Page 89 of Legacy Ascended

"I'd rather be wrong."

He goes. I hear him all the way to the stair, which takes some time, because he doesn't hurry for anything.

I sit down and take the record out of the folder and read it again.

Ledger stamp. Date of receipt. A line in a clerk's hand recording the office the material came from. Then two hundred and seventy-five years of nobody having any reason at all to look at it.

I decided on the covering page before my father arrived.

I write it.

I state what the document is. I state where it was held and how it came into my possession, with the date I asked for the boxes and the date they arrived. I state that I am providing it personally, that House Soren has taken no position, and that I notified the House office in advance. I state that in my judgment the record establishes a route of transmission and does not establish knowledge or intent on the part of any person or House.

Then I sign it, and put my name under it in full, and add the date.

If somebody is going to stand up in a chamber and say that a Soren slipped a paper to the Fourth House heir in the dark, they will be corrected.

I put the covering page on top of the record, and the record in the folder, and the folder in the bag, and the bag against the door where I'll trip over it if I try to leave without it.

It's past one. The snow came back an hour ago.

The bond is quiet in the way it goes when she's awake and being careful with me. I keep my end flat and give her nothing, which takes some doing, and which is the only useful thing I can do for her tonight.

She asked me for dinner in her room this week. Just us. She said she could make pasta, and then got aggressive about whether I could cook, and I said yes, and she said of course you can, and it is remarkable how often I replay that conversation in my mind.

I'm not going to tell her about my father.

Not because she couldn't take it. She'd take it standing up and then spend three weeks trying to put it right, and she'd go and find him, and she would be magnificent and it would achieve nothing. I don’t want her owning this.

I don't sleep much.

Chapter sixteen

Jessica

This trip to the archive is pretty boring, and for that I'm grateful.

The original approval had me going into the restricted archive alone, with Freya waiting upstairs. After the kidnapping, apparently nobody thinks that's a good idea anymore. The amended approval lets Freya and Jon come in with me.

The archive is in an old stone building with a much newer one attached to the back. We surrender our bags and phones at the lockers and follow the custodian downstairs. At the last door, she puts her palm on the reader and a light above it turns green.

"All three of you, look at the camera."

We crowd into the marked space in front of the door. There's a click from somewhere above us.

"That's your entry record," she says. "You'll do it again when you leave."

She puts her palm on the reader a second time. The lock releases. We go through.

It shuts behind us, and the lock catches.

My body reacts before I can stop it. Shoulders up. Weight back. Hands open.

"Jessica?" Freya says.

"Give me a second."

She does. Jon is beside me. He doesn't touch me or ask if I'm all right. He just waits.