Page 208 of The Fifth Heir

The clear light touched my shadow.

Cold moved through my arm, followed by a sharp awareness that did not belong to me. Talia’s concentration pressed against my senses. I felt her uncertainty, her determination, and beneath both, the enormous presence that had awakened inside her.

Her dragon.

She felt me too.

The contact did not carry words, yet it felt more intimate than speech. She found the parts of me I kept behind observation and precision—and she did not pull away.

Her eyes opened.

For one suspended moment, neither of us breathed.

Then the light bent.

It passed through my shadow and divided into four narrow beams. Violet spread over the rubbing as the powers crossed.

The word FOUR lifted from the page.

It did not disappear. The letters peeled upward as a single layer of black magic, hovering above the transfer paper like smoke trapped beneath glass.

A second word emerged below it.

The page shook under my hand.

Rafe lowered the crystal lamp until its light fell directly across the inscription.

Talia read it first.

“Five.”

No one spoke.

The restored inscription lay before us in the same ancient hand as the remaining words.

FIVE ENTER. ONE EMERGES.

Torren came to stand behind Talia. “It was changed.”

“Not repaired,” Leander said. “Replaced.”

Rafe stared at the page. “How long?”

“At least eight centuries,” I replied. “Possibly longer.”

Talia traced the air above the hidden word without touching it. “They erased the fifth heir.”

The quiet pain in her voice angered me more than Malcolm’s threats had.

“They tried,” I said.

She looked at me.

“They failed.”

Some of the hurt left her expression. Not all of it. Eight centuries of erasure deserved more than one answer, but this was one I could give her with certainty.

The transparent scale on her wrist caught the violet light and broke it into a small band of color across the page.