Page 218 of The Fifth Heir

“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.