RONAN’S POV

I pulled the flask from my jacket and stared at it in the dim hallway light. The metal was cold against my palm, but I could feel the weight of what was inside. Not just moonshine. Something much more valuable.

My mother's voice echoed in my head from the conversation we'd had before I came to the academy. She'd pressed this very flask into my hands, her fingers trembling slightly.

"Latch onto one of them and save us," she'd said. Her eyes had been desperate, the kind of desperate ...