Page 13 of Legacy Found

"Capricorn," I say, pointing, delighted. "Of course. Disciplined, patient, plays the long game, thinks he can out-wait everyone in the room —"

"That's slander," Jon says mildly.

"— and is usually right, which is the best worst part."

The corner of his mouth goes up. "Go to bed, Jessica." It's not unkind, and I grin at him.

We do not, of course, go to bed.

We make it about forty feet down the corridor before Renzo stops dead, points at a suit of armor standing sentry in an alcove, and announces, "If that thing moves, I'm leaving. I'll walk back to Italy. I'll swim if I have to."

"It's not going to move," Freya says.

"That is exactly what it wants you to think."

And that's how the six of us end up giving ourselves a completely unauthorized tour of Lufgard by phone flashlight, because none of us can find a light switch and half the wing probably doesn't have them. It's the most fun I've had in years. The castle is made for it — corridors that dead-end at boarded doors, a spiral stair so tight Declan has to turn sideways, rooms of sheeted furniture that Sophia narrates like a true-crime podcast ("and it was here, in the drawing room, that the group was never seen again"). I read every plaque I find out loud, whether anyone wants me to or not. Torres keeps drifting to the front, checking corners before we round them — I don't think he knows he's doing it — and Declan keeps drifting to the back, so the rest of us end up quietly bracketed between them the whole time.

Then, somewhere on the third floor, we all hear it. A long, low, breathy whooo drifting down the dark corridor ahead.

Sophia grabs my arm hard enough to bruise. "Nope. Nope, nope, that's a ghost, I knew it, I called it in the van —"

"I'll go look," Torres says immediately, already moving, because of course he does.

"You will not," Sophia hisses. "That's how the first one always dies. The brave one goes to look. We never see him again."

Renzo, meanwhile, is delightedly making it worse. "Ask it its birthday," he tells me. "Jessica, quick, establish rapport. Ghosts love astrology."

"That," Freya says calmly, from over by the window, "is a tawny owl. There's a nest in the tower above this wing. You can hear the male calling — they hunt this time of night."

Silence.

"…I liked it better when it was a ghost," Sophia admits.

Declan laughs then — really laughs, a big warm sound that fills the corridor and makes all of us grin just to hear it, because it turns out the gentle giant has been enjoying every second of this. Sophia gasps and points at him like she's witnessed an eclipse. "He laughs! Mark the date! Jessica, is this astrologically significant?"

"Deeply," I say solemnly.

Freya reaches over and unlatches the window like she's done it a hundred times, and cold mountain air pours in. One by one we crowd up to look, and the joking trails off into nothing.

Because the Alps are right there.

The moon's up, huge and clear the way it never is over England, laying the whole range out in silver, peak after peak after peak, snow catching the light, the forest falling away below the walls. The owl calls again, and this time nobody jokes. Freya names a few constellations for us. Declan says, softly, that it reminds him of home. Renzo, for once, says nothing at all.

I'm still leaning into the window when someone steps in behind me.

I know it's Torres before he says anything.

He has a delicious smell that I have already memorized. I'm suddenly aware of every inch of space between my back and the solid heat of his body. The window is pouring freezing mountain air straight into my face, and somehow I'm warm.

A shiver runs through me anyway.

Torres leans closer, his mouth near my ear. His breath brushes warm against my skin.

"Cold?"

The word goes straight through me.

An actual little zing shoots down my spine and lands somewhere considerably lower, and for one ridiculous second all I want to do is lean back. Just an inch. Find out what all that heat feels like pressed against me.