Page 14 of Legacy Found

I behave myself.

Barely.

"Freezing," I say, which is a spectacular lie.

His quiet laugh brushes my ear too, which does not improve the situation.

There's a low section of wall just outside the window — a walkway, really, wide and safe, part of the old battlements — and I climb out onto it before my body can come up with any more terrible ideas.

Torres laughs behind me. "Of course you are climbing out the window."

I stand there in the cold with the mountains spread in every direction and the wind pulling at my braid.

"You're going to fall," Torres says.

I glance back. He's climbed halfway out after me.

"Probably," I agree. "It's kind of my whole thing." I tip my head back at the sky. "Worth it, though."

He follows my gaze up, and for a second neither of us says anything, and the wind does all the talking.

Chapter seven

Jessica

I wake up before my alarm, which never happens, and for a second I don't know where I am.

Then the light catches the stone of the wall, and I remember. I'm in a castle. In the Alps. I pad over in my socks and lean into the cold air, and there they are again, the mountains, looking even more impossible in daylight than they did under the moon. Somewhere down the corridor, in whatever room Jon's turned into a temporary reptile hotel, Pickles is either thriving or plotting his revenge, no in-between. I'll go check on him after breakfast.

I realize that I have not felt this rested in a very long time.

Breakfast is in a smaller room off the great hall, and it's about as far from a school cafeteria as you can get — long table, mismatched crockery, baskets of bread and pastry and a huge pot of coffee. The other five are already there, and the noise of them hits me before I'm through the door.

"— and then," Sophia is saying, both hands going, coffee sloshing, "the owl does it again, right over my head, and Renzo screams —"

"I did not scream," Renzo says, with enormous dignity, sliding two extra pastries off the communal basket onto his plate in a move so smooth I almost miss it. "I expressed alarm, with some volume."

"You screamed," Freya says, not looking up from the window, where she's watching something. "Redstart," she adds, to no one, apparently identifying a bird. "And a pair of nutcrackers in the pine."

"See, this is what I mean," Torres says, dropping into a seat. "Freya's out here doing ornithology at seven a.m. and Renzo's committing pastry theft."

"They were going to go to waste," Renzo says.

"They were not remotely going to go to waste."

Declan, without a word, gathers three empty plates from the far end and carries them to the sideboard, because he's apparently incapable of sitting near a mess. I catch it, and I file it away with everything else I'm learning about these people.

And I realize, wrapping my hands around a mug of coffee, that I'm actually excited to spend the whole day with them. A week ago I'd have told you my ideal day involved a trail and precisely zero other humans.

"Okay," Sophia says, rounding on me, because Sophia cannot let a lull live. "My sister. Older, terrifying, currently ignoring my texts. Guess her sign, oh great astrologer."

"Ooh." I sit up, delighted, because this is my favorite game. I think about it — the terrifying-older-sister energy, the ignored texts. "Scorpio. Definitely Scorpio. Broody, holds a grudge, would absolutely fake her own death to win an argument."

Sophia stares at me. "She's an Aquarius."

"…Ah."

"She's an Aquarius, Jessica."