Page 10 of Legacy Found

Oh, great.

He feels it too.

"I've been wondering that since the sign," I tell him, and his grin widens like I've passed a test.

The driver loads our luggage into a van with tinted windows, and when I climb in with Pickles' carrier, he pauses, considers it, and then — with total gravity — buckles the carrier into its own seat with the safety belt.

"He's a very important passenger," the driver says, deadpan, and the whole van cracks up.

"Take notes, everyone," I tell Pickles. "Important."

We pull away and for a while it's exactly the postcard I was promised — clean roads winding through valleys so green they look colorized, villages with window boxes and church spires and cows that appear professionally maintained. I've got my face all but pressed to the glass when I slowly notice the villages have stopped. The road climbs. The valleys narrow. The last town falls away behind us and doesn't get replaced by another one, and the trees crowd in until the sky is just a strip of blue overhead.

We round a curve and a stone gatehouse rises out of the trees like it grew there — old, squat, serious, with heavy iron gates and two people in matching uniforms who step out as we slow. They're not the sleepy security-booth type. They board the van and check every one of our names against a list, matching faces, before waving us through.

"Genuine question," I murmur to Freya, who's beside me. "Does this still feel like a university to you?"

Freya considers it for a moment, watching the guards recede in the side mirror. "No," she says simply, and goes back to watching the trees. It is somehow the least reassuring answer possible.

"Okay," Sophia announces to the whole van, "that's either excellent security or the beginning of a horror movie."

Past the gatehouse the pavement gives up entirely. The smooth road turns to gravel, and the van starts bouncing hard enough that I have to hold Pickles' carrier steady with one hand.

"If this road gets any bumpier," Sophia says, "I'm sending the academy my dental bill."

"I'm going to arrive shorter than when I left the airport," Renzo agrees mournfully.

The gravel goes on long enough that I actually start to relax into it — okay, this is the road, this is fine — right up until the driver turns off even the gravel, onto something that barely qualifies as a road at all. Two ruts in the dirt with grass growing up the middle. A logging trail, maybe, from a century ago, switchbacking up through old-growth trees so tall and close it goes dim inside the van.

"I've changed my theory," I say. "This isn't a university. We've signed up for survival camp. There's going to be a man with a whistle."

"Either we're getting free college," Renzo says, gripping the seat in front of him, "or we're about to be the next missing hikers."

And then the trees open.

Lufgard Castle doesn't so much appear as loom into existence, like the forest was hiding it. It's enormous — genuinely, absurdly enormous — grey stone stacked into towers that push up above the treeline. Ivy climbs half of it in great dark green sheets. Some of the windows glow with restored glass catching the late sun; others are simply boarded over, patient, waiting their turn. One whole wing looks freshly re-roofed. Another looks untouched since the day it was raised. It's not a ruin and it's not a hotel and it is without question, the single most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I forget to make a joke. That's how I know it's serious. The whole van has gone quiet.

"…Well," Sophia breathes, finally. "I forgive the road."

The van pulls into a wide gravel courtyard where staff are already waiting, and the second we stop, it becomes the good chaos of arrival — doors opening, luggage coming out, someone directing traffic. And there, near the great arched doors, sleeves rolled to the elbow of course, is Jon. He spots me climbing out with the carrier and crosses over, and the first thing out of his mouth — before hello, before welcome, before anything — is:

"How did he travel?"

I stop. "You're asking about the lizard."

"I'm asking about Pickles," he corrects, crouching to peer into the carrier with genuine concern. "There's a difference. Hello, Jessica. How did he travel?"

I laugh, and my shoulders drop all at once. "Terribly. He's furious with me. He's going to need a very good cricket and possibly therapy."

"Understandable. Long day for a small creature." Jon straightens and takes the carrier from me with the care of a man accepting something breakable and precious. "I'll get him settled in my suite right now — it's warm, it's quiet, and the heat lamp's already on. You can visit him whenever you like during orientation. Any hour. I meant that." He glances at the castle, then back at me. "Get yourself checked in and find your room. Orientation begins after dinner."

"You have no idea how many questions I have."

"I have some idea," he says dryly, already turning away. "Pickles is in good hands. We'll negotiate custody later." And he walks off carrying my judgmental gecko like an honored guest, and I stand there in the courtyard of a thousand-year-old castle grinning like an idiot, thinking that whatever this place is, it just bought an enormous amount of goodwill by asking about my lizard first.

Inside, Lufgard is even better, because inside is where you can touch it. A woman with a clipboard checks me in, hands me an actual brass key — heavy, worn smooth — and points me toward the residential wing, and I take the longest possible route because I physically cannot move through a place like this quickly. The stone stairs are worn into gentle dips in the center of each step, sanded down by centuries of feet, and the banister has gone dark and glassy under a thousand palms before mine. Above one doorway a family crest is carved into the stone, faded almost to nothing, some animal worn soft by time. The windows in the oldest sections are narrow slits — arrow slits, I realize with a thrill, actual arrow slits — that someone long ago widened and glazed so they'd let in light instead of stopping invaders. I stop to read a small plaque by the great hall because of course I do, and the hall itself nearly undoes me: a vast vaulted room with long wooden tables that could seat a hundred, a fireplace tall enough to stand inside, iron chandeliers, and banners so faded their colors are only suggestions now.