Chapter 4
Talia
Less than an hour after the Choosing, the four heirs stood in Crown Wing Tower while every door prepared for them refused to open.
I had not expected to be there.
Once the headmaster dismissed the Hall, I assumed Keeper Malcolm would take me to an examination room, confirm that I possessed no dragon magic, and allow me to return to the records chamber.
Instead, an academy attendant collected my spare robe and work satchel while another informed my parents that I would be housed with the chosen heirs until the fifth beam could be investigated.
Mother protested.
Father asked how long the investigation would require.
Camilla said nothing.
I had been escorted away before anyone received an answer.
Now I stood beneath the painted dome of the Crown Tower rotunda, surrounded by four men wearing heir torcs and a dozen academy officials pretending that the problem in front of us had an ordinary solution.
The four heirs occupied the chamber as differently as their elements.
Leander waited beside the northern door with perfect patience. Sebastian moved from lock to lock, studying each failure. Rafe had abandoned formality entirely and leaned against the stair rail. Torren remained on his feet near the center of the room, positioned where he could see every entrance.
I stayed close to the outer wall with my satchel clutched against my side.
Four arched doors opened from the circular chamber. Each led to one of the traditional heir quarters: North, South, East, and West. The rooms were identical in size and status so no candidate could claim the academy had favored a particular heir before the Trials began.
Every door was sealed.
Keeper Malcolm pressed the end of his staff to the eastern lock for the third time. Its runes flashed red, violet, silver, and blue before going dark.
“The wards recognize all four torcs,” Sebastian said.
Malcolm looked over one shoulder. “I am aware.”
“They are refusing the command because the sequence is incomplete.”
“You cannot determine that from a single failed ward.”
“Four failed wards,” Rafe corrected.
He shifted against the railing, apparently unconcerned that we had been standing in the rotunda for nearly half an hour.
Someone had removed the formal silver fastening from his collar, leaving the top of his Storm uniform open at the throat.
The torc rested against his skin, its gray-blue stones flashing with each movement.
Leander’s attention remained on the northern door.
“The sequence cannot be incomplete,” he said. “The four torcs awakened, selected their heirs, and closed. Whatever occurred afterward did not change the original Choosing.”
Rafe tipped his head toward me. “You mean her.”
Leander’s gaze moved briefly in my direction. “I mean the unexplained fifth discharge.”
I lowered my eyes to my work satchel.
He had not spoken to me directly since the Hall. None of them had, though I had felt their attention whenever an official asked me to repeat what had happened beside the western lamp.
The fifth discharge.
The phrase had appeared quickly. Malcolm used it whenever someone called me an heir, and several academy officials had begun doing the same.
I preferred it to fifth heir.
An accidental discharge could be corrected.
An heir had to enter the Trials.
Torren crossed the rotunda and stopped beside Malcolm. “What happens if we force the doors?”
“The wards retaliate.”
“How severely?”
“That depends on the force applied.”
Rafe straightened. “Now I want to try.”
“No,” Leander and Malcolm said together.
A brief smile returned to Rafe’s face. “That almost sounded rehearsed.”
Leander did not look at him. Malcolm’s expression suggested he had already begun regretting the Prism’s taste in Storm heirs.
Sebastian crouched before the western lock. He had been studying it since we arrived, careful not to touch the runes after Malcolm warned him twice. Dark hair fell across his forehead as he leaned closer.
“The wards aren’t protecting the rooms from us,” he said. “They are protecting something inside the rooms from an incomplete group.”
“There is nothing inside except furnishings and ceremonial records,” Malcolm replied.
“Then why do the locks recognize all four heirs and still refuse them?”
Malcolm offered no answer.
The headmaster stood in the center of the rotunda with both hands clasped behind his back. He had spoken very little since our arrival, allowing Malcolm to test each door while he watched the results.
“What did the previous heirs do?” Torren asked.
“Their torcs assigned the quarters,” Leander said. “The doors opened as soon as they approached.”
“Separately?”
“Yes.”
Torren looked at the four sealed entrances. “Maybe separating us is the problem.”
Leander’s expression remained controlled, but tension sharpened his voice. “Four heirs have occupied these quarters every century since the tower was built.”
“Four heirs were selected every century,” Sebastian said.
Malcolm rose from the eastern lock. “And four were selected today.”
Silence settled over the rotunda.
All of them looked at me.
I tightened my grip on the satchel strap. “I’m not stopping the doors.”
“We know,” Torren said.
It was the first thing any of them had said directly to me.
His voice was deeper than I expected, firm without being unkind. He did not sound as though he were comforting me or dismissing the possibility that my presence mattered. He was simply stating what the four failed locks had already demonstrated.
For reasons I could not explain, the certainty in his tone loosened something in my chest.
I swallowed. “I could leave the tower. Perhaps they’ll open if I’m farther away.”
The headmaster looked at me. “Try.”
Malcolm frowned. “Headmaster—”
“If her presence is interfering with the wards, distance may resolve it.”
I did not wait for anyone to reconsider.
The main stairway spiraled down from the rotunda to the lower levels. I crossed toward it, relieved to have a useful instruction and a reason to leave the four heirs behind.
Every step away from them made the ache beneath my ribs tighten.
I told myself it was the strain of the beam.
I reached the first stair.
The entire tower shuddered.
Dust fell from the painted dome. A crack ran through the center of the floor, splitting the golden crown inlaid in the stone.
I jumped back.
Torren caught my elbow and pulled me away from the widening line. The movement brought me against his side. Heat radiated through his uniform, stronger than ordinary body warmth but not painful.
His arm remained between me and the fractured floor.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“I think moving was the problem.”
His hand tightened once around my arm.
Firelight flickered beneath the skin at his throat before fading. The contact lasted only seconds, but warmth spread from his fingers through the place beneath my ribs that had begun to ache.
The crack continued across the rotunda until it reached the wall between the northern and western doors. Stone groaned. The portraits hanging there—four rulers depicted in different centuries—shifted away from one another as the wall separated along a seam no one had noticed.
Sebastian stood.
“There,” he said.
A fifth arch appeared between the two heir quarters.
It had no visible door. Solid black stone filled the opening, covered in dust and bound by dozens of interlocking runes.
The headmaster moved toward it slowly.
“I’ve studied the tower plans,” Leander said. “There is no passage there.”
“There is now,” Rafe replied.
Torren released my elbow once the floor stopped moving. The warmth of his hand remained against my skin for several seconds after he stepped away.
I resisted the urge to rub the place.
The new arch was narrower than the other four but nearly twice as tall. Its carved peak disappeared into the curve of the dome. Five symbols had been cut across the stone at eye level.
Four matched the prominent runes surrounding the Prism.
The fifth matched the one beneath the western lamp.
Master Orin should have been here. He would know which records described the tower’s original construction, or at least where to begin searching for them.
Curiosity pulled me forward before I remembered what happened the last time I moved away from the others.
“Talia,” Malcolm warned.
I stopped.
Sebastian approached the arch from the opposite side. “Do you recognize the inscription?”
“Some of it.”
His attention shifted to me completely. His eyes were a dark gray that had appeared almost black across the Hall.
“What does it say?”
“I can’t read the entire phrase. The dialect predates the earliest academy catalog.”
“You recognized the fifth rune in the Hall.”
“I uncovered it. I didn’t translate it.”
“But you knew it belonged within the pattern.”
“I guessed.”
His gaze held mine. There was no disbelief in it now, only concentration intense enough to make me feel as if I had become another inscription he meant to decipher.
“What can you read?” he asked.
I studied the carving without stepping any closer.
“The first mark means crown, but not the physical object. Authority, perhaps. The second is usually translated as wing or flight.” I pointed without touching. “The middle signs are positional. This one might mean beyond, although it can also mean hidden.”
“And the final mark?”
“Fifth.”
Rafe came to stand beside Sebastian. “Hidden fifth crown wing.”
“That is not a translation,” I said.
“It has all the important words.”
“In an order that changes their meaning.”
His eyes brightened. “So you admit it has meaning.”
Leander joined us but maintained more distance from the sealed opening. “There is no Fifth Wing.”
The last rune lit beneath my pointing finger.
I dropped my hand.
One after another, the other marks awakened. Clear light filled their carved lines, dividing into red, violet, silver, blue, and a fifth color that seemed to contain pieces of all four.
The four heir torcs responded.
Torren’s fire opals burned red. Violet light passed through Sebastian’s dark stones, silver flickered across Rafe’s, and frost formed around Leander’s pale blue gems.
Clear light gathered against my sternum where a torc should have rested.
The black stone filling the arch began to dissolve.
It did not swing inward or slide aside. The surface broke into small particles that lifted into the air and disappeared before touching the floor.
Cold, stale air moved through the opening.
Beyond it waited a corridor.
Wall lamps ignited along both sides, illuminating a floor untouched by footprints. Dust covered the dark wood panels and lay thick across several narrow tables, but the passage itself showed no sign of collapse or decay.
The headmaster stepped beneath the arch.
The torcs dimmed immediately.
He stopped and looked back at us. “It will not admit me.”
Leander approached. The light in his torc strengthened as he crossed the threshold. No ward resisted him.
Torren followed, then Rafe.
Sebastian waited beside the entrance.
“For what?” Malcolm asked.
He looked at me.
All four men were inside the passage. The lamps had brightened, but the runes over the arch continued pulsing.
“They aren’t enough,” Sebastian said.
Malcolm’s mouth flattened. “You cannot know that.”
Sebastian extended one hand toward the corridor.
Nothing changed.
Then he gestured for me to enter.
My feet remained planted in the rotunda.
“I don’t have a torc.”
“Neither does the headmaster.”
“The corridor rejected him.”
“Exactly.”
That was not reassuring.
Rafe leaned back through the opening. “If it tries to throw you out, Torren can catch you.”
Torren gave him a look.
“Or I can,” Rafe added.
“That made it less reassuring,” I said.
His grin returned.
Malcolm moved between us. “The passage has been sealed for an unknown period. We will examine it before anyone proceeds.”
The arch began rebuilding itself.
Dark particles appeared along its upper edge, gathering into solid stone. The opening narrowed by several inches.
Rafe looked up. “If you’re planning an examination, I suggest doing it from this side.”
Malcolm stepped toward the arch.
The runes flashed and pushed him back hard enough that his staff struck the floor. Torren caught his shoulder, preventing a fall.
The rebuilding stone descended farther.
“Talia,” the headmaster said.
He had returned to the edge of the entrance, though he could not cross it. “Go.”
I looked at Malcolm.
His expression told me he would forbid it if the arch gave him time.
It did not.
I clutched my satchel against my side and ran through the opening.
The instant I crossed the threshold, the ache beneath my ribs released.
The final line of stone formed behind me.
For one breath, we stood in darkness.
Five strangers sealed inside a part of the academy that did not officially exist.
Then every lamp in the corridor blazed to life.
The light nearest me remained clear. Farther down the passage, separate colors appeared around each of the men—red beside Torren, violet around Sebastian, silver around Rafe, and pale blue beside Leander.
The walls were not merely reacting to five occupants.
They knew which of us stood where.
A row of runes lit across the sealed arch. This inscription was newer and easier to read than the one outside.
Sebastian moved beside me.
“What does that one say?”
My mouth had gone dry.
“Fifth Wing.”
Rafe gave a quiet laugh. “Apparently there is one.”
The corridor opened into a large circular common room.
Tall windows overlooked the academy grounds from a height the tower should not have possessed. Five chairs surrounded a low stone hearth. Five empty spaces waited beneath a row of weapons hooks, and five cups stood on a table without a trace of dust on them.
Everything beyond the corridor was clean.
Not abandoned.
Waiting.
Beyond the common room, a second arch led into a shared sleeping chamber.
Five beds had been arranged along its curved wall.
Not four established rooms with a temporary place found for me.
Five.
The bed nearest the windows was carved from dark wood. Another had silver posts, while a third stood beneath heavy blue curtains. The fourth was broad and plain, positioned closest to the chamber’s outer door.
The fifth was smaller than the others and covered in a clear layer of crystal.
I approached it before I could stop myself.
The moment my fingers touched the bedpost, color traveled through the transparent surface. Red, violet, silver, and blue separated beneath my hand, then merged into clear light again.
The room’s runes awakened.
All of them.
Heat flared behind me. Cold brushed my left arm. A current lifted loose strands of my hair, and the shadows around my feet deepened.
Four elemental powers answering the same room.
Answering me.
No one spoke.
For the second time that day, an ancient part of Crown Wing Academy had recognized me before any living dragon was willing to do the same.