Page 109 of The Fifth Heir

“I’m aware.”

“Could it still happen?”

The healer examined the transparent scale again.

“I have never treated a first manifestation this late.”

That was not an answer.

I waited.

She set down the measuring cord. “But this is living dragon scale. Unless the manifestation is being produced artificially, something inside you is attempting to emerge.”

Hope came too quickly.

For eight years I had trained myself not to want the impossible. One transparent scale shattered that discipline. I wanted wings. I wanted the body that had failed to appear when everyone said it should. I wanted the Prism to have recognized something real in me.

I tried to contain it before Malcolm could dismantle it.

He did not disappoint me.

“An unidentified dragon form presents a greater risk than an unshifted heir.”

Torren stepped closer. “To whom?”

Heat gathered in the room with him. Frost filmed the edge of Leander’s untouched glass, a draft stirred the papers beside Rafe, and Shadow darkened beneath Sebastian’s boots. None of them shifted. None needed to.

“To Talia and everyone housed with her. First shifts are volatile under normal circumstances. We do not know what element she carries, whether she can control it, or whether the torc is forcing a transformation her body cannot sustain.”

“It isn’t forcing anything,” Rafe said. “She found one scale.”

“One scale that refracts every elemental color.”

“Light,” Sebastian corrected. “It refracts light.”

“The assessment fire did the same.”

“We haven’t established that she redirected it.”

Malcolm’s gaze moved to him. “You submitted a report arguing precisely that.”

Sebastian said nothing.

I looked at him.

He had not told me he submitted it.

The headmaster interrupted before I could ask.

“What precautions do you recommend?”

The healer closed her case. “Daily examinations. Immediate reporting of pain, heat, additional manifestations, or involuntary magic. She shouldn’t be left alone if symptoms begin.”

Malcolm looked toward the shared sleeping chamber. “That final condition is already satisfied.”

The wall runes turned orange.

Rafe glanced upward. “They don’t care for you.”