Chapter 12
Talia
The five torcs illuminated.
Red, violet, silver, and blue light traveled from the men toward the clear rune beneath me. My crystal torc answered with a sharp pulse that I felt against my throat.
Then the outer gate remained closed.
Rafe looked toward the sealed entrance. “That was dramatic for absolutely no result.”
“The Trial recognized all five torcs,” Sebastian said.
“It recognized them before admitting us.”
“Not simultaneously.”
Leander approached the center rune. Water ran from his uniform and collected around his boots. The white scales along his neck had begun to recede, but his skin remained too pale.
“You’re freezing,” I said.
“I’m a Frost dragon.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t be cold.”
“It very nearly does.”
Torren took off his coat and held it out.
Leander stared at it.
“I’m not offering twice,” Torren said.
Rafe took the coat and put it around Leander’s shoulders before he could refuse, fastening it at the throat with exaggerated care.
“There. Your pride remains mostly intact.”
“Take it off.”
“The torc lights are fading,” Sebastian said.
All of us turned toward the floor.
He was right. Violet had already dimmed around his feet. Silver flickered beneath Rafe, while Torren’s red line withdrew toward the sealed Fire entrance.
My clear rune continued glowing.
“We have to activate them again,” I said.
“We already did,” Torren replied.
“Not intentionally. They responded because you all returned.”
Leander pushed Torren’s coat from his shoulders and handed it back. “What do you suggest?”
I looked at the elemental points surrounding the center.
The four paths had taken the men when each stood on his corresponding rune. Those same marks had connected to mine when the Trial opened. They remained arranged like parts of one larger design.
“Stand where you were when we entered.”
Rafe glanced at his Storm rune. “The last time I did that, the room tried to throw me off a mountain.”
“The mountain was inside the room.”
“That didn’t improve it.”
“Stand on the rune.”
He went.
Torren took Fire without argument. Sebastian moved to Shadow, and Leander returned to Frost. When all four men were in position, their torcs brightened again.
The lines beneath them did not move.
“What happened when you entered your paths?” I asked.
“The rune pulled me toward the fire,” Torren said.
“Mine drew power from the torc,” Leander added.
Sebastian looked toward the center. “Because the Trial was opening a connection between the heir and his assigned route.”
“The routes are sealed now,” I said. “Perhaps we need to direct the connection somewhere else.”
Rafe pointed toward me. “At the woman standing in the middle.”
I looked down at the clear rune.
“No.”
“Every line leads there.”
“They led here when the gate opened too. That doesn’t mean you should direct elemental power at me.”
“I wasn’t suggesting we set you on fire.”
Torren folded his arms. “Good.”
“I was suggesting we activate the torcs.”
Sebastian touched the dark stones at his throat. Violet light strengthened beneath his fingers.
“Intent may matter,” he said. “The Trial responded when we accepted our paths. It reacted again when all four of us chose to abandon them.”
“Then choose to leave,” Rafe said.
“I already have.”
“Perhaps the mountain needs a formal declaration.”
“The mountain does not care about declarations.”
The Shadow line moved.
It reached the outer edge of my rune before stopping.
Sebastian looked at his feet. “Apparently it cares about intent.”
Rafe touched his torc. “I choose to leave.”
Nothing happened.
“You don’t mean it,” Leander said.
“We’re sealed in a mountain.”
“You also want to know what happens if we activate the center.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to remain sealed.”
“It means your intention is divided.”
Rafe closed his eyes. The silver stones around his throat flashed.
The Storm line moved toward me.
Torren activated his torc next. Red light crossed the floor and stopped beside Shadow and Storm.
Only Frost remained dark.
We looked at Leander.
He stood with one hand near his torc but not touching it.
“What?” he asked.
“You have to choose,” Rafe said.
“I understand the process.”
“Then why are we waiting?”
“Because the Trial has rules. We abandoned the stated objective based upon an unverified interpretation of interconnected mechanisms.”
Torren’s red line held steady. “Talia saw that completing my path would collapse Rafe’s.”
“I know.”
“She kept all four of us alive.”
“I know that too.”
“Then what are you deciding?” I asked.
Leander’s gaze met mine.
“Whether choosing to leave together constitutes a failure of the Trial.”
The question settled over the chamber.
We had not done what we were brought inside to do. No one reached a Crown Gate. No heir proved himself stronger, faster, or more capable than the others.
I had interfered with the contest until it stopped being one.
“If you want to complete your path, Frost is still sealed,” I said.
“I cannot reach it.”
“Then your decision has already been made for you.”
“No. That decision was made when I turned away from the open gate.”
“Why did you?”
His jaw tightened.
Rafe leaned toward Sebastian. “He hates obvious questions.”
Leander ignored him. “Because leaving through that gate while the rest of you remained in danger would not prove I was fit to rule.”
The Frost torc lit—not because Leander had been forced back from his gate, but because he had chosen to return to us.
Blue traveled across the floor.
All four elemental lines reached the clear rune.
The men had made their choices separately. The four lines held together.
The crystal at my throat tightened.
The sensation was not painful, but it demanded my attention. Heat, cold, wind, and Shadow gathered around the boundary of the center circle without entering it.
The Trial waited at the edge of my rune with four powers held perfectly still.
“They made a choice,” Sebastian said. “Now you have to.”
“About what?”
“The fifth torc opened the gate. It may need to close the Trial.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Neither did we.”
Torren’s red line brightened at the edge of mine. Whatever happened when I answered, he was not pulling away.
I placed both hands around the crystal ring.
The clear surface filled with four colors. They moved toward the front of my throat and met beneath my fingers.
I thought about the outer field.
The headmaster and runemasters waiting beyond the gate. My parents watching from the Hall. Camilla seeing her unshifted sister trapped inside a Trial never built for her.
I wanted to leave. Not alone. Not as the accidental fifth participant sent back to the observation platform. I wanted all five of us beyond the mountain.
The clear rune blazed.
Light passed from it into the four elemental lines, moving away from me rather than toward me. Each torc flashed as the light reached its heir.
The sealed path doors unlocked.
They did not open.
The mountain shook hard enough to send all of us to the floor.
I caught myself with both hands. Pain ran through my shoulder, but I stayed inside the center rune.
Stone ground behind me.
The outer Crown Gate split along its central seam.
Morning light entered through the widening gap.
The five torcs dimmed together.
Torren reached me first. He caught my uninjured arm and pulled me upright against him before the floor could shake again. His grip shifted immediately, careful of my shoulder even while stone broke around us.
“Move,” he said.
The Trial began collapsing around us.
Cracks spread from the elemental entrances. Wind escaped through the Storm seal, carrying pieces of stone into the center. Fire burned along the base of Torren’s door. Frost covered the ceiling while Shadow thickened in every corner.
We ran.
Rafe and Sebastian reached the outer threshold first. Leander followed, one hand against the side of the gate as another tremor shook the mountain.
Torren kept hold of my arm as though the Trial might try to claim me again.
The gate started closing.
“Go,” I told him.
“Together,” he said, with no room left for argument.
We crossed the threshold as the stone shut behind us.
The field outside had filled with officials.
Runemasters surrounded the entrance, pressing control stones against the arch. Academy guards stood with their weapons raised, while the medical team waited several yards away.
The headmaster reached us before anyone else.
“Are all five of you alive?”
Rafe looked down at himself. “Parts of me may still be in there.”
The headmaster counted us anyway, his gaze touching each face as though numbers alone could confirm we had all returned.
His gaze paused on Leander’s soaked uniform, Sebastian’s bleeding palm, and the scorch marks along Torren’s sleeves. He looked at my hands last.
“What happened?”
Keeper Malcolm approached from behind him. “The Trial was disrupted when the fifth torc activated the central nexus.”
“Talia was trapped inside,” Torren said.
“We saw that.”
“Then why didn’t you open the gate?”
“The external controls stopped responding.”
“Before or after it pulled us into our paths?”
Malcolm did not answer immediately. “The entrance sealed as soon as the Trial registered all four elemental heirs.”
“Five heirs entered,” Sebastian said.
“Only four paths activated.”
“That is the problem.”
“The problem,” Malcolm said, “is that an unassigned participant interfered with an established Trial.”
Torren moved between us with a low sound that was closer to a dragon’s warning than a man’s.
I stepped around him before he could block me completely.
“I warned them that their paths were connected.”
“You encouraged them to abandon their objectives.”
“Completing the objectives would have injured them.”
“The First Trial is designed to test whether an heir can overcome opposition.”
“Opposition from each other?”
“Yes.”
The answer should not have surprised me. It was carved over the gate.
Four enter. One emerges.
Malcolm looked at the four men. “None of you reached the Crown Gate.”
Leander had.
He could have claimed the victory.
I waited for him to say it.
He took one step forward. “The conditions were not as described.”
Malcolm’s expression tightened. “Your path opened.”
“While my power destroyed Torren’s bridge.”
“Elemental conflict is part of the Trial.”
“Was the collapsing structure part of it?”
“The Trial is dangerous by design.”
“You ordered Talia to return to the observation platform, yet the central rune physically restrained her. If one portion of the established procedure failed, we cannot assume the remaining mechanisms functioned correctly.”
Malcolm looked toward the sealed mountain.
Runemasters continued attempting to restore the external controls. None had succeeded.
“The result will be reviewed,” he said.
“Then it has not been established that she disrupted anything,” Leander replied.
The headmaster watched him with an expression I could not interpret.
Malcolm’s attention moved to Torren. “Did Talia interfere with your path?”
“Yes.”
My stomach tightened.
Torren continued before Malcolm could respond.
“She stopped me from killing Rafe.”
The field fell silent.
Rafe lifted one hand. “I appreciated it.”
“She recognized the connections before any of us,” Torren said. “She coordinated four elements without training and brought us back to the entrance alive.”
“She prevented completion of the Trial.”
“She saved us.”
Red light flickered once through Torren’s torc, as if his dragon agreed.
Malcolm looked at Sebastian.
Sebastian held up his injured hand. “My Shadow concealed a collapsed bridge after Rafe’s wind carried it ahead. I would have stepped into the opening without Talia’s warning.”
Rafe nodded toward the mountain. “And I would have lost my platform when Torren lit the final brazier.”
For the first time since the Choosing, all four heirs stood together without positioning themselves as rivals.
Leander did not add anything else.
He didn’t need to. He had surrendered an open gate, challenged Malcolm’s account, and placed himself on my side in front of every watching official.
The headmaster addressed the waiting officials.
“The First Trial is suspended pending examination. No heir will be credited with victory or penalized for failure.”
“Inconclusive,” Malcolm said.
“For now.”
The headmaster signaled the medical team.
They separated us before anyone could argue further. An examiner took Sebastian’s hand. Two others led Leander toward a warming tent, and Rafe allowed himself to be inspected only after claiming three times that the blood on his sleeve belonged to the mountain.
Torren stayed beside me.
A healer reached for my injured shoulder.
I stepped back automatically.
Torren put one hand between my shoulder blades and kept me in place, his palm warm enough that I felt it through the torn training uniform.
“Let her look.”
“I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.”
The healer removed the wrap and examined the bruise. It had spread farther across my shoulder during the Trial.
I waited for Torren to say something.
He didn’t. His jaw locked, and heat gathered beneath the hand against my back.
That was worse.
“We don’t know what the academy will decide,” I said.
His hand remained steady against my back. “About the Trial?”
“About me.”
He looked toward Malcolm, who stood beneath the inscription arguing with the runemasters.
“The Prism chose you,” Torren said. “The wing recognized you. The Trial needed you.”
“It didn’t give me a path.”
“No.”
The simple agreement hurt more than denial would have.
Then his fingers pressed lightly against my back, the anger in his touch becoming something steadier.
“It gave you all four of ours.”