I shook my head, but it wasn’t working. My brain was slow and fuzzy, like I hadn’t slept in a week, and I was barely keeping myself awake. And I wasn’t sure I was staying awake because I kept missing halves of sentences, yet I was still upright. I blinked and Cooper was helping Savannah try to get through the chairs to Emersyn. Then all of a sudden, the entire group was surrounding us. Everyone was yelling.

“Smoke dragons⁠—”

“Frankie tackled⁠—”

“Emersyn—”

“Fire ball⁠—”

I scrubbed my face with my hands. When I dropped them, I found the others had backed away a little bit.

Easton was the only one between me and Em’s tower of metal and fire. He held his hands up. “I have to put this on us so just hang on. I’ll get it back off.”

He flicked his wrists and the metal chairs flew off their tower and shot right for us—my eyes rolled. NO. I shook my head and looked down to find armor covering my entire body—then darkness claimed me. Something squeezed my shoulders. I gasped and flinched, but it was only Mei-Ling. I sighed and leaned into her, ignoring the worried look in her eyes because I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and more importantly, there was a raging ball of fire in front of us.

Emersyn was inside of it.

Or maybe was the fire.

Hunter and Cooper started forward, but Bentley yanked them backwards. “No. Stay back.”

“Bentley—”

“Stay back, Dad.” Bentley crept close to the inferno. As he moved, his arms turned that black and burned look with veins that looked like rivers of lava running up and down. When he got right up to it, he crouched down and softly said, “Emma?”

It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like the brightness of the fire faded a little though the fire ball itself was still raging strong. Hunter and Cooper took a step forward, but Bentley held one hand up to stop them, without even glancing in their direction. His father and brother froze, just holding each other’s arms.

“Emma, I’m coming in.” Bentley reached through the fire. The flames crawled up his arm, making lightning bolts of the same color spread across his entire body and shining through his shirt. Half of his arm was buried within the flames. “Emerysn, it's safe now. Let it go.”

The flame grew bigger, swallowing all of Bentley inside of it—then instantly went out.

The fire was gone.