Page 1 of The Fifth Heir

Chapter 1

Talia

By the time the first candidates arrived at the Hall of Prism, I had already polished the eastern display case twice.

It did not need a third pass. The glass held no fingerprints. The silver hinges shone, and every relic inside stood precisely where the Hall records said it belonged.

Still, I ran my cloth along the bottom edge once more.

Outside the sealed bronze doors, hundreds of boots crossed the entrance court. Voices gathered beneath the high arches, rising and falling with the restless energy of dragons waiting to learn which four among them would be given a chance at the crown.

Inside, everything had to remain perfect.

I folded the cloth and slipped it into the pocket of my gray keeper’s robe.

The case contained four ceremonial torcs, one for each heir the Prism would choose before the day ended. They appeared identical: silver bands set with clear stones, each waiting to take on the color and character of whichever elemental line the Prism selected.

Four torcs.

Four heirs.

One future ruler.

No one knew which four of the seven elemental lines the Prism would select until the Choosing. That uncertainty had drawn scholars to the ceremony for centuries. Treatises had been written about the order of the beams, the duration of their light, and whether the Prism favored certain bloodlines after war, famine, or unusually long reigns.

It was also the only uncertainty anyone appeared willing to acknowledge.

Camilla would be chosen, of course.

Our parents believed the Prism would select Stone as one of the four elemental lines, then choose Camilla from its candidates. Her instructors believed it. Half the candidates assembling outside had probably accepted it as well.

Camilla belonged to the Stone line. She had first shifted into a granite-gray dragon at sixteen and spent the following fourteen years proving her early transformation had not been an accident of blood.

She was powerful, disciplined, and accomplished in every area the royal histories considered important. She could hold her dragon form longer than most members of our line, withstand blows that would fracture another dragon’s scales, and recite every law governing succession.

At twenty-four, I had never shifted at all.

My parents had waited through my sixteenth year, then my eighteenth, then my twentieth. Healers had examined me. Instructors had tried fear, exhaustion, meditation, and exposure to elemental magic. Nothing had called a dragon from beneath my skin.

Eventually, everyone stopped calling me a late bloomer.

I had spent the years since learning how to preserve the histories that would someday record Camilla’s reign.

“Talia.”

Master Orin’s voice carried down from the gallery.

I looked up to find the senior relic keeper leaning over the carved stone rail. His white hair stood away from his head as if he had dragged both hands through it, which he probably had. The Choosing had made him distrust work he had personally inspected three times.

“The western lamps,” he called.

“I filled them.”

“The lower row?”

“Filled and tested.”

“And the ceremonial oil?”