Page 147 of Legacy Elite

"Time," my father says. "That's all. Argue the seal properly and slowly. I don't want decisions made in a fortnight that we'll be living with in eighty years."

"That's not unreasonable."

"No," he says. "It isn't."

Then he sets the glass down, and I know we've finished the part of the evening that was about Jessica.

"Now," he says. "You."

"Me."

"You're her mate."

"Yes."

"Publicly."

"Everyone at that academy can count to three."

"Then you understand the problem."

I've understood it since about the second week of April, and I've been not-saying it for eight months in the hope that nobody else would notice.

"Say it anyway."

"You're a prince of House Draeven bound permanently to the person whose status this Council is deciding." No heat in it at all. "Every time you sit in a room where the Fourth House comes up, half the people in it are asking whether they're hearing our view or hers. Some will assume you're influencing her. Some will assume the reverse. Almost nobody will assume nothing's happening."

"I know."

"And on Friday," Isolde says, "you argued she should accept relocation."

"I did."

"Against her wishes."

"Vigorously."

"That's useful," she says. "It's the most useful thing you've done this year, politically. It demonstrates you're capable of disagreeing with her."

"That's not why I did it."

"No. But it's what it demonstrates, and I've already used it twice."

I look at her.

She doesn't apologize. She wouldn't. She was in a room defending her nephew and she reached for the true thing nearest to hand.

It still turns my stomach slightly, and I notice that, because it's new.

"There's a difference," my father says, "between disagreeing with her and being willing to act against her if the House needs you to."

"Say the rest."

"Can you still assess this objectively?"

I could give the easy answer. I've given the easy answer to harder questions. I've been giving people easy answers since I was nine.

"No," I say.