Chapter five
Jessica
Convincing a leopard gecko that air travel is in his best interest is not a conversation either of us enjoys.
"It's one flight," I tell Pickles at six in the morning, easing him into the travel carrier I've spent a week researching — insulated, ventilated, lined with his favorite hide so at least one thing smells like home.
"One flight, a car ride, and then you get a professor who's apparently thrilled to babysit you.
That's a better week than I'm having, frankly. "
He gives me the slow one-eyed blink he reserves for my worst ideas.
"I know. But I'm not leaving you behind, so this is happening. We're a package deal now."
And we are, which is the only reason I'm doing this at all.
If Jon hadn't offered to keep him, I wouldn't have come — I'm not the kind of person who ships a living creature off to a stranger and flies to another country.
So Pickles comes too, tucked under the seat in front of me the whole flight, radiating quiet betrayal while I check on him every twenty minutes and the man across the aisle pretends not to hear me murmuring reassurances to a carrier.
By the time we land in Switzerland, I've decided we've bonded through shared trauma.
The arrivals area at the private airport is where it gets strange.
There's a small knot of people clustered near a sign that reads LUFTIS ACADEMY in that now-familiar dark script, and every single one of them is wearing the exact expression I am — the one that says I have no idea what I've agreed to and I'm too far in to turn back now.
We are, unmistakably, the confused ones. And it is an instant, enormous relief.
A lean guy with an easy grin takes in the sign, the group, and my lizard carrier, and announces to no one in particular, "Okay… this definitely isn't a university."
Nobody answers.
"Give it time," says a girl with a messy dark bun and — somehow, already, in an airport — a coffee in hand.
"Renzo," the guy says, offering his hand around the circle like he's being introduced at a gala. Italian, all motion and eyebrows.
"Sophia," says the girl, talking with both hands despite the coffee. "Greek, loud, and emotionally unprepared for all of this. Is that a lizard?"
"Leopard gecko," I say. "Pickles. And I'm Jessica."
"You brought a pet to the mystery castle." Renzo points at me, delighted. "I respect it. I looked at you and thought — that woman definitely owns crystals."
"I do not," I say, scandalized. There's a pause. "…They're in a drawer."
Renzo throws his head back and laughs, and just like that, I know he's going to be one of the good ones.
Two more drift over as a uniformed driver rounds us up.
A tall blonde woman introduces herself as Freya with the absolute minimum number of words, then simply watches everything, saying nothing, which I first read as intimidating and will later understand is just Freya.
And a genuinely enormous guy—Declan, from Ireland—shakes my hand like he's afraid of snapping it, then quietly relieves Sophia of the duffel she's wrestling before she can even ask. Last is Torres.
And—oh.
Broad shoulders. Black hair a little too long. Dark eyes already crinkled with a joke he hasn't made yet. A black geometric band wraps one bicep, disappearing beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt, and there are numbers inked across the knuckles of one hand.
Tattoos. Of course he has tattoos.
I have the immediate, completely reasonable thought that it's a damn shame we're in the Alps.
Beaches have swimsuits. I would like to see Torres in a swimsuit.
Possibly for educational purposes. Purely to document his tattoos.
I wonder how many he has. And where they are.
He takes one look at the six of us, then at the guards. "So which one of us do we think is the sacrifice?"
I laugh.
His eyes snag on mine.
And stop.
For a second, he just looks at me. Really looks at me, like he was scanning a group of strangers and suddenly found something he wasn't expecting.
Then he smiles.
Not the easy grin he walked in wearing. This one is slower. Warmer. Just for me.
My stomach gives a strange little tug.
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.