Page 104 of Legacy Ascended

Those are the things somebody put on an advisory page in September and handed to me before anyone in this valley knew what my surname used to be. Priority Recommendation. Sophia read it over my shoulder in a corridor full of people opening envelopes and said they were training me to be a princess, and I told her they absolutely were not.

I've got all of that. Every bit of it is still mine.

The one line I went and asked for is gone.

The block leaves the following morning from the yard behind the lower hall, which I know because I go down there, because apparently I'm the kind of person who does that.

There's a lot of gear on the ground and Renzo is wearing about six layers and has already lost a glove. Somebody's arguing about who carries the rope. Freya has a list.

Declan comes over with his pack still on one shoulder.

He doesn't tell me it's not fair. He doesn't tell me he'll be thinking of me out there, which would be worse, and he doesn't say anything about next year.

"Two nights," he says. "Then I'll come and tell you everything wrong with how they ran it."

"You'd better."

"There'll be a lot. They've got the casualty scenario in the wrong place. I've seen the map."

"Declan."

"Yeah."

"Don't let Renzo carry the rope."

"I already took it off him."

He bumps his shoulder into my right one, careful about the side without either of us mentioning it, and goes back and gets in the second vehicle.

They pull out of the yard at twenty past eight, and the snow's come back, and I stand there with my hands in my sleeves until the last of them is through the gate and there's nothing to look at but a wet yard and the marks their tires left in it.

Then I go inside, because it's cold, and because I've got a meeting.

Chapter nineteen

Luke

My father calls eight minutes late. He isn't running behind. He’s just proving his time is more important than mine.

"Lukas."

"Sir."

There's a second voice on the line, a woman from the House office who gives her name and then says nothing else. She's there as a witness.

"I've heard you're involved in the Fourth House review," my father says.

“I am.”

“How involved?”

“I'm helping Jessica.”

“That's what I was afraid of.”

“Why?”

“Because Draeven is one of the three Houses whose history she's questioning.”