Page 103 of The Fifth Heir

“It is attached to my arm.”

“Yes.”

“That is not better.”

I shifted the rune plate.

White light passed directly through the clear sliver.

Color broke across Talia’s wrist.

Red, violet, silver, blue, green, and gold spread over her skin in narrow lines. They crossed my fingers and reflected against the cabinet before fading into clear light again.

The same pattern had appeared when the Prism selected her.

Shadow stirred beneath my skin—not in warning, but recognition. The cabinet seals answered with a faint hum, all thirty-seven at once, as though the Wing had felt the new fragment of dragon too.

Talia stopped pulling away.

“What is that?”

I lowered my face closer to her wrist.

The transparent piece rose slightly at its center, curved like a protective plate. Its edge disappeared beneath the surface of her skin without breaking it.

I had seen that structure in anatomical records. Every dragon’s scale pattern differed, but the formation remained consistent.

“It’s a scale.”

Talia stared at me.

“No.”

I looked up.

Her face had gone pale.

“Sebastian, I don’t have scales.”

“You have one.”

“People don’t grow one scale.”

“First manifestations can be limited.”

“At sixteen.”

“Usually.”

“I’m twenty-four.”

“I remember.”

She looked down at her wrist again.

The scale disappeared when the beam shifted away, becoming nearly impossible to distinguish from skin. I adjusted the plate until color returned through it.

Talia’s breathing changed.