Ivy & Ashes' Legacy Girls Lie Too

POV: JORDAN

The gates of Thornfield Academy were iron and old, and they stood wide open like they had nothing to hide.

Jordan Blake walked through them at ten forty-seven in the morning, her duffel bag on one shoulder and her father's brass compass in her jacket pocket. She counted two cameras at the gatehouse, one above the arch and one angled toward the visitor lot. A third was mounted on the stone pillar to her left, its lens tracking the entry path. She noted the sight lines and marked the hedge that broke the third camera's view about thirty feet past the gate. She kept her shoulders square and her chin level, the way her brother Marcus held himself before the men who killed him took that posture away forever, and she did not look at the lenses directly. If anyone here recognized her face instead of the name on her papers, there would be no marshal close enough to reach her in time.

The registration hall was a long room with high windows and folding tables draped in maroon cloth. Students moved through it in a slow current, clutching folders and looking visibly anxious. Jordan joined the Foundation Scholar line and pulled out the envelope. The documents inside had taken six weeks to build. She had examined them under a lamp the night before and found nothing wrong with them; that meant nothing now.

The registrar was a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain and a deliberate way of turning pages. Jordan set the papers on the table and watched the woman's hands. The woman inspected the scholarship letter, inspected the ID, and checked the scholarship letter again. Jordan stood completely still so she would not shift her weight or clear her throat.

"James Blake," the registrar said, not quite a question.

"Yes, ma'am. That's me."

"Everything seems to be in order with the Foundation paperwork." The woman stamped the form with a heavy thud and slid a black lanyard across the cloth. "Welcome to Thornfield."

Jordan took the lanyard and exhaled through her nose. She turned away from the table and almost walked into someone.

"Hey, sorry about that." The boy stepped back and raised both hands. He was tall and broadly built, with an easy grin that looked like it had never cost him anything. "I didn't mean to block your path. I'm Teddy. Teddy Phillips."

"James," Jordan said. "James Blake."

"Foundation Scholar?" He gestured toward her lanyard. "Me too, actually. First year here?"

"Yeah. It is."

"Same here." Teddy fell into step beside her as they moved toward the exit. "Where are you from, James?"

"Ohio. It's just a small town, you wouldn't know it."

"Try me," he said pleasantly. "I know quite a few places out that way."

"Millhaven." She had practiced the name until it felt like her own.

Teddy nodded, looking thoughtful. "Family there?"

"Just my mom." She kept her voice flat and even. "What about you?"

"Baltimore." He smiled again; it was an open, friendly smile, and that was the problem with it. "Big family. Loud house. I was ready to get out." He paused, his expression turning curious. "I didn't see you in the parking lot earlier. You walked in through the main gate?"

Jordan looked at him and saw he was still smiling.

"Bus dropped me at the corner," she said. "It was an easy walk."

"Sure, that makes sense." Teddy gestured toward the far doors, where a map of the campus hung on a corkboard. "I was about to do a walkthrough before they assign the dorms. You want to come?"

He held out one hand toward the corridor, an easy, open gesture.

Jordan looked at his hand, then at his face. She could not tell what was behind the smile, and that was reason enough to stay close to him.

"Sure," she said. "Lead the way."

The quad opened up wide past the registration building, and Teddy walked like he already owned the path. He pointed left toward a brick building with tall windows.

"That's Hargrove Hall. Science and math," he said, tapping his fingers against his strap. "You want to avoid the third floor study rooms because the senior boys claim them by October and they get territorial about it." He pointed right. "Chapel. Beautiful, useless, mandatory twice a month, though who actually listens?"

He spoke pleasantly, like a tour guide who had memorized the brochure and quietly disagreed with most of it. Jordan kept pace beside him while she listened, cataloging and filing each detail into the part of her mind that was building a map. The Foundation Scholar lanyard hung against her chest; she kept her hands loose at her sides, the way Marcus walked when he tried to hide how much he noticed.

"Social hierarchy here is mostly invisible," Teddy said. "But it runs everything. The legacy families sit together at dinner. Not because they're told to. Just because they always have." He paused for a moment. "The scholarship kids are fine, mostly. You get a few people who make it weird, but it settles down... right?"

"Good to know," Jordan said.

"The dorms are just past that hedgerow." Teddy gestured ahead. "Girls on the east side, boys on the west. But there's a common building in the middle that's technically neutral ground."

Jordan nodded. She watched the hedgerow and measured the distance, noting the dark gap in the stone wall where the path curved. Then she felt it: the heavy weight of someone's eyes pressed against her skin. She refused to turn her head abruptly. She adjusted her grip on the duffel strap and let her gaze slide sideways, casual, as though she were only taking in the campus architecture.

He stood near the fountain at the center of the quad, tall and dark-haired, wearing a Thornfield blazer with the ease of someone who had worn it for years. He did not move, and he was not talking to anyone. He looked directly at her, and the look had nothing friendly in it. Jordan felt her shoulders tense, but she forced the muscles flat.

"The dining hall schedule is posted outside the common building," Teddy was saying. "Breakfast ends at eight sharp, which is brutal, but you get used to it."

"Right," Jordan said, tone cool and steady. "Eight sharp."

She kept her stride easy. She watched the boy by the fountain in the bottom edge of her vision, counted the distance between them, calculated the angle, and noted that he had not moved at all. He just stood watching, learning the shape of her. She could not tell what he saw, and that uncertainty felt dangerous.

Teddy pushed open the iron gate that led toward the dormitory path. "Here we go. Home sweet home."

Jordan walked through the gate ahead of him, the prickly burn of Derek Hayes's stare following her all the way past the threshold.

The check-in table inside the dormitory entrance was staffed by a senior boy who looked like he would rather be anywhere else. Jordan set her duffel on the floor and slid her lanyard across the folding table. As she stepped up, she caught the angle Derek held near the doorway, a clear line to the sign-in sheet, and she shifted half a step left, turning her shoulder into the gap. The move cost her nothing, just a girl adjusting to reach the pen, but it put her back between his eyes and the page.

"James Blake. Foundation Scholar."

The boy found her name on the list and tapped it twice with his pen. "Room 14. East wing, second floor." He pulled a key from a labeled hook and held it out. "Roommate hasn't checked in yet, so you'll have the space to yourself for a while."

Jordan took the key and signed the form, angling the paper slightly with her free hand as she wrote. She pressed the pen down carefully, the same way she had written every document over the last six weeks, but she refused to search for Derek Hayes in the crowded room. She did not need to check. She felt where he stood, the same way a person feels a sudden draft before finding an open window. He had trailed them from the quad and positioned himself beside the entrance bulletin board; he stood close enough to read every stroke of her pen if he tilted his head, though her shoulder still blocked the clean line.

She capped the pen and took a quick step back.

"I can take that," Teddy offered, reaching for her duffel bag before she could argue. "It's one bag, and I'm not going to collapse."

"I've got it."

"James." He already held the nylon strap, and he gave her an easy, uncomplicated smile. "Second floor, right? I'm on the third, so it's directly on my way."

"You really don't have to carry my things, Teddy."

"Who said anything about having to?" He hoisted the weight onto his shoulder. "Are you going to let me be polite or not?"

She let him take it. She had no reasonable excuse to refuse without sounding paranoid, and appearing suspicious was the one mistake she could not afford today.

They walked up the stairs together as Teddy kept talking about the housing lottery. "You know the school claims the roommate assignments are completely random, right? But everyone knows the legacy families make private calls during the summer." Jordan listened and nodded at the right moments. At the second-floor landing, she glanced back through the stairwell glass. Derek lingered by the bulletin board. He was not reading the posted notices; he simply kept his eyes locked on the heavy stairwell door.

She broke away and continued down the corridor.

"Here you go." Teddy stopped outside room 14 and lowered the duffel back into her hands. "Dining hall's at six. They do a whole welcome thing, speeches, the works. You don't have to sit with anyone in particular." He paused and rubbed the back of his neck. "Do you want some company, or would you rather sit alone?"

"Thanks," Jordan said, keeping her tone light. "I'll find you."

He nodded and headed toward the upper floor, and she pushed her door open.

The room was small and plain, containing two twin beds, two desks, and one narrow window. She dropped the duffel onto the mattress and moved straight to the glass.

Derek Hayes stood on the stone path below, perfectly motionless near the main doorway. He was not glancing at his phone, nor was he chatting with passing students; instead, he watched the upper brick walls with the quiet focus of a patient hunter settling into position. He looked like a man with unlimited time.

Jordan pushed her fingers deep into her jacket pocket. Her hand closed around the brass compass. The metal felt cold, heavy, and intensely familiar. Her father had carried this exact weight for eleven years before she ever held it, before the night she watched through a cracked closet door as the people who gave her that heirloom stopped breathing one by one.

Would he recognize what she came here to do? Jordan felt sick with apprehension. She stared down at Derek and realized that every question she asked at Thornfield, every door she forced, and every calculated lie she told would happen under his scrutiny. Exposure would not mean expulsion; it would mean the same men who had emptied her house of everyone she loved finding out exactly where to look for the one witness left. He suspected something already, and she did not know what he knew. That blind spot was the most dangerous part of all.

She pulled her hand from her coat and turned back to face the empty room.