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Sebastian lingered.
He leaned behind a column of the arcade, just out of the sight of the guards standing in front of the capitol building. The great entrance blurred in front of his eyes, and he tried to blink it clear again.
God, he hoped that building was real.
He hoped he wasn’t having some beautiful hallucination while he lay rotting and dying and hiding in a crumbling shelter in Kaston.
If it was a beautiful hallucination, it was prolonged and elaborate.
It encompassed the day he had spent hiding from the invading Klah’Eel and the desperate night-time escape out of the city. Then the next day hiding in the field, and the night picking his way through crops hoping to god he didn’t hear the tell-tale click of a landmine. And finally, stealing a ship to race back to Ralscoln but not before he’d caught a gatlung in the gut from one of the guards in the hangar he’d infiltrated.
He winced as he dragged himself around the column. Yep, that gatlung gash was definitely still there. And definitely still bleeding, judging by the warmth still trickling between his fingers.
He’d spent the flight trying to hold his guts in, but here he was, goddammit. He was not hallucinating.
“Oh, please don’t shoot me,” he muttered as he stepped out of the shadow of the arcade and started across the courtyard. The sun had set, and the white floodlights drowned out the half-moon hanging over the capitol building and threw everything into sharp and unforgiving relief. The guards saw him instantly and raised their weapons.
“Don’t—” Sebastian’s voice broke as he tried to raise it, his throat hoarse and dry and his stomach throbbing. He wanted to raise his hands, but the effort felt insurmountable, and to uncurl his body from around his wound felt like it would stretch it open and rip him in two.
“Freeze! Identify yourself.”
Sebastian stopped. That wasn’t hard; it was harder to keep going. He swayed there in the center of the courtyard. He was still in Neumann, and almost no one had ever seen Neumann before. He licked his dry lips. He wished they’d come closer. He didn’t think he could speak loud enough for them to hear him from here.
He opened his mouth and braced for the loudest sound he could manage, but then the heavy doors opened, and a figure stormed out.
Sebastian blinked in confusion. The lights in his eyes made it hard to see, and his fuzzy, blood-starved brain struggled with every new concept.
Then the figure rushed down the stairs and past the barricade, and Sebastian’s knees went weak with relief.
“Hess.”
His legs gave out completely, and his knees hit the flagstones with a terrible crack, but then Hess was there, grabbing his arms before he could fall face-first into the ground.
“Hess.”
“Oh, thank god.” Hess pulled him to his chest. “Sebastian, thank god.”
Sebastian didn’t bother with words. He didn’t even bother to hold himself up anymore. He just let himself collapse against Hess’s broad chest. He’d done it. He’d made it. He was done.
Pain lanced through his stomach to remind him that he was hardly out of the woods yet. He clenched his teeth against it, but he must have let out a whimper because Hess pushed him back and took a hard look at him.
Sebastian forced himself to pull his hand away from his stomach, but he didn’t dare look at it. “I—”
“Shut up.” Hess snapped. Then he swept Sebastian into his arms and lifted him from the ground. “Get the doctor. Now!”
Hess carried him across the courtyard, not quite as though he weighed nothing but with purpose and speed. When the guards didn’t react right away, he barked at one again, and the guard took off running.
Sebastian managed a hum of agreement and a mumbled, “Doctor would be good.”
Hess shot him a scowl and growled down at him. “Shut up. Stop talking.”
For some strange reason, probably blood loss and fever delirium, Sebastian giggled at that. It had never felt so nice to be told to shut up and stop talking. People weren’t usually holding him when they said that, cradling him in their arms and taking steps two at a time. Hess glanced at him in astonishment, and that just made Sebastian giggle more.
“Get the doctor here now,” Hess roared over his shoulder. Were there people there that Sebastian couldn’t see? Or was Hess just shouting into the building, assuming someone would eventually do his bidding? It was probably a safe assumption if he was.
They stopped in the middle of a hall, and Hess looked over his shoulder. “Open this door.”
A hand reached around Sebastian and turned the knob, and Hess kicked it open. So there were other peop—
