Page 228 of The Fifth Heir

Torren’s presence reached me first. Heat, fury, and fierce determination filled the connection between us. Beneath it lay fear—not for himself, but for me.

Rafe followed in a rush of silver energy. His courage had never been the absence of fear. It was motion in spite of it, the decision to leap before uncertainty could close around him.

Sebastian’s power entered quietly. I felt his attention moving through the Trial, recognizing connections even now. Behind that control was something warmer, carefully protected and offered only because he had chosen to let me see it.

Bastian.

The private name passed through the bond.

Violet light flared.

Leander came last, steady as the frost surrounding the circle. Duty, regret, restraint, and a devotion he had not allowed himself to name settled beside the others.

None replaced the rest.

Each remained distinct.

All four were with me.

The realization loosened something inside my chest.

My dragon opened her eyes.

She had never been absent. She had not been sleeping somewhere separate, waiting for the right spell to call her forward. She was the part of me that recognized what others missed—the hidden groove beneath the repaired rune, the fifth beam within the Prism, the four paths within a Trial that everyone else believed were separate.

For years, I had searched for proof that I belonged among dragons.

She had been searching for the others.

The pressure inside me changed.

It no longer pushed outward in wild surges. It gathered behind my ribs with unmistakable purpose.

My body knew what came next.

“I’m going to shift,” I said.

Torren gripped his gate. “Can you control it?”

“No.”

His fire surged with alarm.

“But she can.”

The first clear scale vanished from my wrist.

For one terrible second, I thought I had lost it.

Then every scale appeared at once.

Crystal swept over my arms, shoulders, chest, and legs in a single brilliant wave. My body expanded too quickly for pain to separate into individual sensations. Bones lengthened. Muscles reshaped. My hands struck the platform and became forelegs tipped with transparent claws.

The academy coat disappeared beneath the transformation.

My spine arched.

Wings broke free in a burst of clear-violet light.