Page 59 of The Fifth Heir

She studied the traced lines.

I indicated the first angle. “This mark is Torren’s intervention. The second turn began here.”

“At the center disc.”

“Where you stood.”

She shook her head. “I don’t control fire.”

“The chamber already established that.”

“Then Torren redirected it.”

“From the wrong side of the room?”

“Perhaps the containment wall pulled it.”

“The wall absorbs magic after impact. It cannot reach across the chamber and alter the path.”

Talia pressed her fingertips to the edge of the tracing paper. They rested within the outline of the clear section I had drawn.

“I saw light on my hands,” she said quietly.

“What color?”

“Clear at first. Then all of them.”

The description matched the torc. The hidden runes. The transparent flame in the Fifth Wing hearth.

And the space fire had refused to touch.

“Did it hurt?”

“No.”

“What did you feel?”

“I don’t know. It happened too quickly.”

“Heat? Pressure? A pull toward the flame?”

“I said I don’t know.”

The wall runes would have turned orange if we were inside the Fifth Wing.

I lowered my voice. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“The Keeper believes I caused the fifth beam by cleaning a rune. Now an assessment chamber fails while I’m standing in it, and you think I controlled someone else’s fire.”

“I think the evidence indicates that you altered its direction.”

“That is not better.”

“It could be.”

She looked at me as though I had suggested the fire might have been harmless.

“If you moved it,” I continued, “the elemental assessment was wrong. You have magic. It simply does not match one of the seven known affinities.”