Page 24 of Legacy Ascended

Frances looks older than he did in the bedroom.

“Will you come back?” he asks.

“I’m not moving into this valley, and I’m not promising anything about your House.” I adjust the blanket around my shoulders. “But I have about nine hundred questions, and you haven’t answered ten of them.”

“No,” Frances says. “I haven’t.”

“So this isn’t finished.”

“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”

Then Luke hands me his phone with it already connected.

Sophia's face fills the screen and immediately dissolves.

"JESSICA—"

"Hi."

"Don't you hi me." She's crying so hard the picture is shaking. "Turn it — no, turn it — I want to see your face and your arms and — is that blood? Whose blood is that?"

"Mine. It's dealt with."

"Move the camera down."

"Soph—"

“Move the camera down, I swear on my mother—”

Renzo crowds into the frame beside her, gray and unshaven and looking extremely happy to see me.

“Quick academic question,” he says. “Does getting kidnapped excuse you from Faris’s reading, or are you still expected to ruin the curve?”

“Renzo,” Declan says from off-screen.

“I’m asking for the rest of us.”

Then he actually looks at me—the strapping, the dressing, whatever my face is doing—and the grin disappears.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay, bella. Okay.”

Declan takes the phone from both of them.

"Have you been treated?"

"Yes. Their doctor. She's good, Declan."

"Properly treated, or told to walk it off?"

"Wounds cleaned, bandaged, something for the pain, and she's sending her notes with me."

He breathes out. "When are you coming back?"

"Tonight. We leave in about twenty minutes."

There's a noise in the background that I think is Sophia sitting down very suddenly.

Then Freya's face appears at the edge of the frame. She doesn't say hello.