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“You got it?” Maddox said, jumping up from the couch. Xavier joined him while Claire and Dawn hung back. Our father hovered on the edge of the room, silent. “Holy shit, what happened?”

“We’ll explain later,” I said. “How’s War?”

“He’s unresponsive, Damien. We don’t have much time.” Dawn squeezed her hands together.

“Is this it? The cure?” Claire moved past my brothers and went for Robby. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. More silent tears slipped from the corner of his eyes, but he managed a weak smile and handed it over.

“It is,” Robby answered. “We went through hell and back to get it.”

Understatement of the century.

Claire lifted the golden vial up in the air. The wings on the cap glistened under the bright light in the living room. She uncapped it and looked inside, wafting the scent in her direction before it reached me. Whatever was in that bottle smelled like a mixture of vanilla and berries. She looked around the room with a worried expression, her thin brows inching together.

“What? What is it?” I asked.

Please don’t say this was all for nothing. Please don’t say that.

She took a breath, licked her lips, and swallowed down whatever was bothering her before she spoke. “We have two choices here, and I want to leave the decision up to you guys.”

“What do you mean ‘choices’?” Xavier asked.

Claire recapped the vial, holding it delicately in her hands. “This looks to be for only one person. I think it only works on an individual’s curse, not the entirety of dragonkind. I can hold on to it and see if I can replicate whatever is in here, but that would take me months—if I even can replicate it.”

“But War…” Dawn said, her voice trailing off.

“He doesn’t have months,” Claire finished.

“He doesn’t even have hours,” Maddox said, moving toward Claire as if he was going to take the potion from her, decision made. I tried to process a hundred different ways this could play out, but all I kept thinking about was one possibility: losing my little brother because we waited. And there wasn’t even a guarantee that Claire could replicate the potion. If we lost him for nothing…

“We don’t have time.” Dawn stood ramrod straight, her lips tight together and her expression set in stone. “I say we just give it to him.”

Xavier cleared his throat. “If anyone finds out we used the one thing that could stop the dragon fall—”

“Who the fuck cares?” Maddox retorted, raising his voice. Ice started to climb up his fingers, encasing his knuckles.

“Calm down, you two,” I said, stepping between them. The last thing we needed was a full-on brawl.

Maddox puffed out his chest, his biceps flexing. The black tank top he wore made it very obvious that he was getting ready to fight. “I’m done being calm. I’m not losing War. Not when we have a cure right fucking here.”

“I get it, Madds, but we need—” I was cut off by my father.

“Fuck this,” he said. He pushed past us all and snatched the vial out of Claire’s hand. None of us could—or would—stop him as he stormed down the hall, up the stairs, directly to Warrick’s bedroom. We followed behind him, a procession of silence and nerves.

The decision had been made. It was out of our hands.

We filed into Warrick’s bedroom. He was on his bed, looking eerily calm. His eyes were closed, and there was the tiniest hint of a smile on his youthful face, even with how gaunt he looked. He had his hands cupped on his chest, his most comfortable pajamas on. I saw a flicker of flame light near his ankle.

We didn’t have much time left.

Our father went straight to the bedside. He uncapped the vial, throwing the golden wings to the floor. He knelt down and gently lifted War’s head. My little brother’s eyes were still shut, his chest rising and falling in extremely long intervals. Emerald scales rippled up and down his arm. He likely only had a few more minutes before he’d burst into flames and leave us with a pile of ash.

Dad brought the vial up to my brother’s lips. None of us intervened; none of us interjected. Dawn stood with Claire, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders in support. Madds stood by my brother’s feet while Xavier watched from the other side of the room, as if he couldn’t stand to be near Warrick if this didn’t work.

And then there was me and Robby. I wasn’t exactly quite sure when I had reached out for his hand, but all I knew was that our fingers were interlocked, and it was this touch that kept me grounded. If Robby wasn’t here, I would have been spiraling with a hundred different “what-ifs” and “don’ts.” With Robby next to me, I was able to relinquish some of that. It would all happen how it was meant to; if not, then Robby and I never would have crossed paths.