Page 170 of The Fifth Heir

“It’s a general fact.”

“A conveniently relevant one.”

“Yes.”

I looked at him.

He came to stand beside me.

“White light contains many colors,” he continued. “Most materials absorb or reflect them together. A prism changes the angle of each one, allowing us to see what was already present.”

“So I’m a prism.”

“I don’t know what you are.”

The honesty no longer felt cold.

I lifted my wrist. “The scale doesn’t create the colors.”

“No.”

“It only reveals them.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what happened in the Hall?”

“With the elements?”

“I saw each one separately. I could direct them because they never truly mixed.”

Sebastian looked toward the stars again.

“Refraction.”

“What?”

“The bending of light as it passes between materials. Your power may be doing something similar with elemental magic.”

The word fit better than unknown manifestation.

“Refraction,” I repeated.

He watched me say it.

The expression on his face was the same one he wore when a sealed record opened.

My brief sense of discovery tightened into something else.

“There,” I said.

“What?”

“That look.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re doing it again.”