Page 126 of Legacy Ascended

Sophia turns me around by the shoulders when she's finished, and neither of them says anything at all, which from those two is the loudest possible review.

Then Sophia says, "Okay, I need you to understand that I'm about to cry and it will ruin forty minutes of my work, so nobody speak."

"Sophia—"

"Nobody speak."

Freya hands her a tissue without looking up from the shoes.

I turn to the mirror.

The woman in the glass is in a burnt-orange gown that lights up the amber in her eyes, with her hair off her neck and a healing bullet channel across her shoulder like it's part of the design. She doesn't look delicate. She doesn't look like she's borrowed anything.

"Right," I say. "Let's go."

"Wait." Freya stands up. She's in the dark charcoal silk she found in that same fitting room and never wore again, and she's put something in her hair. "You know the rule."

"Which rule?"

"The one Natasha used on you."

Oh.

You do not ask a prince to dance. Princes extend invitations. You wait to be chosen.

"You're an acknowledged heir of a Great House," Freya says, in exactly the voice she uses for correcting my map reading. "As of the day before yesterday it's in the record, and the House has its name back. So at a traditional Great House event, you don't wait."

"I extend the invitations."

"You extend the invitations."

Sophia makes a sound like a kettle.

The Great Hall is candles and crystal and the smell of hot wax and too much perfume, and the three banners drop the full height of the far wall the way they did the first time, the way they've done for two hundred years.

Deep forest green, a gray wolf sitting sentinel between two crossed spears.

Dark navy, a silver wolf caught mid-leap over a single sword.

Royal purple, a snarling wolf's head crowned in gold flame.

And to the left of them, the wall. Just wall. Stone and candlelight and nothing.

I stand in the doorway and look at it for three full seconds, and I don't know what my face is doing, and I decide not to fix it.

Then the room notices me.

It's not the same as last time. Last time the ripple went through the room because six scholarship students walked in wearing clothes that fit, and because a prince stopped talking mid-sentence. Tonight it moves differently — it starts near the doors and travels, and people don't stop talking so much as change what they're saying, and every head that turns does the same thing. Eyes to my face. Eyes to the dress. Eyes back to my face.

They know what the color is. Every single one of them has sat in that lecture and looked at the founding plates.

Somebody near the Ardent tables says "oh" out loud.

"Chin," Sophia murmurs beside me.

I lift my chin.

Dinner is a logistical crisis and I enjoy every second of it.