Chapter 5 #2
Sebastian reached me first. “Where?”
I pointed to the final support.
He leaned closer. “I don’t see anything.”
“Look past it at the wood grain.”
He adjusted his position. A second later, his eyes widened.
“Don’t touch it,” Sebastian said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Rafe joined us. “I still don’t see it.”
“Stand here,” I said.
He stepped beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine. A faint electrical charge lifted the hair along my arm.
I moved away and pointed again.
“The line of the desk bends.”
Rafe’s expression changed. “That’s not empty.”
Torren approached from the terrace. He held his hand over the support without lowering it.
“No heat,” he said.
“Move your fingers slightly to the left,” I told him.
His knuckles struck something solid.
A clear note sounded through the study.
Torren withdrew his hand.
Light traveled through the object he had touched, briefly revealing the outline of a rigid neck ring.
A torc.
The crystal became invisible again when the light faded.
My pulse quickened.
“There were only four in the Hall,” Leander said.
“Four visible ones,” Sebastian replied.
“This one was not present.”
“How would anyone know?”
“The ceremonial inventory lists four.”
I opened my notebook and flipped through the pages until I found the copy I had made during the final inspection. Four torcs, each described by material, stone, weight, and condition.
No fifth entry had been removed or marked unreadable.
“It has been here,” I said. “The dust around the supports is undisturbed.”
“Waiting,” Rafe said.
Leander looked at me. “For what?”
No one answered.
I reached toward the invisible torc.
Torren caught my wrist.
His grip was careful, but it stopped me immediately. “Sebastian warned us not to touch anything.”
“I know what it is now.”
“You know what it resembles.”
“The support is made for a torc. The others are wearing theirs. This is the fifth position.”
“And we don’t know what happens when you lift it.”
“I didn’t know what would happen when I cleaned the rune either.”
“That isn’t an argument in favor of touching it.”
The room brightened around us. Clear light gathered in the wall carvings and split into color where it passed over his hand on my wrist.
Torren looked at the runes.
His thumb rested over my pulse. I wondered if he could feel how quickly it had begun to beat.
He released me slowly.
“If I don’t touch it,” I said, “we remain sealed inside.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But every part of the wing has responded to all five of us, and the outer entrance disappeared before I was recognized as anything more than a magical accident.”
“You believe this will recognize you.”
I looked at the empty place on the stand.
“I think that’s what it was made to do.”
The four men exchanged glances.
Sebastian’s expression gave away nothing, but he did not tell me to stop again.
I placed both hands around the invisible torc.
The surface was cool and perfectly smooth. It weighed less than the silver relics I had handled in the Hall, yet the shape felt substantial beneath my fingers.
I lifted it from the stand.
Light entered the crystal.
Red appeared first, followed by violet, silver, and pale blue. The colors separated across the torc, then turned inward toward an empty place at its center.
A fifth color formed there.
It was not one I could name. It changed when I moved, flashing through every shade before returning to clear.
The torc opened in my hands.
I froze.
“Talia,” Torren said.
The crystal moved before I could set it down.
It circled my throat and closed.
Cold passed through me from my neck to my feet.
Then came heat, wind, darkness, and a sharp blue-white chill.
The wall runes ignited so brightly that I shut my eyes.
Magic struck every room at once.
Water rushed into the bathing tubs. Fire filled the common-room hearth. Air swept across the training terrace, and locks released throughout the study with a rapid series of clicks.
Behind us, somewhere beyond the dressing room, stone split apart.
When I opened my eyes, Torren, Rafe, Sebastian, and Leander were staring at me.
The torc no longer felt cold. It rested against my skin as if it had been shaped for me.
Not a borrowed relic.
Mine.
Sebastian stepped closer.
“May I?”
I nodded.
He lifted one hand but stopped before touching it. His eyes followed the clear ring around my throat.
“It’s almost invisible.”
“So am I, apparently.”
His gaze met mine.
“Not anymore.”
The words settled somewhere the magic had not reached.
A heavy door opened in the common room.
Voices reached us from the corridor. The headmaster called our names, followed by Malcolm’s sharper orders.
The Fifth Wing had released us.
Or admitted them.
We returned to the common room as academy officials came through the newly opened outer entrance. Malcolm stopped the moment he saw my throat.
The headmaster did not.
He approached until the crystal torc caught the firelight between us. Color spread across its surface, visible for one breath before disappearing.
“There were five,” he said.
Malcolm’s face tightened. “We still do not know what this wing was intended to house.”
Rafe picked up one of the cups from the table. “I have a theory.”
Sebastian took it away from him again.
The headmaster’s gaze moved around the common room, taking in the five chairs, the five place settings, and the five colored flames now burning in the hearth.
“So do I,” he said.
Malcolm looked at the four traditional heir torcs, then at mine.
“The tower must be examined before anyone remains here.”
The wall runes turned cold white.
Every door leading deeper into the Fifth Wing closed.
The headmaster watched the reaction. “I don’t believe the tower agrees.”
By nightfall, our belongings had been delivered.
The officials inspected every room the wing permitted them to enter, found no immediate danger, and accepted that the five of us would remain there under guard.
Malcolm protested until the headmaster asked where else they intended to place an heir whose torc had been waiting inside the academy longer than anyone could determine.
No one had an answer.
Leander called us together in the common room after the last attendant left.
“We need rules,” he said.
Rafe dropped into one of the chairs. “Of course we do.”
“We are sharing living space during a politically unstable succession. Privacy and security must be established immediately.”
Torren took the chair nearest the hearth. Sebastian remained standing beside the study corridor.
I chose the seat farthest from the center.
Leander noticed.
He did not comment.
“No one enters another person’s bathing alcove,” he began. “No one searches another heir’s belongings. Information concerning the Trials remains within this group until we agree otherwise.”
“Within this group?” Rafe asked. “You believe she’s part of it now?”
His eyes shifted toward me.
Leander’s did the same.
The crystal torc rested lightly against my throat. I had touched it at least a dozen times since it fastened itself there, checking that it had not disappeared.
“The Prism chose her,” Torren said.
“The wing admitted her,” Sebastian added.
Rafe leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “I was asking Leander.”
The room turned white again.
Leander looked at the five flames in the hearth.
Then he looked at me.
“Until the investigation proves otherwise,” he said, “the academy recognizes five heirs. These rules apply to all five.”
It was not acceptance.
It was more than I had expected.
The runes softened from white to clear.
Rafe glanced at the wall and smiled.
“They like her answer better than yours.”
“That wasn’t her answer.”
“No,” he said. “But the room still knows who needed to hear it.”