Page 129 of Legacy Ascended

"I know."

"I'm going to hold you and move. That's the whole plan."

"It's a good plan."

He holds me and tries to dance. He's terrible at it. I keep laughing into his shoulder, and he smells like the soap in my bathroom because he's been showering there for a month.

"Last time," he says, "you got humiliated by a girl in blue and I came and got you off the edge of the floor."

"I remember."

"I've been thinking about it all week." He turns us badly. "I asked you because I thought somebody should. Then I spent the whole song working out that I didn't want anybody else to."

"Mateo."

"Don't get weird about it, we're in public." He grins. "Also I'd like it on the record that you asked Draeven first."

"He was closer."

"He was closer."

Natasha waits until Torres has gone to get me water and Soren has been claimed by his own delegation.

She's in emerald tonight and she looks extraordinary and she knows it. She stops beside me, and her eyes go from my dress to the place where Soren's hand was.

"Orange," she says. "That's subtle."

"I wasn't going for subtle."

"Clearly."

She looks around the room. Luke by the doors. Ander at the Ardent tables. Soren with the councillors. Torres coming back with two glasses.

"Yesterday," she says, "you asked the Council not to assume anything it couldn't prove. Tonight you've dressed like they've already restored you."

And there it is, and it lands, because it's true.

There are so many ways I could respond to this bitch. Deep breath, Jessica.

"They haven't," I say.

"I know."

"So do I."

Natasha looks at me for a second longer. Then she inclines her head — not much, maybe fifteen degrees, the exact gesture she once told me I would never be owed — and walks away.

Torres hands me a glass. "What did she want?"

"She was right about something."

"Do you need me to be outraged?"

"Not yet."

Luke finds me later, out on the long stone gallery that runs off the side of the hall, where the air is cold enough to hurt and the music is a wall of sound behind glass.

He doesn't ask if I'm all right. He hands me his jacket and leans on the balustrade beside me.