Page 174 of The Fifth Heir

The shaft was the obvious choice.

I discovered it during my second year at Crown Wing, after an instructor confiscated a bottle of western lightning liquor and stored it with the prohibited training supplies. Recovering the bottle earned me two weeks of disciplinary flight duty.

Discovering that disciplinary flight duty included unsupervised access to the academy roofs made the punishment worthwhile.

The same shaft remained above the western storeroom.

I crossed the roof after midnight, keeping below the ridge where the tower guards could see me from their posts. Storm clouds covered most of the moon. I had not created them, though I appreciated their cooperation.

The ventilation grate had been replaced.

That was insulting.

I crouched beside it and examined the new seal. The headmaster’s mark covered the central latch, exactly as ordered during the emergency review. Breaking it would trigger every alarm in the lower academy.

The seal protected the latch.

It did not protect the screws holding the grate to the roof.

I removed them.

The grate lifted without disturbing the mark.

Leander would have called that a violation of the order’s clear intent.

Sebastian might have appreciated the distinction.

Talia would ask why I hadn’t told anyone where I was going.

Torren would ask whether I intended to get myself killed.

The honest answer to the final question was usually no.

Tonight, the answer mattered less. Someone had designed a test to drain four heirs through Talia’s body, then stood in the Hall and called her dangerous for surviving it. If proof remained inside the academy’s sealed stores, I was not waiting for procedure to misplace it.

I lowered myself into the shaft.

The passage was narrower than I remembered. Either the academy had reduced its size or my shoulders had increased since I was nineteen. I shifted enough to turn my fingernails into talons and used them to control my descent.

Silver light moved beneath the skin of my forearms.

I stopped it before it could illuminate the shaft.

The western storeroom waited below. Shelves filled the long room, holding rune plates, control stones, replacement metal channels, and sealed containers of materials used to repair active Trials.

No guards stood inside.

The academy trusted its locks.

I dropped from the ventilation opening and landed between two storage aisles.

A thin current of air carried sound beneath the outer door. One guard shifted his weight. The other yawned.

Neither entered.

I moved toward the channel inventory.

Sebastian had shown us the fragment from the failed demonstration. Black metal. Inward directional seal. No inventory code.