Page 48 of Legacy Found

Students file out when class ends, quieter than usual, but not in quite the same way.

A few avoid my eyes.

A few don't.

One guy I barely know catches my gaze for half a second and gives me the tiniest shrug, like you weren't wrong, before disappearing into the crowd.

Huh.

Sophia catches up to me in the corridor, wide-eyed.

"What was that?"

"I asked a question."

"No." She laughs, a little nervous. "You questioned the entire ruling system of an entire species. To the face of the professor whose whole personality is the ruling system." She shakes her head. "Jessica. You keep doing the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you say something completely reasonable and everybody acts like you set off a bomb."

Torres falls into step on my other side.

"For what it's worth," he says, "I wonder the same thing. Why does everybody bow to a last name?"

Sophia groans. "Oh, great. Now there are two of you. We're all going to get expelled because you two can't stop asking things."

I laugh. "I'm starting to think curiosity is the single most expensive thing at this academy."

"It really is," Torres says. And he doesn't say it like a joke.

I glance back toward the classroom. Neither did the person who said I wasn't wrong.

After my last class I head down to the arena, and Luke's already there — but today he's not alone. Soren and Ander are up in the bleachers, watching.

I wave. "Hi."

Soren gives me a polite nod. Ander offers the smallest possible acknowledgment a person can offer while still technically moving his head.

I smile to myself as I drop my bag. Honestly. It should be illegal for three men to be that ridiculously good-looking. Shame only one of them ever seems willing to smile about it.

We train. And the thing is — I'm better. Weeks of this, every afternoon, and my body's finally learning what Luke promised it would. When he throws a strike toward my head now, I don't freeze. Most of the time. I slip it, or I block it, or at least I move, and the flinch that used to cost me everything is shrinking down to almost nothing. Luke notices. He pushes me harder, faster, stacking combinations, and I keep up — sweating, breathing hard, but keeping up.

At the end of a run that would've flattened me a month ago, Luke steps back and nods once.

"Better."

I grin, wiping my forehead. "I know."

We break for water, and I'm still buzzing from the good round, and history class is still turning over in my head, so I just — ask him.

"Can I ask you something?"

Luke tips his head. "You're going to anyway."

"Do you actually think bloodlines matter more than character?"

"That's how our society works," he says, immediate, automatic. Like reciting.