"Gansey." Noah's voice is quiet, nearly authoritative in the same way Gansey's sometimes gets with Ronan. "It was never going to be me. I knew that. I died and it had nothing to do with any of you. I wasn't there for you to save me," he starts to say and stops himself. He wasn't the one who'd needed saving.

Noah stares at Gansey a long moment, with his mussed hair and wire rims, plucked from a place in time where he must have been happy and free from the burden of curses and sleeping Kings. It makes Noah's heart ache with both happiness and something else, something like sadness because he won't have been able to see it. The four of them, happy. Here, at least, he can.

"I wasn't a person anymore, Gansey. And there's something else," he begins to say, but reluctantly.