I whisper, “Find someone to help,” and the Grace tosses their head and disappears into the blazing halls. Cormac stares at me, and I hiss, “Get your ass up,” and he’s with me.

“Why didn’t it kill us?” he rasps.

“I don’t know,” I lie and pull him toward the door.

There’s something awful building in my stomach, a pounding in my head like Seraph is clawing through, but I get Cormac into the hall. The flames are as tall as a person, and it’s impossible to breathe without hacking. Cormac wrenches himself out of his jacket and presses it against my mouth. I shove it back at him, he needs it more than I do, but he takes one half to block the smoke and shoves the other against me again, and I let him.

We stumble through the back door.

Dozens of people are out here. It’s chaos. Salvador smashes a window on the other side of the courtyard and boosts someone through, into the safety of a strange building. Sadaf shouts at Sarmat to hold someone down while she cuts clothing away from a festering burn.

People are alive. This is my fault, but people are alive, God, they’re alive.

I get two steps into the courtyard before the Grace dies.

I feel it in the Flood, in my skull. My knees give out from under me. Cormac stumbles, trying to catch me under the arms, but he’s too late. Vomit wells up in my throat. I can’t take down my mask to throw up, it’ll show my face, I can’t—

“Benji?” Cormac whimpers.

I snatch his jacket.

“Shit,” Cormac says, “Nick! Nick!” I hold the jacket like a shield and barely pull down my mask before I vomit. My jaw opens so far it hurts, and the tear across my cheek strains. Something big comes up, and I have to get it out with my tongue, and it falls into the grass, wet and heavy and way too big. “Nick, where are you?”

Two sets of hands bring me to my feet, around my waist and under my arms. I cling to the jacket, vision blurring. Acid burns the back of my tongue.

“You’re fine,” Cormac says while I work my mask back up. “You’re okay.”

I slam the jacket against Cormac’s chest to get it out of my face, and the first thing I see is Nick—to my left, our sides pressed together, holding me tight. Then he lets go. He’s in front of me, climbing through the window, holding out his hands for me. Salvador boosts me through and says, “Glad you made it, kid.”

“Sit,” Nick says, a hand hovering over the back of my neck. Like he knows I thought, for a second, of running back in. “Now.”