14. Chapter 14 #2
"Natasha."
"I hope the Council was productive."
"It was—"
"Of course, one doesn't ask." She's still got her head at that angle. "Do go ahead."
And she waits.
She actually waits, in an archway, with two girls watching and about nine people behind them on the path, until I walk through first.
I get four steps before I understand what she's just done.
She hasn't insulted me. There is nothing I can point at. She has been flawless — and she has made absolutely certain that everybody within thirty feet watched a Faris give way to a Miller, and now every single one of them is going to spend the evening discussing what that meant.
Faris's daughter. God, of course.
I don't even know if she meant it as a knife. That's the genius of it.
By the time I get to dinner I've stopped being able to feel my own face.
And then Renzo takes the roast potatoes off my plate without asking, the way he has done since the first week of first year.
"Hey."
"You weren't going to eat them."
"I was absolutely going to eat them—"
"You never eat them. You move them." He eats one.
Freya sits down opposite and says, "You're late."
"I've been at the Council."
"You're still late."
Declan puts a second plate down in front of me, because he's noticed the potato situation, and Sophia starts complaining about a woman in her community rotation who has apparently developed a strong position on tablecloths.
Nobody steps aside. Nobody says Miss Miller . Nobody inclines their head fifteen degrees.
I sit there in the middle of it and let it go on around me, and I hadn't understood until this exact second how much I needed one table in this entire building where I'm just the person who doesn't eat her potatoes.
Dinner stretches on because nobody seems particularly interested in going anywhere.
Eventually Declan leaves first because he has an early rotation, and Freya goes with him.
Renzo follows ten minutes later after Sophia catches him trying to take the rest of the bread.
Sophia lasts until almost nine before announcing that she's going to bed and that nobody is allowed to become historically significant again before breakfast.
Then the door closes behind her, and for the first time all evening the suite is quiet.
Almost quiet.
Luke's at the other end of my sitting room with his shoes off and a glass of something, and Torres is on the floor with his back against the couch below my knees.
"I'm glad you got your room back," Torres says. He tips his head back to look at me. "But are you actually okay being here?"
I look toward the bedroom.
"I think so."
"That's not a yes."
"It's the best I've got."
Luke sets his glass down. "You can stay in my rooms."
"I know."
"For as long as you want."
"I know that too."
Torres reaches up and squeezes my knee. "Or we stay here."
That one I don't have to think about.
"Here."
"Here it is."
At ten past nine my phone buzzes for the fourteenth time.
Request for interview — Council communications office Rescheduling notice: leadership rotation, Thursday Security: revised movement protocol, please acknowledge Request for meeting — legal office (property review) Request for—
I put it face down on the arm of the couch.
"Enough."
Both of them look up.
"Was that at us?" Torres says.
"That was at the concept of correspondence."
"Fair."
Luke takes another drink. "Falken sent me the summary from this afternoon. If you want to know where the Draeven position is going to land—"
"No."
He stops.
"I don't want to talk about the Council," I say.
"All right."
"I don't want to talk about the Fourth House."
"All right."
"I don't want to talk about who owned what two hundred years ago, or the deeds, or the review, or what my blood means.
" My voice has gone somewhere I didn't send it.
"Do you know how many people talked to me today?
Properly talked. Not Miss Miller . Not a title I haven't been given. Four. It was four."
Torres has turned round. He's got one arm up on the couch cushion by my leg.
"I want one hour," I say, "where nobody wants anything from me because of what I am."
Nobody says anything for a second.
Then Torres says, "We don't."
"Torres—"
"No, I mean it. That's not me being nice.
" He looks up at me. "I didn't know what you were.
Nobody did. I was a foster kid in a bad school with a secret and you sat down next to me anyway on the first day, before any of this, when there was nothing to get.
" He shrugs one shoulder. "So there's nothing for me to want off you. There never was. I already got it."
And Luke — who has been very still — puts his glass down.
"I met you before you knew what wolf politics even were," he says.
"I've been political about you since about week three, and you've been correct to hate it, and I'd like to say clearly that not one part of what I feel arrived in a records office.
" He looks at me steadily. "You were the most interesting thing on this campus when you were nobody, Jessica. "
The room is very quiet.
I get up off the couch.
Torres tips his head back to watch me. Luke doesn't move at all.
And I cross the room, and take Luke's face in my hands, and kiss him.
He makes a sound against my mouth and his hand comes up into my hair, and he kisses me back the way he does everything, which is thoroughly and with an alarming amount of technique, and I stop thinking about the Council somewhere around the second time he tilts my head.
"Jessica—"
"Don't ask me if I'm sure."
"I wasn't going to ask if you were sure." His thumb moves along my jaw. "I was going to ask what you want."
"That's the same—"
"It really isn't," Luke says.
And then Torres is behind me.
I feel him arrive before he touches me — the bond going warm and close, and then his hands settling at my hips, and his mouth at the side of my neck, unhurried, like he's got all night and intends to use it.
"She wants what she said," Torres says over my shoulder. "One hour."
"Then stop asking her questions."
Luke laughs against my mouth. "You're extremely rude."
"You talk too much."
"Both of you," I say, "shut up," and I turn around and pull Torres down to me.
He kisses me rough and I love it. Luke's hands come round to the buttons of my shirt and start working them open without ever quite touching skin, which is a thing he does on purpose and which I have complained about before.
"You're doing the slow thing."
"I am."
"I hate the slow thing."
"You don't," Luke says, and gets the last button, and pushes the shirt off my shoulders, and puts his mouth just below my ear.
Torres has stopped kissing me to look.
"Bedroom," I say. "Now. Both of you."
I get four steps into my own bedroom before I stop and turn around, and they both stop too, and I take a second to look at them.
Torres is already pulling his shirt off over the back of his neck, one-handed, the way he does. Luke is unhurriedly rolling a sleeve up like a man with an appointment. And both of them are watching me with the exact same expression.
Two entirely different men. Same look.
"Get on the bed," I tell Luke.
His eyebrows go up half an inch.
"Now?"
"Now."
"That's very direct."
"I've had a day."
"Evidently." But he goes, and he sits back against my headboard, and there's a laugh at the edge of his mouth that I intend to remove.
Torres comes up behind me and his hands slide round my waist, and his mouth finds the top of my shoulder and stays there.
"You want him where you can see him," he says against my skin.
"Yes."
"Because he's a nightmare when he's behind you."
"Yes."
I turn in Torres's arms and kiss him properly this time, up on my toes, both hands in his hair, and he lifts me — just picks me up like I weigh nothing, because he does that, because he's always done that — and carries me the four steps to the bed and drops me onto it, and I land half across Luke's legs laughing.
"Careful," Luke says, catching me.
"I’m good."
I get my hands into the front of Luke's shirt and haul him down and stop the conversation.