Page 55 of Legacy Found

"Again," he says.

His voice is perfectly controlled. The tips of his ears are not.

Well. That's interesting.

I turn before he can see me smile and reset my stance. I try it again.

Better.

Luke, off to the side, gives a short nod. Ander returns to the bleachers like nothing happened at all.

I watch him go. Huh. Maybe I've been wrong about him. Not completely wrong. Let's not get carried away.

But possibly... ten percent wrong.

Soren joins in after that — but not to touch me. To argue with me.

"You telegraph," he says flatly, from where he's drifted to the edge of the mat. "When you're frustrated. Your whole intention arrives a half-second before your hands do."

"I do not."

"You do."

His pale eyes stay on mine.

"You decide what you're going to do, and then your face announces it to everyone in the room."

I stare at him. "My face does not announce things."

"It rarely shuts up."

There's a beat.

Did Soren just make a joke?

"Attack me," he says.

So I do — and he steps out of it before I've finished thinking it, reads me so completely it's like he watched a replay first, and I pull up, scowling.

"Okay," I admit. "That's annoying."

And Soren smiles.

It's the first real one I've gotten out of him — it changes his entire face, cracks all that ice wide open, and it hits me like an actual physical event.

Oh.

That's unfortunate.

Because it turns out Soren smiling makes him roughly forty percent more attractive, which is a statistic the world was not ready for.

I point at him. "That's misleading."

The smile fades. "What is?"

I wave vaguely at his face. "You've been walking around looking like an angry glacier this entire time. You can't suddenly do that."

His eyebrows draw together.