Read Online The Legend Trilogy Collection by Marie Lu - Free Book Online

dealer who heard about the hospital break-in. Maybe they think we have a lot of money or something. Could be a soldier. Even a spy. I lost my pendant at the hospital—I don’t know how they would use it to learn anything about me, but there’s always a chance.”
    “What are you going to do about it?”
    I shrug. My bullet wound has begun to throb, and I lean against the wall for support. “I’m sure as hell not meeting him, whoever he is—but I got to admit, I’m curious to see what he has to say. What if he
does
have plague cures?”
    Tess stares at me. It’s the same expression she wore the very first night I met her—hopeful, curious, and fearful all at once. “Well . . . can’t be any more dangerous than your crazy hospital break-in, yeah?”

I DON’T KNOW IF IT’S BECAUSE C OMMANDER J AMESON has taken pity on me, or if she really does feel the loss of Metias, one of her most valued soldiers, but she helps me arrange his funeral—even though she’s never done that for one of her soldiers before. She refuses to say anything about why she chose to do it.
    Wealthy families like ours always have elaborate funerals—Metias’s takes place inside a building with soaring baroque archways and stained-glass windows. They’ve covered the bare floors with white carpets; round white banquet tables over-flowing with white lilacs fill the room. The only colors come from the Republic flags and circular gold Republic seal hanging behind the room’s front altar, the portrait of our glorious Elector looming above them all.
    All the mourners wear their best whites. I have on an elaborate white gown, laced and corseted, with a silk overskirt and draped layers in the back. A tiny white-gold brooch of the Republic seal is clipped on its bodice. The hairdresser piled my hair high on my head, with loose ringlets cascading over one shoulder, and a white rose pinned behind my ear. Pearls line the choker wrapped around my throat. My eyelids are coated with glittering white eye shadow, my lashes are bathed in snow, the puffy redness under my eyes erased by shining white powder. Everything about me is stripped of color, just as Metias has been stripped from my life.
    Metias once told me that it was not always this way, that only after the first floods and volcanic eruptions, after the Republic built a barrier along the warfront to keep the Colonies’ deserters from fleeing illegally into our territory, did people start mourning for the dead by wearing white. “After the first eruptions,” he said, “white volcanic ash rained from the sky for months. The dead and dying were covered in it. So now to wear white is to remember the dead.”
    He told me this because I’d asked him what our parents’ funeral was like.
    Now I wander among the guests, lost and aimless, responding to the sympathetic words of those around me with appropriate, practiced replies. “I am so sorry for your loss,” they say. I recognize some of Metias’s professors, fellow soldiers, and superiors. There are even a couple of my classmates from Drake. I’m surprised to see them—I’d never been good at making friends during my three years in college, considering my age and my hefty course load. But they’re here, some from afternoon drills and others from my Republic History 421 class. They take my hand and shake their heads. “First your parents, and now your brother. I can’t imagine how hard it is for you.”
    No, you can’t
. But I smile graciously and bow my head, because I know they mean well. “Thank you for coming,” I say. “It means a lot. I know Metias would be proud that he gave his life for his country.”
    Sometimes I catch an admiring glance from a well-wisher across the room, which I ignore. I have no use for such sentiments. My outfit is not meant for them. Only for Metias do I wear this unnecessarily exquisite gown, to show without words how much I love him.
    After a while, I sit at a table near the front of the room, facing