Page 93 of Legacy Elite

There's a silence in which approximately six adults become extremely interested in their own shoes. And I watch it arrive on Luke's face — the thing I said to him three weeks ago in his sitting room, coming back around and landing.

He closes his eyes for a second.

"Right," he says.

"Yeah."

"I'm doing it again."

"You are."

"It's been ninety seconds."

"You were extremely efficient."

Luke exhales through his nose. And then he does something I don't expect at all, which is turn to Falken and say, "Ignore about half of that. She's in the room. Ask her."

Soren's arrived at some point during that. He's in the doorway with his shoulder against the frame and he hasn't said anything and I don't know how long he's been there.

He doesn't tell anybody anything.

He looks at me and says, "Where do you want to sleep tonight?"

And it's such a simple question that for a second I can't answer it.

Because that's the first person, with a room full of people arranging my life, that is the first person who has asked me what I want to do.

"I haven't decided," I say.

"Then decide," Soren says.

Ander comes in at the end.

I assume — genuinely, right up until the second it happens — that he's here because Soren's here, and that within about a minute he'll say something about how a card is not a knife and I should stop treating a piece of stationery like an assassination attempt.

He doesn't say anything at all for a while. He looks at the card through the sleeve. He looks at it for much longer than anyone else has.

Then, "Who found it?"

"I did."

"Where?"

"On my bed."

"On the bed. Not the desk, not under the door." His head comes up. "How long were you out?"

"Since eight this morning."

"Who touched it?"

"Nobody. Freya stopped me."

He glances at Freya, approvingly.

"Was anything taken?"

"No."