Page 29 of Legacy Found

I put my head down on the table, gently, because sudden movements still hurt. "I've been here forty-eight hours and I've done a scandalous thing and gotten a concussion. At this rate I'll be expelled by Friday and legendary by Saturday."

"You say that like it's bad," Renzo says. "I would kill for a reputation."

The staring hasn't stopped. If anything it's worse — every table I pass goes a little quieter, and I've given up pretending I don't notice. There's something else, too, that I can't quite name: I've felt off since I woke up. Restless in my own skin, a low unsettled hum I keep blaming on the concussion, a faint ache under my breastbone like I've forgotten something important and can't think what. The healer said I'd feel strange for a few days. I guess she was right.

"Hey," I say, when the ache nudges at me again and reminds me. "Does anyone actually know how I got to the medical center? I don't remember any of it. One second there's a fist, then nothing, then a very concerned woman shining a light in my eye."

There's a small silence. Torres, across the table, gets very interested in his food.

"Torres."

He sighs. "Somebody carried you."

"I gathered that, unless I levitated. Who?"

He hesitates — actually hesitates, which Torres never does — and then he says, carefully, "Prince Luke."

I blink. "...Oh."

Prince. There's that word again.

One of the three from breakfast, then.

I know Ander, but the other two are still just Green Eyes and the enormous one. Apparently one of them took a look at my unconscious body and decided, Yep, I'll carry her.

Something about knowing it was one of those three makes the odd ache under my ribs give a little pull.

Which is strange enough that I ignore it entirely.

"Well," I say. "I should probably thank him."

Torres nearly chokes on his drink.

I forget about it, mostly, until dinner, when I spot them.

The three princes are at a table near the center of the hall, and even in a room this big they're impossible to miss, because there's a large bubble of space around them. They're surrounded — plenty of students at nearby tables, plenty of eyes — but nobody's at their table. Nobody approaches. Nobody leans in to say hi. There's an invisible perimeter, three feet of empty deference in every direction, and people orbit it without ever crossing it.

I watch for a second, chewing. They must be wildly popular. That's the only thing that makes sense — the kind of popular where everyone wants to be near you and nobody's brave enough to actually do it. I remember that dynamic from high school, vaguely, from the outside of it.

I study the three of them. Ander I know. The other two are still just the huge one and the green-eyed one.

One of them is Luke. Who apparently carried my unconscious ass across the academy.

I owe him a thank-you, and there's only one way to find out which one he is.

I pick up my tray.

"...Where are you going?" Sophia asks, with the wariness of a woman who has learned to fear my sense of what's reasonable.

"To say thank you," I say, matter-of-fact. "One of them carried me. That's a whole thing. I'm not going to just sit here and not acknowledge it."

The entire table goes silent.

Renzo opens his mouth — "Jess, I don't think—"

"Jessica," Torres says.

But I'm already up, already moving, tray in hand, because it's a two-minute errand and everyone's being so weird about it.