Chapter 27
Talia
The Final Trial had summoned us for first light.
None of us intended to wait that long.
Sebastian secured the restored inscription inside the warded case with the original Trial evidence.
Leander sent an emergency message to the headmaster.
Rafe searched every historical account he could find for a description of the final chamber, while Torren checked the weapons stored in the Fifth Wing.
I stood before the words glowing across the common-room wall.
FIVE SHALL ENTER.
The message had not faded.
“What if we refuse?” I asked.
Leander looked up from the communication panel. “An heir may challenge the conditions of a Trial, but the Accords assume the Trial is administered by a Keeper. They say nothing about refusing a summons issued by the Trial itself.”
“So no one has ever tried.”
“So no one recorded trying.”
Rafe turned another page. “The cheerful news is that most accounts of the Final Trial don’t mention anyone dying.”
“Most?” Torren asked.
“The less cheerful news is that several accounts end before the heirs enter.”
Torren fastened a dagger at his waist. “Stop helping.”
“I’m presenting the available facts.”
“You’re enjoying the presentation too much.”
Rafe’s smile did not reach his eyes.
We all understood the part he had not said. The official histories could not be trusted. If a Keeper had concealed an entire fifth heir, he could have concealed deaths just as easily.
A sharp knock struck the outer door.
All four men moved.
Torren drew his dagger. Shadow spread across Sebastian’s fingers. Frost whitened Leander’s knuckles, and silver lightning flashed once beneath Rafe’s skin.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
“No,” they answered together.
Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed that.
Torren took position beside the door while Sebastian examined the threshold wards. “One person. No visible spell against the lock.”
“Visible?” Rafe asked.
Sebastian ignored him and opened the door.
Camilla stood in the corridor.
Her hair had escaped its braid, and the hem of her academy coat was smeared with gray dust. She had no weapon. She held a roll of heavy paper against her chest with both hands.
“I need to speak to Talia.”
Torren did not move aside.
Camilla looked past him and found me. “Please.”
I had never heard my sister plead.
Dust streaked her cuffs and knees as well as her hem. Whatever had brought her here, she had not stopped to make herself presentable first.
“Let her in,” I said.
Torren’s jaw tightened, but he stepped back.
Camilla entered beneath the combined attention of four heirs. The door closed behind her, and Sebastian restored the wards.
She saw the summons on the wall.
All the color left her face.
“It’s already awake.”
“You knew this would happen?” I asked.
“No. Not tonight.” She looked down at the roll of paper. “I thought we had until morning.”
“Until morning for what?”
Camilla glanced at the men surrounding us. “Can we speak alone?”
“No,” Torren said.
“This concerns my sister.”
“That’s why you won’t be alone with her.”
Anger flashed across Camilla’s face. Normally, she would have challenged him. Tonight, it disappeared almost immediately.
Talia, the torc whispered against my throat.
Not in words. It had never spoken. But a pulse of clear light ran through the stone when I looked at my sister, as if the wing itself were waiting for my decision.
“They stay,” I said.
Camilla closed her eyes briefly. “All right.”
She unrolled the paper across the dining table.
It was a structural diagram of a circular chamber divided into five sections. Four broad passages led inward from the outer wall. A fifth, much narrower route began at the center.
The design resembled the first Trial.
It also resembled the elemental platform where the channels had been reversed.
“Where did you get this?” Sebastian asked.
“The lower construction archive. I’m assigned there twice a week.”
“You never mentioned working in the Trial archives,” I said.
“It isn’t the Trial archive. It contains structural records—repairs, foundation work, reinforcement plans. Stone students assist with them.”
She ran one finger along the outer edge of the diagram.
“This is the Final Trial chamber.”
Rafe came closer. “The histories claim no map survives.”
“No official map. This one was filed as a foundation assessment. It doesn’t name the room.”
Leander studied the symbols marking each passage. “How did you identify it?”
“The support stone is older than the academy. The only foundation built with five radial anchors is beneath the Hall of Crowns.”
The place where kings were presented after winning the Trials.
The place where one heir emerged.
Torren pointed to the narrow center route. “Where does this lead?”
“It isn’t a route.” Camilla’s fingers trembled against the paper. “It’s a convergence shaft.”
Sebastian moved the nearest lamp over the diagram. “For elemental power?”
“For all of it.”
Silence settled over the table.
The design showed four passages carrying power toward the center. At the convergence point, the lines joined and traveled downward into a chamber beneath the floor.
A fifth anchor rested directly above it.
My anchor.
“Those lines point inward,” I said.
“Yes.”
The black channels from the demonstration had done the same thing.
Torren looked at Camilla. “Who altered the chamber?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” She pointed to several small markings near the outer passages. “These are Stone Dragon reinforcement runes. They control how the chamber responds when elemental pressure increases.”
Leander examined them. “Can you read the signature?”
“There isn’t one. The runes are correct, but they’re facing the wrong direction. Instead of supporting the outer walls, they’ll force any released power toward the central anchor.”
Toward me.
My stomach tightened.
“Could that be the original design?” Rafe asked. “Five powers enter, one emerges.”
“No.” Camilla shook her head. “The foundation beneath the central anchor isn’t built to hold the full discharge. If all four passages activate, the stone will collapse.”
Torren’s dagger struck the table as he set it down. “Malcolm.”
Camilla flinched.
He noticed.
The room changed.
Sebastian’s shadows rose from the floor, sealing the door. Frost spread across the windows. Rafe moved between Camilla and the corridor, and Torren stepped closer to her.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Camilla backed into the table.
“Torren,” I said.
He stopped, but the heat around him remained.
I looked at my sister. “Answer him.”
Her face crumpled in a way I had never seen. Camilla had always known what expression to wear. Pride before our instructors. Patience with me. Confidence before the Choosing, even when her hands had shaken.
Now she looked frightened.
“I went to Malcolm after I left the Fifth Wing,” she said.
The words were quiet.
They still struck hard.
“Why?”
“I asked him to challenge your selection.”
My throat tightened. “You told me to be careful what I shared with the other heirs. Then you gave my private information to him.”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you redirected the fire. That your torc reacted to all four heirs. That being separated from them caused you pain. That you hid how badly things hurt.”
“Why would you do that?”
Camilla looked at me then.
“I thought it would prove the fifth beam had changed you in ways the academy couldn’t control. That your selection wasn’t valid. If your selection was declared invalid before the Trials continued, the Prism could have been reopened.”
The truth arrived before she finished.
“You thought it might choose you.”
Her eyes filled. “It was supposed to.”
Torren took another step, but I raised one hand.
This belonged to Camilla and me.
“You thought that if they removed me, you would take my place.”
“I didn’t want them to hurt you.”
“You wanted them to disqualify me.”
“I thought you wanted that too.” Her voice broke. “You kept saying the Choosing was a mistake. You said you didn’t belong here. I thought if Malcolm proved it, you could return to the archive and I could—”
“Get what you deserved.”
She looked away.
Everything I had told her returned in pieces. The ache beneath my ribs. The fire that had moved when I reached for Torren. The way the torc reacted to all four men. My fear that my dragon was dangerous.
Sebastian went completely still.
The demonstration had tested exactly those things.
The individual elemental exposures. The simultaneous activation. The redirected power.
Malcolm had not guessed what might affect me.
Camilla had given him a list.
She had not designed the demonstration, but her betrayal had made it precise.
“I didn’t know what he planned,” she said. “He told me the demonstration would establish whether your selection was authentic. He said no one would be in danger.”
Ignorance did not make her innocent. It only marked the point where her ambition had allowed someone else to choose the cost.
“You believed him?”
“He was the Keeper of Trials.”
“So was the person who erased the fifth heir.”
Camilla stared at me. “What?”
Sebastian placed the rubbing beside the structural plan.
The hidden word remained visible beneath the loosened seal.
FIVE ENTER. ONE EMERGES.
Camilla read it. Her lips parted, but no sound came.
“The Keeper’s authority mark was used to conceal the first word,” Sebastian explained. “We cannot prove Malcolm placed the original seal, but his office has protected the alteration for centuries.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t want to know.”
She recoiled.
The words hurt me too, but I did not take them back.
“You wanted the Prism to choose you so badly that you gave him everything he needed to test how much power my body could survive.”
“I thought he would prove you weren’t an heir.”
“And when the demonstration nearly killed me?”
“I started looking.”
She pushed the structural diagram toward me.
“At first, I was trying to prove the reversed channels were a mistake. I thought a stone worker had installed them incorrectly. Then I found an order authorizing repairs beneath the Hall of Crowns.”
“Signed by Malcolm?” Leander asked.
“The order was issued under Keeper authority, but the signature page had been removed.”
Again, the office. Not the man.
Enough to know what was happening. Not enough to prove who had done it.
“When were the repairs completed?” Sebastian asked.
“This afternoon. I found the completed work order near dusk and came here as soon as I matched it to the foundation plan.”
After Malcolm’s suspension.
“He no longer had his keys,” Rafe said.
“He didn’t need them,” Camilla replied. “The workers were admitted before the headmaster suspended him. They remained below the Hall all day.”
Torren looked toward the summons glowing on the wall. “Then someone needed the chamber finished before first light.”
The transparent torc tightened against my throat.
I touched it instinctively.
Clear light raced around the metal.
The other torcs answered.
“Something’s happening,” I said.
The summons disappeared from the wall.
For one second, the stone stood blank.
Then new words formed.
THE FINAL TRIAL ACCEPTS ITS HEIRS.
Leander went to the communication panel. He pressed his palm against the central rune.
Nothing happened.
“The line is dead.”
Sebastian tested the door wards. “So are mine.”
A heavy mechanism engaged beyond the Fifth Wing.
The entrance doors opened.
The corridor outside was gone.
In its place stood a circular stone passage descending into darkness.
“No,” Camilla whispered. “That passage leads beneath the Hall of Crowns.”
“We aren’t going,” Torren said.
The fire stone in his torc flashed.
He staggered toward the opening.
Rafe caught his arm, but his own torc ignited with silver light and pulled him forward. Frost spread across Leander’s collar. Sebastian’s shadows stretched toward the passage as if drawn by a force he could not resist.
My torc remained still.
The Trial was calling the four of them first.
“Take them off,” I said.
Torren hooked his fingers beneath his torc and pulled. The metal did not move. Rafe tried his clasp. Leander pressed both hands against the frost-coated band, but it had fused into a solid ring.
Sebastian reached for the shadows binding his.
They tightened.
“Go to the headmaster,” I told Camilla. “Tell him the Trial has opened early. Show him the map.”
Camilla rolled up the diagram with shaking hands. “What about you?”
I looked at the men fighting to remain inside the wing.
“If they go, I go.”
“No.” Torren braced one hand against the doorway. Fire spread over his arm as the torc dragged him another step. “You stay here.”
“The chamber is designed to send all four of your powers into the center. If I’m not there, we don’t know what it will do.”
“We know what it will do if you are.”
“It will try.”
“Talia.”
The command in his voice might have stopped me once.
Not now.
I removed the structural diagram from Camilla’s hands and tore away the section showing the convergence chamber. I folded it and tucked it inside my coat.
“Give the rest to the headmaster,” I said.
Camilla caught my wrist. Her fingers closed directly over the transparent scale.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at the sister I had trusted all my life.
“I believe you.”
Hope entered her face.
“I don’t forgive you.”
It disappeared.
I understood now how Leander must have felt when I said the same words to him.
The difference was that Leander had already chosen what he would do next. Camilla still stood between the person she wanted to be and the thing she had done.
“Help the headmaster reach us,” I said. “Then we’ll see what your apology is worth.”
She released my wrist.
Torren’s boots slid across the floor as the Trial pulled him into the passage. Rafe and Leander followed. Sebastian resisted longest, his shadow wrapped around a stone pillar until cracks spread through its surface.
I ran toward them.
The moment I crossed the threshold, my torc awakened.
Pain closed around my throat. Clear light exploded across my vision, and the passage seized all five of us at once.
Behind us, Camilla shouted my name.
The Fifth Wing vanished.
I struck stone hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. When I forced my eyes open, the others were gone.
Five passages surrounded the circular chamber.
Four were marked with elemental symbols.
The fifth bore no symbol at all.
Directly ahead of me, the altered Stone runes began to glow.
The Final Trial had not waited for first light.
And it had separated us exactly as the altered design intended.