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They were trying to keep me safe, and I had no right to stop them when I was trying to do exactly the same thing. I was in the wrong. I’d messed up. All of it—coming north, running, not telling them—it was all a stupid mistake.

I sighed. It was time to admit the real reason we’d fled the hotel. It had probably been time to tell them back at the gas station, or maybe right before we’d left . . . “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t get straight into the van and drive back to the hotel.”

Zee shook his head and shoved his palm at my face. “Nah, dawg. I am not making open promises until you’re honest with us.”

“Zee!” I whined. “This is why I haven’t told you. You guys need to let me do this. You’ve both proven why you can’t protect me. I have to protect you.”

“From what?” Victor asked, sharp as a razor blade.

“From my . . .” I bit my lip and turned my face away . . . but when I looked back, their expressions were even more sympathetic, and my heart was done. I couldn’t lie to them anymore. “From my brother.”

“You got a brother?” Zee asked.

“Technically, I had eight of them. And three sisters.”

“Fuck, that’s a lot of Christmas gifts—oh right, the chicken an’ egg thing. That’s why there’s so many of you.”

“I was under the impression your family were all . . . dispatched,” Victor said, choosing his words carefully.

Done with the lies and feeling sorry for myself, I dropped onto the end of the bed. “They were . . . well, I thought they were, but he’s uh . . . he’s back.” I didn’t even want to say his name. Saying his name made it real, and meant I could no longer hide the horrible fact from myself—I was being hunted. We all were.

“Okay, so he’s back and that’s bad because . . . ?”

I looked up at the two most precious people in my life standing side by side. “His name is Syros, and it’s bad because he’s probably a bit angry that I tried to tear his face off . . . then his wings, and you know . . . I murdered our entire family.”

“Yeah. That’ll do it. Oreo?” Zee shoved the cookies under my nose. “There’s a whole lot of goodness in these little ohs.”

“That’s uhm . . . that’s the ad for Cheerios . . .” I told him, then caught his smile and smiled back. He was using Oreos to build a bridge over the chasm I’d dug between us.

Taking a cookie, I nibbled its edges. “Syros is mean and vicious. He’ll burn down everything and everyone to get to me. That’s why I had to get us out of the hotel. If he knows I’m not there, he won’t stay there for long. They’re safe.”

Victor sat next to me on the end of the bed, making the mattress dip and me slide against him. “The wards would have protected us, Adam.”

“Not when you visited the council,” I said, and faced Zee again. He waited, tail swishing. “Or when you went to Razorsedge to see the demons. We’d have been prisoners in our own home. Syros is smart, like you’re smart.” My gaze returned to Victor’s again. “I thought I’d . . . killed him. We fought and . . . it was brutal.” I remembered the blood . . . so much blood. It didn’t seem possible that my brother had lived. We’d torn into each other with such ferocity we both should have died. “I was so badly wounded I didn’t check that he was dead, I’d just had to get away . . . Always running,” I mumbled, then nibbled more cookie. “We can’t go back to the hotel until I figure out what to do about him.”

“Let’s just murder him like we murder everyone else we don’t like,” Zee said.

We didn’t murder everyone we didn’t like. “It’s not that simple. You may have noticed dragons are hard to kill.”

“Victor did it, with werewolf mercenaries.”

“That dragon was old and slow,” Victor said. “Killing it equated to mercy. His own kin would have done the same had they discovered him.”

“Syros is bigger than me . . . more powerful. He’s one of the worst.” Shaking my head, I struggled to imagine how we could stop him. “We just need to lie low, away from the hotel so he doesn’t destroy it, and you guys need to stop throwing yourselves into danger to protect me when I’m a whole lot tougher than you realize. Because he will find you and hurt you, and I just need you to survive . . . I can’t . . . My heart couldn’t take it if you were gone.” I whispered that last part, mostly because my voice had gotten all squeaky and weird, and my heart pounded, and everything felt hot and cold at the same time.

I nibbled more cookie. It did actually help.

“That’s why you got shitty with me earlier,” Zee said. “You’re scared.”

“Yes. I am so scared of losing you guys. You’re all I’ve got. You’re everything to me. He’ll try to take you away because you’re mine. He doesn’t care about anything. He just wants to hurt me, and the easiest way is to hurt you two. I can’t let him . . . I can’t . . .” Overwhelmed, I stuffed the remaining bits of cookie in my mouth and ate them along with my feelings.

Zee sat on my left, flung an arm around my shoulders, and tucked me against his side. “He threatened you at the hotel, didn’t he?”

“He said I should go with him or he’d destroy you both, and I had until the next day to decide. So I ran . . . because it’s all I know that works against dragons. You have to run.”

“He’s a dick,” Zee huffed.

“Yeah.”