Chapter five #2
Inside, Lufgard is even better, because inside is where you can touch it.
A woman with a clipboard checks me in, hands me an actual brass key — heavy, worn smooth — and points me toward the residential wing, and I take the longest possible route because I physically cannot move through a place like this quickly.
The stone stairs are worn into gentle dips in the center of each step, sanded down by centuries of feet, and the banister has gone dark and glassy under a thousand palms before mine.
Above one doorway a family crest is carved into the stone, faded almost to nothing, some animal worn soft by time.
The windows in the oldest sections are narrow slits — arrow slits, I realize with a thrill, actual arrow slits — that someone long ago widened and glazed so they'd let in light instead of stopping invaders.
I stop to read a small plaque by the great hall because of course I do, and the hall itself nearly undoes me: a vast vaulted room with long wooden tables that could seat a hundred, a fireplace tall enough to stand inside, iron chandeliers, and banners so faded their colors are only suggestions now.
"I would live and die in this room," I inform a passing staff member, who smiles like she's heard it before.
Before dinner, the six of us end up gathered in a smaller sitting room off the hall, doing the awkward shuffle of strangers thrown together. Torres drops into the chair beside mine like we've been assigned seats.
"So," he says, low, just to me, nodding at the room, the castle, the whole improbable situation. "Like your room?"
"Oh, hard yes," I say.
He studies me a second. "You're going to be trouble. I've got a sense for these things."
"No comment."
He laughs, and it's the easy, loud kind, and just like that we're off — trading theories about what the whistle-man's name will be, whether Declan could take a bear (unanimous yes), whether Renzo has ever once completed a sentence without a gesture (unanimous no).
It's the kind of friendship that shows up rarely and seems fully formed already.
The conversation drifts to where everyone's from — Renzo's Italian coast, Sophia's Thessaloniki, Freya's northern Sweden, Declan's County Kerry, Torres from the States — and that's when the question comes out of me, automatic, before I've decided to ask it.
"Okay, more important. When's everyone's birthday? "
The room goes briefly, beautifully confused.
"…That's your opening question?" Renzo says.
"I'm into astrology."
He points at me, vindicated. "I knew it. The crystals. It all makes sense."
"Finally," Sophia announces, throwing up the hand not holding coffee. "Someone's asking the important questions."
"So you're into it too," I say.
"Not at all." A sigh. "But every terrible decision I've ever made involved a Gemini."
Renzo's hand flies to his chest. "I'm a Gemini."
"I know," Sophia says, delighted, and the room dissolves.
I go around anyway, because there's no stopping me now.
Sophia's a Leo, which surprises exactly no one — the sunshine, the volume, the way she's already collected all six of us into a friend group by sheer force of will.
Freya, a Virgo, gives me her date, unreadable, while I explain what it means; when I nail "notices everything, says a tenth of it," the corner of her mouth twitches, which from Freya I'm learning is basically a standing ovation.
Declan's a Cancer, and honestly I could've guessed — he's spent the whole day quietly carrying other people's bags, and when I say Cancers look after everyone before themselves, he just shrugs, enormous and embarrassed, and mutters that someone has to.
"You," I say, turning on Torres. "Go."
He eyes me, amused, arms crossed. "April twelfth."
"Aries." I clap once. "Oh, that tracks. Confident, a little reckless, walks into a room full of strangers and immediately picks the fight for fun. Leads with jokes because it's easier than leading with anything real — and would absolutely throw hands for someone he's known a week."
His expression freezes for a moment — quick, there and gone. Then he recovers and grins. "Deeply unsettling. Do it again to someone else."
"I'm going to have all your charts figured out before this week is over," I warn the room. "Fair warning. There's no escape."
"I feel like I should be more scared of you than the castle," Torres says.
"You should be exactly as scared. We're a matched set now."
Dinner in the great hall is soup and bread, eaten at those enormous wooden tables under the faded banners, loud and warm and good.
Afterward, a staff member leads us up to the residential wing to settle in before the evening begins, and my brass key opens the heavy wooden door onto my simple and completely perfect room.
It’s got a narrow bed with a hand-stitched quilt, a wardrobe, a writing desk, and a single deep-set window in a wall two feet thick.
There are fresh flowers on the desk. The stone around the window is worn smooth where centuries of people have leaned there to look out, and when I lean out too, the mountainside drops away into a dark forest.
The castle talks while I unpack — creaks and settles, wind finding its way through old stone and whistling faintly somewhere above me. I sit on the edge of the bed and just let myself feel how completely insane the last couple of weeks have been.
A bell rings then rolling through the whole castle until I feel it in the stone under my feet — and a moment later there's a brisk knock on my door, then one down the hall, then another, someone moving along the corridor rapping on every door in turn.
"Orientation begins in fifteen minutes."
I stand up and check myself in the little mirror by the wardrobe. My braid's a mess, but whatever. I grin at myself.