Page 89 of Legacy Elite

It's too late; he's already seen it, and he's already worked out what it means, because whatever else Ander Ardent is, he has never been slow.

"Fuck," he says.

"Yes," I say.

Chapter twelve

Jessica

"You're smiling."

"I'm not."

"Jessica, you've been smiling since the bottom of the stairs."

"I'm cold. My face has gone into a spasm."

"That is not a spasm, that's a—" Sophia stops on the landing and points at me with an entire arm. "That's a development. Freya, look at her face."

Freya, who is coming up behind us with an armful of photocopies she's spent the afternoon labeling, does not look at my face.

"She was at shift training," Freya says.

"With who?"

"You know with who."

"I want her to say it—"

"With Soren," I say, "because Voss assigned him, and if you say one word about it I'll tell the entire dining hall about the boy in your Monday seminar."

Sophia gasps.

"You swore."

"I lied."

I am absolutely not telling her the rest of it. Not tonight, not next week, not on my deathbed. Some things go in a box and the box goes in the ground.

Although — I did do it. I fucking shifted! Nobody was drowning. Nothing was on fire. I stood in a wet field and decided, and it happened, and Soren was proud of me.

My emotions have never gone from total mortification to pleased that quickly.

I drop my bag by the door and kick my shoes off, and Sophia goes straight for the couch and Freya starts squaring her photocopies on my coffee table, and I go through to my room to get my sweats.

And I stop.

My desk drawer is open about two inches. That's it. A drawer, not quite shut, in a room that has been mine for eight weeks.

I stand there.

I don't leave that drawer open. I never leave it open — it sticks, that's the entire reason I know it, it needs a shove and I always shove it.

Housekeeping. It'll be housekeeping. Or Torres looking for a charger. Or Sophia, who has no boundaries and has definitely been in my desk before.

And then I look at my bed.

There's a card lying on it.