A Preview of Book Two TALIA
A Preview of Book Two
TALIA
The knocking began before sunrise.
Three hard blows struck my chamber door, close enough together to sound like a warning rather than a request.
I was already awake. The Forest seal beneath the academy had pulsed through my dreams all night—green light moving under black roots, a path opening where no path had been before.
Across the bond, four answering presences sharpened.
Leander woke first, cool and alert. Sebastian followed with a flare of concern. Rafe's awareness came bright and restless. Torren's arrived like a hand closing around the hilt of a blade.
None of them had been summoned.
All of them were coming anyway.
I opened the door.
A man in a dark green Keeper's coat stood in the corridor. Silver threaded his hair at the temples, and a narrow scar crossed one side of his jaw. I had never seen him before, but the academy crest fastened at his throat carried the authority Malcolm had forfeited.
“Talia,” he said. “My name is Keeper Elias Varen. Effective this morning, I have assumed Malcolm's duties.”
“Where is Malcolm?”
“Confined, pending judgment.” His gaze shifted past me as footsteps sounded at both ends of the corridor. “I was told the five of you rarely arrive separately.”
Leander reached us first, Sebastian beside him. Rafe came at a run, fastening his coat as he moved. Torren appeared a heartbeat later, fully dressed and entirely unsurprised to find trouble waiting outside my door.
“What happened?” Leander asked.
Varen held up one gloved hand. A thin green filament curled around his wrist.
Not thread. Not magic shaped to resemble it.
A living vine.
It pushed through the seam of his glove, unfolded a white flower no larger than my thumbnail, and turned toward me.
The bond tightened.
“The Forest Trial crossed the academy boundary just before dawn,” Varen said. “It has never done that before.”
The stone beneath our feet trembled.
A crack split the corridor floor between us. Roots as pale as bone pressed through it, spreading over the flagstones in five directions. One reached my boot. The other four found Leander, Sebastian, Rafe, and Torren.
Green light raced through every root at once.
The corridor vanished.
For one impossible breath, an archway stood where the wall had been. Beyond it waited an ancient forest drowned in silver mist. Trees wider than towers crowded around a path that bent out of sight, and something moved between them—too tall, too quiet, watching us from the dark.
A voice slipped through the opening.
Not loud. Not human.
“Fifth Heir.”
The title wrapped around me like a chain.
“You have been chosen.”
The four roots at my companions' feet dimmed. Mine burned brighter.
“Now prove the others deserve to follow.”
Torren stepped onto my root before the last word faded. “No.”
The forest shuddered. Branches scraped together like teeth.
“It wants a hierarchy,” Leander said quietly. “It wants her separated from us.”
“Then it has misunderstood the assignment,” Rafe said.
Sebastian moved to my other side, his shoulder touching mine. Through the bond came the same answer from all four of them—steady, immediate, absolute.
Together.
I looked into the mist beyond the archway. The watching shape had drawn closer.
“You chose five heirs,” I told the Forest. “You get all five.”
Our torcs ignited.
The roots recoiled, then surged up the walls. The archway widened with a groan of splitting stone, and cold air poured into the corridor carrying the scent of wet earth, crushed leaves, and something old enough to remember the first crown.
Keeper Varen's face lost its careful calm.
“Step away from the threshold,” he ordered.
But the threshold stepped toward us.
The Forest Trial had begun.