Page 100 of Legacy Ascended

“It's a sauce.”

Sophia looks over. “It's the color of a bruise.”

“It's a reduction,” Ander says.

“Of what?” Renzo asks.

Ander looks down at the pan. “Ingredients.”

Renzo starts laughing.

“Fuck you.” Ander holds out the spoon. “Taste it.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Coward.”

I take the spoon from Ander and taste it.

He watches my face. “Well?”

I swallow.

“We should order pizza.”

“Traitor.”

“I'm saving lives.”

Ander takes the spoon back. “More for me.”

“That's not the threat you think it is.”

Chapter eighteen

Jessica

The meeting's at ten, in the long room in administration with the bad radiator.

I know the radiator. I sat under it while Voss told us a net had been built for something my size. Freya sat beside me. Corvin was two days out of surgery.

The radiator knocks twice and goes quiet.

Falken's at the head. Voss is three seats down with a folder in front of him. Two of the academy's security people I know by face and not by name. Faris, because she sits on everything. Jon at the far end, where he puts himself now, with a notebook he won't open.

Luke and Soren and Ander along one side, because their Houses are involved and nobody was going to keep them out.

Torres beside me, which took an argument at the door that Falken lost again.

On the screen at the end, Councillor Wren and two other faces, joined from somewhere with better weather.

"Rurik," Falken says.

Voss doesn't stand up, and he doesn't open the folder. He puts one hand flat on the cover.

"Three items. I'll take them in the order they were asked for."

"Go on."