Page 80 of Legacy Elite

"It looks exactly like that from where I'm standing."

"Jessica—"

"You lot don't even know it's mine," I say. "That's the funniest part. That's what Faris says. That's what Hallam says. Nobody's proved a thing. My genealogy stops dead in 1856 and everybody's very clear that I'm not officially anything." I spread my hands. "So I'm Fourth House enough to need a security assessment, but not Fourth House enough to be allowed in the house."

Luke doesn't answer.

He doesn't answer for long enough that I know I've got him, and there's absolutely no satisfaction in it whatsoever.

"I'm not asking to wander into the Preserve alone at midnight," I say, quieter. "I'm asking to go back into a building I already lived in for a week. I ate dinner there. I got lost on the third floor. Renzo made us all check a room for ghosts with our phone flashlights." My throat closes. "I laughed in that house, Luke. Before any of this. And now that it might have belonged to my family, it's the one place on the entire estate I'm not allowed to stand in."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Yes," Luke says.

And then, because he can't help it, because it's what he is: "Give me time. I can work on it. If it's arranged properly — no announcement, no schedule anyone can predict, faculty escort, the academy authorising it rather than the Council permitting it, which is a completely different animal politically—"

"And if they still say no?"

He doesn't answer fast enough.

"Right," I say. "That's what I thought."

He starts to say something else and I put my hand up, because I've just worked out what I actually want, and I want to say it before he manages it for me.

"You're doing it too," I say.

"Doing what?"

"Guiding me."

Luke goes still.

"You've been in here twenty minutes explaining a decision that was already made," I say. "Not asking me what I want to do about it. Explaining it. Very well, incidentally — you're extremely good, I nearly agreed with you twice." I pick my bag up off his floor. "But every person in my life this year has decided something about me in a room I wasn't in, and then come and told me about it afterwards in a kind voice. Falken. The Council. Faris. And now you."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?"

He doesn't say anything. His mouth opens, but whatever argument he had ready doesn't come out. He looks away.

For once, Luke has nothing to defend himself with.

"No," he says slowly. "It's fair."

"Then here's what I want."

"Tell me."

"When they decide about Lufgard—" I hold his eyes "—get me in the room."

Luke blinks.

"Not lobbying for me. Not reporting back to me afterwards over a nice cup of tea. In the room, at the table, when it's discussed." I shrug the bag onto my shoulder. "You know how those rooms work. You've been sitting in them since you were nine. So use it for that instead of using it to build me a nice cage with a view."

He looks at me for a long moment.