Page 12 of Legacy Found

Chapter six

Jessica

I follow the sound of voices down a corridor lit by actual wall sconces, wondering if the "meeting room" is going to be a dungeon.

It isn't, it's a low stone chamber near the great hall, warmed by a fire someone's built up in a hearth big enough to roast an ox, with worn leather chairs and old couches arranged in a loose circle. It's cozy. The other five file in behind me, Renzo, Sophia, Freya, Declan, Torres, and we sort ourselves into seats, everyone leaving a polite half-cushion of space that Sophia immediately erases by dropping down beside me and tucking her feet up like we've been friends for years.

Jon's already there, leaning against the mantel, looking entirely at home. He waits until we've settled, then doesn't launch into a speech. He just looks around the circle, taking a second on each of our faces, like he's making sure he's got us.

"So," he says. "You've had a long day, and I'm not going to make it longer with a lecture. I mostly want to tell you what this week is and, just as importantly, what it isn't."

"It better not be a sacrifice," Renzo says. "We discussed that in the van."

"Encouraging," Jon says, without missing a beat, and Renzo looks thrilled to have landed a joke on a professor in the first ten seconds. "No. It isn't a sacrifice. It also isn't an exam. Nothing this week is graded. Nobody's being ranked, or tested, or quietly sent home." He looks around the circle. "Whatever you've each been bracing for on that long drive up — let it go. This week only works if you stop trying to prove yourselves and start paying attention."

I feel my shoulders come down half an inch, and I hate a little how much I needed to hear it.

He walks us through the week, and it is — I'll be honest — the best-sounding week of my entire life. Hiking, proper hiking, deep into the surrounding wilderness. Navigation, which Freya perks up at like a hunting dog hearing a car door. Team exercises. A survival day. Sessions on the academy's history. Evenings left open. And, threaded through all of it, time to ask questions — "especially," Jon says, "the ones you're embarrassed to ask. Those are usually the useful ones."

"Will there be a man with a whistle?" I ask.

Jon considers this with total gravity. "There is a Professor Voss. He teaches combat and leadership at the academy proper. He does own a whistle. You'll meet him if you decide to stay and attend Luftis." A pause. "I'd suggest not making the whistle joke to his face until you've known him at least a day."

"Got it," Torres says, and I can feel him filing Voss away somewhere.

"Which brings me to the part you actually want," Jon says, and the room leans in. This is it — the thing I came down the corridor thinking I'd finally get. Tonight I finally find out. "You've all been wondering the same thing since the first letter. Why you. Why a hiking store, a coffee shop, a search-and-rescue team, a ranger station. You're bright, but you know as well as I do the world is full of bright people who never got a cream envelope."

Nobody breathes. Even Sophia goes still.

"The honest answer," Jon says, "is that the academy finds people through a program I helped build — a partnership with hospitals and labs across Europe. Every one of you came up through it. And every one of you has something the academy is genuinely, specifically looking for." He chooses his words with that same care I saw across the shop counter, the care of a man deciding exactly how much truth a moment can hold. "What that something is — that's part of what this week is for. I could tell you now and it would sound like nonsense, and you'd spend seven days deciding whether I'm a crank. Or I can show you, a little at a time, in a way that will actually make sense. I'd rather show you."

And there it is. The door, cracked, then gently shut again.

"That's the cult talk," I say, before I can stop myself. "You know that's the cult talk."

Jon's mouth twitches. He remembers. "It is exactly the cult talk," he agrees. "My defense is the same one I gave you in England, I haven't asked any of you for money, a signature, or your immortal soul. I've asked you to take some very nice walks and let me answer things in an order that works." He looks around. "Anything I can answer plainly tonight, I will. Ask me anything."

"Is the castle haunted?" Sophia asks.

"No," Jon says.

"Would you tell us if it was?"

"No," Jon says, and Sophia points at him like she's cracked the whole thing open.

Renzo raises a hand. "Are we going to be the least impressive people at this school? Be honest. I need to emotionally prepare."

Jon's expression softens then, goes almost fierce under the calm. "No," he says, and there's real weight in it. "You'll be told, by all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways, that you don't belong here. Some of them won't even mean to. So I'm telling you first, before any of them get the chance — you were chosen. Every one of you earned the envelope. When someone makes you doubt that, and someone will, I want you to remember my words."

The room is very quiet.

"…Okay, now I might cry," Sophia announces, and everyone laughs, and the moment breaks in the good way, the tension rolling out like a tide.

I like his answer. Something valuable. I turn it over like one of my trail rocks — and I still cannot, for the life of me, imagine what a girl who sells headlamps and reads a horoscope app is supposed to be contributing to Europe's oldest anything. But I decide, in the firelight, that I'm willing to spend a week finding out.

"One more," I say, because I can't help it. "When's your birthday?"

Jon looks at me a long second, like he's unsure whether to be amused or worried. "December twenty-ninth."