Page 181 of The Fifth Heir

“I trust you more.”

The truth was larger than the evidence on the table. I trusted Talia to read the pattern, Torren to act when it became dangerous, Sebastian to preserve what could be proved, and even Leander to name his family among the suspects when silence would have protected him.

The statement silenced the room.

I had not intended it to sound important.

Talia made it important by looking at me the way she did.

Clear light moved through the wall runes. It passed over each of us without changing color.

The five chairs, five cups, and five torcs formed a circle around the evidence.

For the first time, no one argued about whether Talia belonged inside it.

Chapter 24

Talia

The evidence lay across the study table beneath four steady rune-lights.

One unused outward return channel. One storage note documenting the return of all eight. A fragment of blackened metal cut with the reversed pattern that had nearly killed us.

It should have made me feel safer.

Instead, every time I looked at it, I remembered the power tearing through my body in the Hall of Prism. Fire, frost, storm, and shadow had struck me together. I could still feel the place where they had met beneath my skin.

“We should take everything to the headmaster tonight,” Leander said.

“No.” Sebastian stood on the opposite side of the table, turning the damaged channel between two gloved fingers. “We take copies tonight. The originals remain here until we know who had access to the Trial stores.”

Rafe leaned against the shelves with his arms folded. “I’m the one who stole them.”

“Recovered,” Leander corrected.

“I removed a ventilation grate, picked one lock, and climbed back out through the same shaft.”

“You recovered them unlawfully.”

“Thank you. That sounds much more respectable.”

Normally, I would have smiled. Tonight, even drawing breath required too much concentration.

A sharp pressure had been building beneath my breastbone since we returned to the Fifth Wing. At first, I had blamed exhaustion. Then the ache spread beneath my ribs and down both arms, settling into every joint as if my bones had been packed too tightly inside me.

The single transparent scale at my wrist began to burn.

Then the pain traveled beneath my skin.

I dropped the pen.

Torren caught my wrist before it struck the table.

“What happened?”

“The scale.”

Clear light spread beneath his fingers.