Chapter 18
Leander
Rafe violated nine of the twelve flight restrictions.
He disputed four.
The remaining five were apparently justified because Talia laughed.
Laughter was not an approved safety measure. Nor should the memory of it have made the violations harder to condemn. I pressed the pen more firmly into the paper and added the unauthorized ascent.
I completed the incident report in the Fifth Wing study while the two of them remained in the garden. The academy flight master required documentation whenever an unshifted passenger was carried without an instructor. Rafe claimed that heir status exempted him. The flight master disagreed.
I found the disagreement reassuring.
The law still functioned in some parts of Crown Wing Academy.
Sebastian sat at the desk across from mine, studying a copy of the First Trial inscription. Torren had taken the borrowed harness back to the training grounds. Neither commented when I listed Rafe’s unauthorized second circuit around the tower.
“You missed the ascent beyond the approved height,” Sebastian said.
I added it.
Ten violations.
“You were measuring?” I asked.
“I estimated based on the tower windows.”
“That is not an admissible measurement.”
“It was accurate.”
“Those are separate considerations.”
The study door opened.
Talia entered first, carrying the folded harness instructions. Color remained high in her cheeks, and the crystal torc at her throat continued catching the light with every movement.
Rafe followed.
He looked entirely too pleased with himself.
Talia looked pleased too. Her mouth was pink from the cold wind—or from the kiss I had interrupted in the garden. Frost gathered across the metal nib between my fingers before I forced it away.
I lowered my pen. “The flight master has requested your presence.”
“Did you tell him I landed safely?”
“I told him what occurred.”
“Then he knows.”
Talia placed the instructions on the desk. “I chose to fly.”
“No one suggested otherwise.”
“You’re writing a report.”
“Because Rafe ignored the approved conditions.”
“I agreed to the second circuit.”
“The conditions were designed to protect you.”
“I was protected.”
“Because nothing went wrong.”
Rafe leaned against her desk. “I believe this is where you congratulate us.”
“It isn’t.”
The wall runes turned cold white.
The Wing had begun to make privacy impossible. I could regulate Frost through battlefield pain, political negotiation, and three days without sleep. Apparently, I could not prevent a wall from noticing jealousy.
Talia looked at them, then at me.
For one unreasonable second, I remembered the garden turning red while she kissed Rafe.
I had cleared my throat because the flight master was waiting.
That was all.
A knock came from the outer door.
An academy messenger entered carrying a sealed envelope marked with my family crest.
He handed it to me and waited.
The seal belonged to my father.
The message contained six words.
North Council Chamber. Come alone. Immediately.
I folded it.
Rafe watched me. “Good news?”
“No.”
“Bad news?”
“Family.”
He nodded as though the answer explained both.
The North Council Chamber had been reserved for my family since Crown Wing Academy opened for the Choosing.
No law granted us the room. Tradition did. The current king belonged to our bloodline, as had three rulers before him. My grand-uncle would never describe the space as ours, but no other delegation attempted to use it.
My father waited inside with two council advisers.
The advisers left when I entered.
That concerned me more than their presence.
Father stood beside the long window overlooking the academy grounds. Frost-white hair at his temples was the only sign that he had aged since I completed my first military examinations. He wore no formal court mantle, only the dark blue coat of a northern magistrate.
His eyes went to my torc.
They always did now.
“You completed the First Trial,” he said.
“No one completed it.”
“Your Crown Gate opened.”
“I turned away.”
“Yes.”
He indicated the chair across from him.
I remained standing.
“What do you need?”
“The council is preparing a petition for clarification of the fifth selection.”
“Malcolm’s review remains open.”
“Which is precisely why a legal position must be established before he closes it.”
“Whose position?”
“Ours.”
“I am an heir of the entire realm.”
“You are a son of the North.”
“Those identities are not in conflict.”
“They will be if the fifth heir renders the succession illegitimate.”
I had heard variations of the argument since the Prism selected Talia. No law recognized five heirs. No law prohibited them either.
That distinction mattered.
“The Prism named her,” I said.
“The Prism released an unexplained beam after the Choosing was complete.”
“The Fifth Wing contained her torc.”
“A torc no official catalog recorded.”
“Because it is transparent.”
“Because no record establishes that it belonged to an heir.”
“The wing was built for five occupants.”
Father walked to the table and opened a black folder.
Copies of the First Trial report lay inside. The records included the failed external controls, the interconnected elemental channels, and Talia’s position within the center nexus.
Someone had also provided a sketch of her transparent scale.
The drawing reduced the first impossible proof of Talia’s dragon to measurements and labels. I had watched her face when the healer confirmed the scale was alive. Nothing in the council’s neat black lines recorded what that knowledge cost her—or what it gave back.
“Where did you get that?”
“The manifestation is not confidential.”
“The healer’s drawing is.”
“It was submitted to the Keeper of Trials.”
“And he gave it to the North Council?”
“The council requested all evidence relevant to the succession.”
“That does not answer my question.”
Father closed the folder.
“You are looking for conspiracy where ordinary procedure is sufficient.”
“Malcolm refused Sebastian access to the Trial construction records.”
“Candidates have never received unrestricted access.”
“He is an heir.”
“So are you, yet you understand why the Trials cannot be studied before completion.”
I understood the law.
I had become less certain that the law explained Malcolm’s decisions.
Father gestured toward the folder. “The petition will not declare Talia illegitimate.”
“Then what will it do?”
“Require the academy to determine what she is before she enters another Trial.”
“She manifested living dragon scale.”
“One transparent scale with no known element.”
“The academy has already ordered daily examinations.”
“Observation is not identification.”
I looked toward the window.
Crown Tower rose above the lower academy buildings. The Fifth Wing could not be distinguished from the outside. Its windows appeared only from within, another impossibility no review had explained.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Firsthand confirmation.”
“Of what?”
“Whether the official reports accurately describe her abilities.”
“They do.”
“Did she redirect Torren’s fire during the assessment?”
“I didn’t see the initial turn clearly.”
“Did she control the central nexus?”
“She interpreted it.”
“That is not control.”
“She established communication between four sealed paths and coordinated our return.”
“Through the torc?”
“Through the Trial channels.”
“Did those channels respond before or after she touched them?”
I thought of Talia kneeling in the center rune. Clear light moved beneath her hands whenever she changed connections.
“After.”
“Did her torc react to one elemental source?”
“I don’t know.”
“The scale refracts all elemental colors.”
“It refracts light.”
“Does the torc?”
“It carried all four colors when the First Trial opened.”
“Simultaneously?”
The word changed the conversation.
I looked at my father.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because the council must know whether her manifestation represents an independent element or an unstable combination of the chosen four.”
“You intend to argue that she is drawing power from us.”
“We intend to require the academy to answer the question.”
“How?”
“Under controlled conditions.”
My father spoke as though the proposal were cautious and reasonable.
Perhaps it was.
That was how dangerous decisions entered law: not as cruelty, but as reasonable precautions endorsed by people who would never stand inside the circle being tested.
Talia had redirected Torren’s fire. The Fifth Wing hearth turned clear when she approached it. Her torc accepted four elemental colors, and the First Trial’s channels converged beneath her feet.
If her magic depended upon ours, we needed to know before another Trial forced the connection.
“The torc reacted most strongly when all four elements reached the center,” I said.
Father listened without moving.
“The scale appeared under concentrated rune light. It divided the beam into multiple colors, but there was no elemental discharge.”
“Can she produce the effect deliberately?”
“No.”
“Has she attempted to redirect power since the assessment?”
“Not in my presence.”
“Is she training?”
“With Torren. Human defense only.”
“Despite her injury?”
“The healer cleared light activity.”
Father’s mouth tightened. “She conceals pain.”
I did not ask where he learned that.
The information could have come from the healer’s reports or from anyone watching her complete the assessment.
“She does,” I said.
“And the men encourage her?”
“Torren ends the training when necessary.”
“What about Rafe?”
“His judgment is less consistent.”
“Yet you allowed him to carry her.”
“I do not control the other heirs.”
“You will need to if you intend to rule them.”
The old expectation entered his voice.
I had been trained for the crown since my first shift. Law, strategy, diplomacy, military command, elemental control—every lesson assumed that if the Prism recognized me, I would enter the Trials more prepared than my rivals.
It had.
I was.
Then Talia appeared, and every rule I understood began opening hidden doors.
I had expected rivals I could defeat within a system designed to measure us. I had not expected a woman the system could not explain—or the possibility that being worthy of the crown might require protecting her from the institutions that served it.
“I intend to rule the realm,” I said. “Not the other heirs.”
Father studied me.
“Your grand-uncle believed the same thing before his first Trial.”
“I’ve read his account.”
“You’ve read the approved account.”
The answer struck too close to Sebastian’s sealed record.
“What does that mean?”
“It means rulers learn which truths can be carried publicly and which must remain with the crown.”
“Is there an unapproved account?”
Father closed the folder and tied the cord around it.
“That is not why I summoned you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
A faint expression crossed his face. Approval or irritation. With my father, they often looked similar.
“The council will petition for a controlled elemental demonstration,” he said. “You will not be asked to challenge Talia’s selection. Only to cooperate in identifying her power.”
“When?”
“After Malcolm accepts the petition.”
“He has already seen it?”
“Not formally.”
I looked at the confidential healer’s drawing inside the folder.
“Do not share anything else I told you.”
“The council acts for the stability of the crown.”
“That was not permission.”
Father’s gaze cooled.
“I heard you.”
I returned to the Fifth Wing after sunset.
Talia sat in the common room with the basket her sister brought. One honey cake remained on the plate. Rafe reached for it as I entered, and she slapped his hand away.
“You ate four.”
“I flew you around the tower.”
“Which somehow entitles you to all of my mother’s food?”
“I assumed it entitled me to more than cake, but Leander interrupted.”
The wall runes turned red.
Talia’s face did the same.
Torren looked up from the chair beside the hearth. Sebastian stopped reading.
I removed my coat.
“Don’t involve me in your inability to behave appropriately.”
Rafe smiled. “There he is.”
Talia broke the final cake in half and gave him one piece.
I went to the study.
The sealed cabinets waited in their rows. Sebastian’s copied Trial records covered one desk, while Talia’s notebook lay closed on another.
I should have told her about the petition.
Nothing had been filed. No decision had been made. My father had requested information relevant to a lawful review, and I had provided only what the academy already knew or needed to know.
There was no reason to alarm her before Malcolm acted.
The argument was legally sound. It was also the same kind of selective truth my father had defended less than an hour earlier. Recognizing that should have sent me back to the common room.
A message appeared on the study wall.
Black letters formed inside a rectangular border.
BY ORDER OF THE KEEPER OF TRIALS: THE FIVE HEIRS WILL PRESENT FOR CONTROLLED ELEMENTAL DEMONSTRATION AT MIDDAY.
I read the next line.
THE FIFTH HEIR’S TORC WILL BE TESTED UNDER SIMULTANEOUS EXPOSURE TO ALL FOUR CHOSEN ELEMENTS.
The exact phrase my father used.
Simultaneous exposure.
The petition had reached Malcolm before I returned to the tower.
I went to the common room.
Talia stood beneath the matching notice forming there. Her hand covered the scale at her wrist.
“This is about me,” she said.
Rafe rose.
Torren’s flames filled the hearth.
Sebastian looked toward me.
He saw something in my face.
I could have explained.
Instead, I said, “It appears so.”
The wall runes turned cold white.