Chapter 6
Torren
Talia was gone when I woke.
Her crystal bed stood empty across the sleeping chamber, its blankets folded back with more care than anyone should manage before dawn. The clear frame gave off a faint glow, enough to show the indentation her head had left in the pillow.
I sat up and listened.
Leander’s breathing remained slow and even behind the blue curtains around his bed. Sebastian had fallen asleep with one arm hanging over the side of his mattress and a book open on the floor below him. Rafe lay facedown with his blankets twisted around one leg.
No one appeared concerned that the Fifth Wing’s newest heir had disappeared during our first night inside it.
They had not spent years waking at the smallest change in a camp.
An empty bed did not always mean danger. Sometimes a soldier needed water or air. Sometimes they had drawn the early watch and forgotten to wake their replacement.
Sometimes an empty bed meant the enemy had crossed the perimeter without making a sound.
I pulled on my trousers and boots, then followed the light beneath the wall runes.
The common room was empty. The five flames in the hearth burned low, each no larger than my thumb. Clear light extended from the doorway on my right, leading toward the study.
The tightness between my shoulders eased when I found her.
Talia sat at one of the desks.
Three cabinets stood open around her. She had arranged their contents in precise rows: blank ledgers, sealed ink bottles, pieces of chalk, measuring cords, and small metal tools I couldn’t identify.
Her brown hair had been twisted into a loose knot, though several strands had escaped and fallen around her face.
She still wore her keeper’s robe.
She had removed the badge and placed it beside her notebook. The crystal torc remained around her throat, nearly invisible except where the study lamps passed through it and cast narrow bands of color across her skin.
She looked completely at home.
That did not make this safe.
“You left the sleeping chamber without waking anyone,” I said.
She looked over her shoulder but did not startle. “I went to the study.”
“I see that.”
“The wing showed us where it was yesterday.”
“I remember.”
She waited.
I waited longer.
Finally, she set down her pen. “Was I supposed to ask permission?”
“No.”
“Then what did I do wrong?”
“You disappeared from a room containing four people who are supposed to notice if something happens to you.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Nothing happened to me.”
“You didn’t know that when you left.”
“I walked through two rooms.”
“Inside a magical wing that sealed us in yesterday.”
“The doors were open.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“What is the point?”
I had commanded soldiers who argued less before breakfast.
I reminded myself that she was not one of my soldiers. She had not accepted my command, and I had no authority over her.
The knowledge did nothing to quiet the instinct that had driven me out of bed the moment I saw hers empty.
“The point is that none of us knows what this place can do,” I said. “Torcs, beds, and entire corridors appeared because you touched them. Until we understand why, no one should be alone when testing something new.”
“I wasn’t testing anything new. We examined this room together.”
She was right.
The fact annoyed me more than it should have.
“You opened the cabinets.”
“Sebastian unlocked them when I put on the torc.”
“That doesn’t make their contents safe.”
She glanced at the orderly rows covering the desks. “Nothing reacted.”
“Something could have.”
“Nothing did.”
I crossed the study and stopped on the opposite side of her desk. “Sebastian warned us not to touch unfamiliar objects, and then you came in here while we were sleeping and emptied three cabinets.”
“I knew what was in them.”
“You knew after you opened them.”
Her mouth tightened.
The wall runes changed from clear to orange.
I looked at them.
“So that color is irritation.”
“The theory remains unconfirmed.”
“You wrote it in your notebook.”
“As an observation, not a conclusion.”
I leaned one hand against the desk. “Fine. My observation is that the walls turn orange when you’re annoyed.”
“They also turned orange when Rafe was annoying me.”
“That supports my conclusion.”
A brief expression crossed her face before she looked down at the ledger.
Amusement.
The runes softened to gold.
I had never lived in a room that announced the emotional state of its occupants. Before the end of the first week, one of us was going to find a way to cover them.
Assuming the academy still considered us heirs by then.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Cataloging what we found.”
“At dawn.”
“I woke early.”
“You slept for three hours.”
This time, she did look surprised. “How do you know?”
“I was awake when you went to bed.”
“You were facing the other direction.”
“I heard you.”
She closed the ledger. “I slept enough.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I am capable of deciding when I’m tired.”
“You’re also capable of lying about it.”
Her gaze snapped to mine.
The runes turned orange again.
I expected her to deny it. Instead, she gathered several of the small metal tools and returned them to the first cabinet.
“You don’t know me well enough to call me a liar.”
“I watched you tell your sister you weren’t hurt after you struck your shoulder against the lamp.”
Her hand stopped.
The movement lasted less than a second, but it confirmed what I already knew.
“How did you see that?”
“I was in the Hall.”
“So were several hundred other people.”
“Most of them weren’t watching the keepers.”
“Why were you?”
“I watch exits, officials, and anyone handling ceremonial weapons or magical relics.”
“I wasn’t handling anything.”
“You were kneeling beside a lamp stand and cleaning a rune no one else appeared to know existed.”
“That happened before the ceremony.”
“Yes.”
She turned fully toward me. “You noticed me before the Prism did.”
I had.
Brown hair escaping its pins. Dust across a gray robe. A woman kneeling where everyone else stood, studying something the rest of the Hall had overlooked.
The realization appeared to bother both of us.
It should not have stayed with me as clearly as it had.
I straightened and moved around the desk. “Let me see your shoulder.”
“No.”
“Talia.”
“Torren.”
My name in her mouth stopped me for half a heartbeat.
“You hit iron hard enough to shake a lamp,” I said.
“I bruised it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I can move my arm.”
She demonstrated by lifting it above her head.
Her face remained controlled until her elbow passed the level of her shoulder. Then her breath caught, and she lowered the arm too quickly.
I folded my arms.
“That proved nothing,” she said.
“It proved you’re in pain.”
“I already said it was bruised.”
“You said you weren’t hurt.”
“A bruise does not count.”
“It counts if you’re entering the Dragon Trials.”
“I’m not entering anything.”
“You’re wearing an heir torc.”
“Because it attached itself to me.”
“So did mine.”
“You can shift into a Fire dragon. You’ve trained for this most of your life. I cleaned the display case that held your torc.”
The words came without self-pity.
That made them harder to dismiss.
She genuinely believed the distance between us was too great to cross.
Maybe it was.
The Trials had killed heirs before. Not often, and never in recent cycles, but the records did not pretend every chosen dragon survived. Power alone offered no guarantee. An unshifted woman with no combat training would be at a greater disadvantage than anyone the academy had prepared to receive.
I had spent years learning to control fire under pressure. I had trained in human form, dragon form, and the dangerous space between them. I had scars from lessons that went wrong and memories of one lesson I would have given anything to take back.
Talia had a notebook, three hours of sleep, and a shoulder she refused to admit hurt.
The Prism had still chosen her.
“Take off the robe,” I said.
Her eyes widened.
“So I can examine your shoulder.”
“No.”
“I’m not asking you to undress.”
“That is precisely what you asked.”
“The robe goes over your uniform.”
“I know how my clothes work.”
“Then you understand that you’ll remain fully dressed.”
The runes turned red.
Not orange.
Red.
We both looked at the walls.
Talia’s cheeks changed color.
So did the tips of her ears.
“That one could mean anger,” she said.
“It could.”
“It does.”
I decided not to argue, particularly when I was no longer certain anger was the only thing the room had detected.
“Fine. Keep the robe on.” I stepped back, giving her space. “Will you at least sit down while I find something warm for the bruise?”
She regarded me suspiciously. “You aren’t going to summon a healer?”
“Not if the pain eases and you can move it afterward.”
“That sounds almost reasonable.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
Gold flickered through the red runes.
At last, she sat.
I went into the bathing room and found clean cloths stacked in the cabinet beside the tubs. The water ran cold until I touched the basin. Heat spread across the stone beneath my palm, warming it faster than I intended.
I withdrew my hand immediately.
The water stopped steaming.
Control first.
Always.
I wet the cloth with ordinary warm water and returned to the study. Talia had opened the ledger again.
“Close it.”
“I can hold a cloth and read.”
“You can also rest for five minutes.”
“You are very fond of impossible demands.”
“This is not one of them.”
She closed the ledger with unnecessary force.
I folded the cloth and held it out rather than placing it against her shoulder myself.
“Here.”
Her fingers brushed mine when she accepted it.
The contact was brief, but heat tightened instinctively in my chest. Her clear torc caught the light, separating the red from the other colors for one bright second.
She noticed.
Neither of us mentioned it.
“Hold it over the bruise,” I said.
“It’s warm.”
“Yes.”
“Did you heat it?”
“I heated the water.”
“With fire magic?”
“That is generally how Fire dragons heat things.”
Her fingers tightened around the cloth. “I’ve never seen anyone use elemental power for bathwater.”
“You need to spend less time in archives.”
“I like archives.”
“I noticed.”
She pressed the cloth over her robe, then adjusted it until the warmth reached the bruise.
Her shoulders lowered.
The small line between her brows eased despite her attempt to hide it.
“Better?”
“A little.”
“That means yes.”
“It means a little.”
I sat on the edge of the opposite desk.
For several moments, the only sound came from her fingers tapping once against the folded cloth.
“Do you think it was an accident?” she asked.
“The bruise?”
“The selection.”
I considered giving her the answer everyone expected.
I could have said that five heirs were impossible. I could have reminded her that she had never shifted and possessed no known element. I could have listed every reason Malcolm had already given for treating the fifth beam as an unstable discharge.
None of that would explain why the wing had opened or why a crystal torc made for her had waited inside it.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said.
“That sounds like a careful way of saying yes.”
“It’s an honest way of saying I don’t know.”
She studied me.
The runes remained clear.
“If Malcolm determines the beam was an accident,” I continued, “you go back to the Hall. If the selection stands, you enter the Trials.”
Her hand lowered slightly. “And die.”
“Not if you prepare.”
“I have no dragon.”
“You may have no dragon. We don’t know that yet.”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“I know.”
“First shifts occur at sixteen or seventeen. Eighteen is considered late. At twenty, the academy records you as wingless.”
“I know that too.”
“Then you know preparation won’t give me wings.”
“No. It will keep you alive while the academy determines what the Prism saw.”
She looked at the cloth pressed to her shoulder. “Why would you help me?”
The answer arrived too quickly.
Because the thought of finding her bed empty again had felt wrong.
Because the Prism had selected her, and something in me had accepted that before the academy did.
I gave her the only answer I was prepared to say aloud.
“I didn’t say I would.”
The runes flashed orange.
I almost smiled.
“I said you deserve the chance to prepare.”
“Because the headmaster recognized me?”
“Because the Prism did.”
Her fingers stopped tapping.
Outside the study, footsteps crossed the common room. Leander appeared in the doorway fully dressed, his pale blue torc bright against the collar of his dark uniform. His gaze moved from me to Talia and the cloth she held against her shoulder.
“A summons arrived,” he said. “We’re due in the assessment chamber at the ninth bell.”
Talia stood immediately.
I caught the ledger before she could pick it up.
“You’re finished with this.”
“I haven’t recorded the wardrobe contents.”
“They’ll still be there tonight.”
“You don’t know that.”
It was my own argument, returned without hesitation.
Gold light spread through the runes.
Leander watched it, then looked at me.
I handed Talia the ledger.
She accepted it with a small, victorious lift of her chin.
“Five minutes,” I said. “Then you eat before the assessment.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Would you prefer the academy’s first report on the fifth heir to say she collapsed from exhaustion before testing began?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“That is manipulative.”
“Is it working?”
The wall turned orange.
“Five minutes,” she said.
I had commanded soldiers who surrendered with less resentment.
I had never enjoyed winning an argument this much.