, because I can already hear it.

"Fourth House heir returns to ancestral seat," Luke says. "That one's the friendly version. That one's written by somebody who likes you." He straightens off the couch. "Direwolf claimant enters fallen keep during Council review. Academy escorts Miller onto disputed land. Not one of those has to contain a single false sentence. That's what makes them work."

"I'm not claiming anything."

"That doesn't matter."

"It matters to me—"

"It matters to you and to about nine other people," Luke says, "and none of them sit on the Council."

I hate this. I hate every part of this.

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"At the moment? Nothing. Which is unbearable and I understand it's unbearable." He comes around the couch. "Jessica, you didn't ask for any of this, and I know exactly how it feels to be told that a thing you want is politically inconvenient, because I have been told it my entire life. But you have to understand what you became in that clearing. You didn't just become a direwolf. You became the most politically dangerous person on this campus, and you did it in front of witnesses."

"That's comforting."

"It wasn't intended to be." He stops a few feet away. "There are people who'll look at you and see something to use. There are people who'll see something to control. And there are people who will look at you and see something that should have stayed extinct."

And down the bond — because it's there, because it's been there since I walked in and I've been too angry to read it properly — I finally feel what's underneath all the smooth reasoning.

He's frightened.

Not concerned. Not politically cautious. Luke Draeven, who has never in his life given a straight answer when he could give a clever one, is standing in his own sitting room and he is scared, and he's been scared the entire time he's been explaining headlines to me.

He’s scared for me and I am still so angry.

"Okay," I say. "Now hear mine."

"I'm listening."

"Every answer I have got, from every single person, for six months, is wait." I count them off, because apparently that's what we do now. "Wait for the Council. Wait for the genealogy. Wait for the legal review. Wait until we know more. Wait until it's safe." My voice is getting louder. "And every time the answer is wait, the reason is that I'm more important than I was the last time I asked. Do you understand what that means? The more the Fourth House turns out to have to do with me, the less I'm allowed anywhere near it."

"That's not what this is."