Chapter 15 #2
Camilla stood beside me while I adjusted the focusing plates. I pushed up my sleeve and turned my wrist beneath the concentrated light.
The scale appeared.
My sister stared.
I had watched Camilla maintain her composure when the Prism passed over her, when the Fifth Wing opened, and when the First Trial credited no one with victory. The transparent scale broke through it.
Her hand rose toward mine.
She stopped before touching me.
“It has no color.”
“The light gives it color.”
I moved my wrist. A narrow rainbow passed over the table.
Camilla’s lips parted.
“What kind of dragon does that?”
“No one knows.”
“Did it hurt?”
“No.”
“When did it appear?”
“Last night. Sebastian noticed it while we examined the cabinet runes.”
“Were you using magic?”
“Only the rune lamp.”
“Did the torc react first?”
I tried to remember. “I don’t think so.”
“And you felt nothing?”
“Nothing unusual.”
Her gaze stayed on the scale. “The First Trial didn’t trigger it?”
“The healer didn’t see it afterward.”
“But she may have missed it.”
“It’s nearly invisible.”
Camilla looked toward the lamp controls. “May I?”
I stepped aside.
She adjusted the beam herself, reducing its intensity until the scale disappeared. Then she brought it back slowly, watching the precise point when clear surface divided the light.
“When I shifted,” she said, “my back hurt for three days.”
“I remember.”
“You were eleven.”
“You broke the headboard.”
“That wasn’t part of the shift.”
“You gripped it when the first scales appeared.”
“I forgot that.”
“I didn’t.”
Camilla deactivated the lamp.
The scale vanished again.
“You always remembered everything,” she said.
“Not everything.”
“Everything that mattered to someone else.”
Her words sounded like affection. Something painful moved beneath them.
I lowered my sleeve.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“Daily examinations. Restricted training. Malcolm believes an unidentified dragon might be dangerous.”
“And the others?”
“They don’t seem afraid of me.”
“Torren argued with Malcolm in front of half the academy after the Trial.”
“He argues with everyone.”
“Not like that.”
Heat entered my face.
Camilla noticed.
She had always noticed more than I wanted her to.
“Is something happening between you?”
“No.”
The study runes turned gold.
Camilla looked at the walls.
“They react to emotion.”
“I heard.”
“They aren’t always accurate.”
“Of course.”
She did not believe me.
I opened the basket and found the honey cakes beneath a folded cloth. Mother had arranged them in two perfect rows.
Camilla watched me take one.
“You’re eating?”
“Yes.”
“You used to forget for half the day when you worked in the archive.”
“Torren doesn’t allow that.”
“He doesn’t allow it?”
“He makes breakfast impossible to avoid.”
“Because you’re training together?”
“Because he’s irritating.”
The runes deepened to gold.
Camilla looked at them again.
I took a bite of honey cake to avoid explaining.
“Be careful what you tell them,” she said.
I stopped chewing.
“They’re your rivals, Talia. They may be protecting you now because none of them understands what the fifth selection means. If the Trials return to normal, only one person receives the crown.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Leander could have completed his path. He turned back.”
“And the result was declared inconclusive. Next time, he may not choose you over the crown.”
The warning should have sounded sensible.
Instead, it felt rehearsed.
Not false. Camilla’s concern was real; I knew every small tension around her mouth. But the words arrived too cleanly, as if she had chosen them before entering the Wing and waited for the safest moment to place them between me and the heirs.
I folded the cloth over the remaining cakes.
“Did Mother send anything else?”
“Questions. Father talked her out of coming with me.”
“Why?”
“She wants you to withdraw.”
The words hurt even though I expected them.
“She believes the academy is putting you in danger,” Camilla continued. “She isn’t ashamed of you.”
“I didn’t say she was.”
“You thought it.”
“Apparently everyone can read me now.”
“Only the people who know you.”
She reached across the table and covered my unwrapped hand with hers.
“I know you never asked for this.”
“No.”
“And I know you’ll keep pushing until you prove you deserve it.”
My throat tightened.
“What if I do deserve it?”
Camilla’s fingers went still.
Then she squeezed my hand.
“Then you shouldn’t have to destroy yourself proving it.”
The answer sounded exactly like the sister I had trusted my entire life.
I told her everything.
The fire in the assessment chamber. The pressure of the center rune.
How the paths connected, the ache beneath my ribs when I moved away from the others, the way the torc responded when all four powers reached it, where my shoulder hurt, and how Sebastian believed the torc might be awakening something dormant inside me.
Camilla listened without interrupting.
Only once did her composure slip—when I described how the center rune had answered me. Her fingers tightened around mine, then relaxed so quickly I might have mistaken it for concern.
When she left, she took none of the honey cakes.
She carried every weakness I had given her.