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“Oh,” croaks Grian. His voice is naught but a scrape of ashes; he’s been flying through the fire for hours on end, and there’s no sign of it stopping, the writhing vines stretching out ever further, the flames devouring them with a vengeance. And yet. And yet.
“Tim,” says Grian, as much as his ruined voice will allow. “You didn’t.”
Jimmy, curtained midflight with his own golden wings that Grian helped him design, stares at him like he’s seeing a ghost. “Oh fuck,” he whispers back, stricken. “Oh fuck, Grian. You’re not supposed to be here. What are you doing here, you bloody idiot—I told you to leave!”
“The island was burning,” Grian says dumbly. “People were burning. There are carriers by the docks. I couldn’t—we couldn’t leave them.”
“‘We?’” repeats Jimmy, horrified.
Grian bobs his head, and it sends a spike of pain down his neck. God, everything hurts. “Me and… the others. The Hermits. Xephyr… there are some people left. Godeye’s people. And Tidekeeper…”
“Grian,” Jimmy cuts him off in a venomous hiss that Grian’s taken aback to hear. “I bloody—I told you all to leave, god, why didn’t you listen—”
“You did this,” Grian says, not believing himself even as he says it. “Tim. Tim, you… you did this.”
Jimmy flinches so hard the gout of fire on his breath gutters out.
Grian says, too exhausted to be the furious he feels like a sunder in his soul, “Tim, Taurtis is dead. Gem is dead. Joel told me he saw Etho go down in a burning building,” and he almost relishes the look that he blooms in Jimmy’s wide, stricken eyes.