Page 94 of Legacy Elite

"Anything moved?"

"A drawer."

"Which drawer?"

"The desk."

"Was there anything in it worth having?"

"A charger and a Christmas card."

Ander stands very still for a second.

Then he says, "This isn't about the House."

The whole room looks at him.

"It says leave it buried," Luke says.

"I can read." Ander doesn't take his eyes off the sleeve. "That's what it's about. That isn't what it's for." He looks up. "If you want somebody to stop investigating a bloodline, you send a letter. You send it to her mail. You send it to the Chancellor. You put it somewhere she'll open it and be frightened by the words." A pause. "You don't need to be standing in her bedroom to say leave it buried."

Nobody answers him.

"They opened a drawer with nothing in it," Ander says. "They took nothing. They damaged nothing. They came in, they walked around, and they put it in the middle of the bed where she'd have to stand next to it to read it." He turns to Falken. "The words are decoration, Chancellor. The message is the room."

Falken's face has gone very careful.

"It's a warning about access," Ander says.

Oh.

Oh, that's what's wrong with my stomach.

I've been standing here being furious about somebody being in my space, and I've been treating that as the insult part and the card as the threat part, and it's the other way round.

Somebody wanted me to know they can get to where I sleep. The words were just what they wrote on the receipt.

"Apparently my fan club's expanding," I say.

"Don't," Ander says.

Not angrily. Sharply, and fast, and he's already looking at me when I turn.

"Don't make it smaller because you don't want to be frightened of it."

And I have absolutely nothing to say to that, from him, of all the people in this building.

"She's not staying here," Torres says.

"I am literally standing right here."

"He's right," Ander says.

I look between the two of them.

"Fantastic. Hell's frozen over and apparently it's my bedroom."

"Jessica—"