Chapter 3
Talia
The beam held me against the wall.
Light covered my hands, my robe, and the floor beneath my shoes, but I felt no heat. The force was physical, a steady pressure across my chest that made it difficult to draw a full breath. When I lifted one hand, color moved beneath my skin in narrow bands before disappearing beyond my wrist.
Something moved deeper.
Not a shape. Not yet. Only a vast pressure stretching beneath my ribs, as if my body contained a space I had never known was there.
No one spoke.
Hundreds of candidates filled the Hall. Every gallery seat was occupied. Only moments earlier, the applause for the fourth heir had been loud enough to shake dust from the upper carvings.
Now I could hear my own uneven breathing.
Keeper Malcolm recovered first.
“Do not move,” he ordered.
I would have laughed if I’d had enough air. My shoulders were pinned to the stone, and my knees were close to giving way.
Malcolm approached the Prism with his staff raised.
The crystal continued pouring light across the chamber.
Unlike the four elemental beams, this one did not create a clean circle around its chosen heir.
Its edges changed whenever I looked directly at them, separating into colors before becoming clear again.
“What happened?” someone called from the gallery.
“The Choosing is complete,” another voice answered.
“That is a fifth beam.”
“Who did it select?”
The questions multiplied, too many to distinguish. Candidates broke formation as they turned toward the eastern wall. Several academy attendants moved between the rows, ordering them to remain in place.
The headmaster did not repeat the command.
He stood beside the Prism with his attention fixed on me. Shock had widened his eyes, but he appeared more interested than afraid.
Malcolm struck the metal base of his staff against the floor.
Nothing happened.
He struck it again.
The beam remained.
“Release,” he commanded.
The Prism did not respond.
A muscle moved in Malcolm’s jaw.
Master Orin stepped in front of me. He kept a careful distance from the light, though one edge passed across the sleeve of his black robe and broke into pale ribbons.
“Talia?”
“I’m all right.”
“You don’t look all right.”
“I can’t move.”
His mouth tightened. He turned toward the dais. “She cannot breathe properly.”
The headmaster descended the first step. “Do not touch the beam.”
“I hadn’t planned to.”
The pressure increased.
A sound escaped me before I could stop it.
Camilla left the Stone line immediately.
An attendant caught her arm. “Candidates must remain in formation.”
Gray scales flashed across the back of Camilla’s hand.
“That is my sister.”
The attendant released her.
Camilla crossed the Hall, but Malcolm moved into her path.
“Stay back.”
“She said she can’t breathe.”
“The Prism has never produced a fifth beam. We do not know what contact with it will do.”
“It’s already touching her.”
Malcolm’s gaze hardened. “Which is why we will not introduce another elemental power until we understand what occurred.”
Camilla’s protective scales appeared along her throat. Granite gray spread beneath her skin, tracing both sides of her neck and disappearing into the collar of her uniform.
“I am going to my sister.”
The floor trembled beneath her boots.
“Camilla.”
Father’s voice reached us from the gallery.
She looked up.
He stood at the stone rail with one hand braced against it. Mother remained seated behind him, her face pale. I had never seen either of them look so lost.
Camilla closed her eyes for one brief moment. When she opened them, the floor stilled and the scales at her throat began to recede.
The headmaster approached the light.
Unlike Malcolm, he carried no staff or ceremonial protection. His black mantle dragged over the glowing lines as he crossed the floor.
“Headmaster,” Malcolm warned.
He stopped several steps in front of me.
“Talia, can you lower your arms?”
“I think so.”
I tried.
My right hand moved first, then my left. The pressure across my chest eased enough for me to inhale deeply. The air tasted like cold metal after a storm.
The headmaster watched the colors pass over my fingers.
“Did you activate anything before the beam appeared?”
“No.”
“You uncovered the runes beside the western lamp,” Master Orin said.
Malcolm turned sharply. “What runes?”
“I found them during the final inspection,” I said. “I thought they were decorative.”
“Why were they not reported?”
“I was going to record them after the ceremony.”
Camilla looked at me.
I heard her earlier warning as clearly as if she had repeated it.
Today is not the day to prove that you are the most observant person in the room.
“I touched them before the Choosing,” I continued. “There was a pulse, but nothing happened after that.”
Malcolm went to the western lamp. He pushed the iron frame aside with the end of his staff, revealing more of the glowing pattern beneath its base.
His expression changed.
Only slightly. A tightening around the eyes, gone almost before I noticed it.
“You disturbed a sealed inscription.”
“It wasn’t sealed. It was covered in residue.”
“You had no authority to expose it.”
“I was cleaning the Hall.”
“And in doing so, you may have redirected residual Choosing magic.”
The explanation reached the audience.
Whispers spread through the chamber.
Not chosen.
An accident.
A discharge.
The words were not shouted, but the Hall’s acoustical runes carried them farther than their speakers intended.
Relief passed through me so quickly that my knees weakened.
An accident made sense.
The Prism had awakened dormant markings I happened to be standing near. Light had followed the newly opened path and struck the first person at its end. I had caused the beam by disturbing something I should have left alone.
No one had to explain why the Prism would choose a twenty-four-year-old junior keeper who had never shifted.
No one had to ask me to become something I could not be.
“Keeper Malcolm is right,” I said.
The headmaster looked at me. “We have not established that.”
“I touched the rune. The light followed it.”
“After passing through the candidates.”
“It was looking for somewhere to go.”
A few nervous laughs came from the gallery.
The headmaster ignored them. “The Prism is not water spilling from a broken channel.”
Heat rose into my face. “I didn’t mean—”
“You believe the Choosing made a mistake.”
I looked down at my gray robe, my keeper’s badge, and the dust still caught beneath my nails.
“Yes.”
The beam brightened around me.
Color flashed across the wall on either side of my body. The hidden runes beneath the lamp responded with a matching pulse.
The pressure under my ribs answered.
The headmaster’s eyebrows lifted.
Malcolm returned to the dais. “The Prism is unstable. We should clear the Hall and conduct a complete examination before assigning meaning to an unprecedented magical reaction.”
“Agreed,” Leander said.
Every head near the dais turned toward him.
The Frost heir stepped out of his circle. His torc remained pale blue, but the light inside its stones had dimmed when the beam selected me.
“We should not declare a fifth heir until the integrity of the Choosing has been verified,” he continued. His voice was calm, carrying none of the accusation in the gallery whispers. “Nor should we dismiss the selection before that examination.”
Malcolm inclined his head. “A reasonable position.”
“Reasonable?” Rafe asked.
He had also left his place, though no one seemed to have noticed him move.
“The giant ancient crystal shot her with light,” he said. “That looks fairly decisive from here.”
A startled laugh escaped someone in the Storm delegation. Rafe ignored it.
“It selected four heirs,” Leander said. “Four torcs awakened.”
“And then it selected her.”
“There is no fifth torc.”
I looked toward the empty display cases.
He was right. Torren, Sebastian, Rafe, and Leander each wore proof of the Prism’s decision. I had only a keeper’s badge and a beam that should not exist.
Sebastian had not joined the argument. He stood at the edge of the glowing floor pattern, following the newly exposed runes with his gaze.
“The fifth line connects to the others,” he said.
Malcolm turned toward him. “Step away from the inscription.”
Sebastian obeyed, though his attention remained fixed on the pattern.
Torren had moved away from the Fire line.
He was watching me rather than the runes.
Our eyes met across the Hall. His expression held none of Rafe’s challenge or Sebastian’s fascination. His gaze moved over the way I held myself against the wall, then settled on the beam pressing into my chest.
“Can you release her?” he asked Malcolm.
“If I could, I would have done so.”
Torren’s jaw tightened. Heat rippled around his shoulders.
For the first time since the beam struck me, something other than panic cut through my confusion.
He was angry on my behalf.
He did not know me. He had no reason to care whether the light hurt.
Yet he had noticed.
“Perhaps it will stop on its own,” I said.
Malcolm’s attention returned to me. “Have you experienced any elemental manifestation?”
“No.”
“Unusual heat? Cold? Shadow response? Electrical discharge?”
The colors beneath my skin had felt like all of them and none of them. I did not know how to explain that without making the Hall even more interested in me.
“No.”
“Scales?”
My hand rose automatically toward my bare throat.
Nothing covered the skin. Nothing ever had.
“No.”
“Have you ever shifted partially?”
The question should not have embarrassed me. My status was recorded in the academy archives, along with the name of every dragon-born child who failed to manifest by twenty.
“No.”
Malcolm turned toward the headmaster. “She has no known elemental affinity and no dragon form. The Prism does not choose humans.”
“I’m not human,” I said before I could stop myself.
Malcolm’s expression did not change. “You are unshifted.”
“I was born to two dragons.”
“As were others who never manifested.”
The distinction was one I had lived with for years.
Dragon-born.
Unshifted.
Wingless.
Never heir.
The headmaster looked from Malcolm to me.
Then he stepped into the beam.
The galleries erupted in alarm.
Light passed over his mantle and separated into seven narrow colors. It did not strike or repel him. He continued forward until he stood directly in front of me.
The pressure across my chest vanished.
I dragged in a breath and pushed away from the wall.
My knees buckled.
The headmaster caught my forearm before I fell.
The moment his hand closed around me, the beam withdrew. It moved back across the Hall, passing over Camilla and the rows of candidates before disappearing into the Prism.
The pressure beneath my ribs went with it, leaving an ache in its place.
The white light at the crystal’s center went dark.
Every lamp relit at once.
The sudden return of ordinary fire made me blink. For several seconds, I could see nothing beyond pale shapes and spots of color. Sound rushed back with the light: murmuring candidates, scraping boots, my mother calling Camilla’s name.
The headmaster released my arm only after I steadied myself.
“Master Orin,” he said.
“Yes, Headmaster?”
“Identify your assistant for the official record.”
Master Orin looked as if he would rather be asked to move the Prism with his bare hands.
“Talia,” he said. “Junior keeper of the Hall of Prism.”
No family title.
No military rank.
No elemental territory.
Only my name and the work I had been doing when the light found me.
The headmaster faced the chamber.
“The Prism has named five.”
Malcolm stepped forward. “We have not confirmed—”
“The Prism has named five,” the headmaster repeated.
No one challenged him a second time.
“The fifth selection will be investigated. The runes will be examined, and the integrity of the ceremony will be verified. Until evidence establishes that the Prism failed, Crown Wing Academy will recognize what occurred in this Hall.”
He turned toward me.
“Talia, junior keeper of the Hall of Prism, chosen fifth heir.”
Silence followed.
The title seemed to belong to someone else. Someone trained, powerful, and standing at the center of the Hall instead of leaning against a wall to keep her knees from folding.
The headmaster began to clap.
The sound was startlingly ordinary. One pair of hands coming together in a Hall full of people who did not know what they were expected to do.
Master Orin joined him.
Torren was next.
His applause was slow and measured, his attention still fixed on me.
Rafe followed with considerably more enthusiasm. Sebastian began after one last look at the hidden runes.
Leander waited.
Our eyes met briefly. His face revealed nothing, but his earlier words returned to me.
Nor should we dismiss the selection.
Then he brought his hands together as well.
The sound spread through the candidates. The senior keepers joined. Academy instructors and officials followed, and finally the galleries filled with applause that was neither as loud nor as joyful as it had been for the four men.
It did not matter.
The Hall was recognizing me.
I stood beside the headmaster in my plain gray robe, with dust beneath my fingernails and no torc around my throat, while hundreds of dragons applauded a choice none of us understood.
Camilla approached when the headmaster dismissed the remaining candidates.
People moved out of her way again, but not as quickly as they had before the ceremony. Some watched her with open curiosity. Everyone knew she had been expected to stand among the heirs. Everyone had seen the fifth beam touch her uniform before passing her to reach me.
She stopped in front of me.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry. The words pressed against the back of my teeth, but saying them here would make the moment worse. I had not taken anything from her intentionally, yet I stood beneath the attention that should have belonged to her.
Camilla looked at my empty throat.
Her gaze remained there one heartbeat too long.
Then she embraced me.
Her arms closed tightly around my shoulders. Pain flared through the one I had struck against the lamp, but I did not pull away.
“Congratulations,” she said beside my ear.
Her voice did not break. Her posture remained perfect. Anyone watching would see an accomplished elder sister celebrating the impossible honor granted to the younger one.
Her hands trembled against my back.
“Camilla—”
“Not here.”
The whisper was so quiet that the Hall’s runes could not carry it.
She drew away and smiled for the people watching us.
I did the same.
Between us, reflected in Camilla’s dark eyes, the Prism remained clear and silent.