Legacy Found (Luftis Academy #1)

Chapter one

Jessica

Working retail doesn’t come with a lot of perks, but a day off is definitely one of them.

I say it out loud to my empty flat. "Day. Off."

Rain streaks the window, because — this is England, where the sky treats sunshine like a limited-edition drop. But the forecast app swears the Peak District will clear by ten, and I've learned to trust the little cartoon cloud with the hopeful yellow peeking behind it.

I'm dressed before my brain fully wakes up — leggings, my flannel, washed soft, boots that know my feet.

My pack's been loaded since last night, because past-me is occasionally a genius: trail mix with the dark chocolate chunks I pick out first, two water bottles, my camera wrapped in a spare sock like the precious thing it is.

I sling it over one shoulder and reach for my phone to check the weather — and the app I actually open isn't the weather one. It's the horoscope. My thumb just goes there, muscle memory.

Sagittarius. "The stars align for the unexpected. Today's journey may take a turn you didn't plan for. Stay open — the universe has a lesson waiting."

I read it twice. This one is true. I can feel it.

The stars are talking straight at me. "Okay," I tell the screen.

"I'm listening." My horoscope has been right more times than not.

It once told me, in so many words, not to cross an ocean for a man with a great accent — and I did it anyway, and I now live alone in a country that isn't mine with a judgmental lizard for company, so.

Point taken, universe. Loud and clear. Since then, I've learned to pay attention when it bothers to lean in and say something.

To me, that's exactly what it is: the weather for the parts of a day you can't see coming.

"A lesson waiting," I murmur, grabbing my keys, already half-wondering what it'll turn out to be.

I head out.

By the time I reach the trailhead, the cartoon cloud has kept its promise. The rain's burned off into that clean, washed-bright light you only get after a storm, everything so green it looks like someone bumped the saturation.

I take a breath so deep it goes all the way to my toes.

This. This is the thing the office people never understood when they asked why I "settled" for a hiking store instead of finishing my degree.

They saw a name tag. I see this — trails to talk about all day and walk on my days off, legs strong enough to carry me anywhere.

My old boss back in California once told me I lacked ambition.

I think about him out here sometimes, and I don't feel a single thing he wanted me to.

The trail starts easy, dirt curving up through wildflowers. My boots find their rhythm, a skylark shows off somewhere overhead, and I hum along to nothing, the way I do when I’m peaceful and happy.

Twenty minutes in, a ruined shepherd's cottage ambushes me — grass grown up through the old hearth, a doorway with no door, tiny purple-and-gold wildflowers at the base of a collapsed wall. I get the camera out and take too long over all of it, because it’s really beautiful.

There's a mossy plaque, and I read every word, because I am physically incapable of walking past history: the wall's three hundred years old, and people once lived up here with nothing but sheep and sky.

I press my palm flat to the cold stone for a second, like I can say hello to whoever stacked it — then feel slightly unhinged for petting a wall, and move on.

The paw print stops me cold about an hour in.

It's pressed into a patch of mud where the trail dips toward a stream, and it is — okay, it's big. Not big like a Labrador. Big like something that made me do an involuntary double-take and then crouch down beside it before my brain caught up with my knees.

I set my hand next to it for scale, the way you're supposed to, and immediately regret it.

My hand does not win.

The print swallows my splayed fingers with room to spare. Four toes, a broad pad, and — I lean closer — claw marks at the tip of each toe. Deep ones. Not the neat little retractable situation a cat would leave. These dug in.

"Okay," I say to the mud. "That's a big dog."

The wind picks up, hissing through the grass, and the back of my neck prickles.

"England doesn't have wolves," I say out loud, standing and brushing my hands on my leggings. "You people hunted them all to extinction ages ago. I’m sure of it."

I photograph it, obviously — my hand in frame for scale, so later I can show someone at the store and they can tell me it's a Great Dane and I can pretend I wasn't briefly, genuinely, six years old and scared of the dark.

Big dog. Somebody's off-lead monster having the time of its life up here. Same as me, honestly. Good for it.

I step over the print and keep climbing, and I only look over my shoulder twice.

Maybe three times.

The trail turns mean about a mile later.

The gentle dirt gives way to rock — proper rock, dark and slick, stacked into a steep scramble that hugs the side of the hill.

The stream is louder now, tumbling down beside me in a rush of white water, and the morning's rain has left everything glazed and shining.

I love this part. I know, I know. But there's something about a scramble that switches my whole body on. My hands find holds without me thinking. My core engages. My heart's working, but it's happy work.

I'm maybe two-thirds up when my boot finds a rock that looks exactly like all the other rocks.

It isn't.

The moment I put my weight on it, the world tilts. My foot skates out from under me on the wet stone and my stomach does that awful drop, but I catch myself — palm slamming down, fingers clawing into a crack, one knee catching hard on a ledge.

"Oops," I gasp.

For one bright, stupid second, I think I've got it. My heart's slamming but I've got a grip, I've got a knee down, I just need to breathe and reset and —

The rock under my hand shifts.

Just an inch. Just enough.

And then I'm falling.

There's no time to be graceful about it. The ledge disappears. My hip hits stone. I scrabble for anything, and there is nothing, and gravity drags me down the scramble in a clatter of loose rock and flailing limbs.

My arm scrapes something. My palms shred. The world is elbows and sky and the bright white shock of pain, and I come to a stop in a heap at the bottom of the steep bit with my ankle folded underneath me.

The pain arrives about half a second late, and when it lands, it lands.

"—okay," I hear myself wheeze. "Okay. Okay."

I lie there breathing, taking inventory the way the first-aid course taught me. Head — fine, didn't hit it. Spine — fine, I can wiggle my toes, thank God. Hands — stinging, gravel-studded, one long scrape up my forearm beading red.

Ankle.

I look down at my ankle and my whole body says no.

I try to stand anyway, because I am, apparently, an idiot. I get my good foot under me, grab a rock, and push — and the second any weight touches the bad ankle, the pain whites out my vision and a sound comes out of me that I'm glad no one's around to hear.

I sit back down. Hard. "Right," I breathe. "Not that, then."

I assess the situation with the cold practicality of someone who refuses to panic.

Two miles in. Alone. On a Wednesday, on a trail that’s empty.

My ankle is the size and color of a small aubergine and getting bigger.

I could crawl — I actually get about four feet of dragging myself along before my shredded palms and my screaming ankle hold a meeting and veto that plan.

Calling emergency services because I fell down is embarrassing. I work at a hiking store. I tell people how to layer socks, be safe, take the trekking poles. And now I get to explain to a very patient dispatcher that I've been defeated by a wet rock.

I call for help.

The paramedic who reaches me is named Priya, and she is a godsend. "Tell me what happened," she says, kneeling by my ankle.

“I slipped on a rock and went ass over teakettle.”

She laughs. Good. At least someone is enjoying this. They splint me, clean the gravel out of my palms, and load me onto a stretcher I feel absurd on, and then it's the ambulance and England sliding past the little window while I clutch a foil blanket and try to look like I've got this.

"You're taking it well," Priya says.

"Practice. Being embarrassed is basically my hobby. That and hiking — which, as you can see, go great together."

She grins. "First fall?"

"First one where I had to call you guys."

The hospital is too-bright fluorescent light and that smell every hospital on earth shares.

The X-ray says what I already suspected — no break, just a bad sprain.

The kind that comes with crutches and stay off it for a few weeks and a look from the doctor that says he's seen a thousand of me and we all think we're the exception.

A nurse cleans my cuts, then reaches for a little tray. "Just a quick blood draw, and we'll get you sorted."

"Is that standard?" I ask, because I like knowing why things happen.

"Routine, love. New protocol — everyone who comes through gets a panel now. Health authority thing." She ties the band, taps for a vein. "Barely takes a second."

"Ah." I look away, because I'm brave about ankles and a total coward about needles.

"Just a pinch now."

I feel the pinch. That's all it is — a pinch, a vial filling dark red, a cotton ball and a bandage and a there, done.

Nothing feels different. I just know my ankle hurts and I want to go home.

They release me as the afternoon light is fading. The doctor repeats the instructions like I'm going to forget them — ice, elevate, stay off it, don't be a hero — and I nod and promise and privately mourn the summit I didn't reach.

Because that's the part that actually stings. Not the ankle. Not the palms. Not even the humiliation of the rescue. It's that it was such a good day — the exact kind of day I crave every day spent at work.

I crutch toward the exit, already certain I'll have bruises in my armpits. The automatic doors whoosh open. Cool evening air hits my face.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, the little app pipes up. Today's journey may take a turn you didn't plan for.

I stop. Right there in the doorway, balanced on my crutches.

And I laugh.

"Well," I say to no one. "I guess you got that right."

Although, seriously, universe? You couldn't have worked a hot doctor who wanted my number into the plan? Just a little something to balance out the bumps and bruises?

Apparently not.

I hitch my pack higher on my shoulder and point my crutches toward home.