Page 23 of The Fifth Heir

Malcolm frowned. “Headmaster—”

“If her presence is interfering with the wards, distance may resolve it.”

I did not wait for anyone to reconsider.

The main stairway spiraled down from the rotunda to the lower levels. I crossed toward it, relieved to have a useful instruction and a reason to leave the four heirs behind.

Every step away from them made the ache beneath my ribs tighten.

I told myself it was the strain of the beam.

I reached the first stair.

The entire tower shuddered.

Dust fell from the painted dome. A crack ran through the center of the floor, splitting the golden crown inlaid in the stone.

I jumped back.

Torren caught my elbow and pulled me away from the widening line. The movement brought me against his side. Heat radiated through his uniform, stronger than ordinary body warmth but not painful.

His arm remained between me and the fractured floor.

“Don’t move,” he said.

“I think moving was the problem.”

His hand tightened once around my arm.

Firelight flickered beneath the skin at his throat before fading. The contact lasted only seconds, but warmth spread from his fingers through the place beneath my ribs that had begun to ache.

The crack continued across the rotunda until it reached the wall between the northern and western doors. Stone groaned. The portraits hanging there—four rulers depicted in different centuries—shifted away from one another as the wall separated along a seam no one had noticed.

Sebastian stood.

“There,” he said.

A fifth arch appeared between the two heir quarters.

It had no visible door. Solid black stone filled the opening, covered in dust and bound by dozens of interlocking runes.

The headmaster moved toward it slowly.

“I’ve studied the tower plans,” Leander said. “There is no passage there.”

“There is now,” Rafe replied.

Torren released my elbow once the floor stopped moving. The warmth of his hand remained against my skin for several seconds after he stepped away.

I resisted the urge to rub the place.

The new arch was narrower than the other four but nearly twice as tall. Its carved peak disappeared into the curve of the dome. Five symbols had been cut across the stone at eye level.

Four matched the prominent runes surrounding the Prism.

The fifth matched the one beneath the western lamp.

Master Orin should have been here. He would know which records described the tower’s original construction, or at least where to begin searching for them.