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Leon slowly uncoiled. “Your…mother. She called you…?”
“Sebbie.” A little heat warmed the back of their neck. “Short for Sebastian. My middle name. It’s what my family’s always called me.”
“Your family, the Ralsdis.”
“Yeah…”
Leon’s mind reeled with the implications. “Your family the Ralsdis. Who founded Ralscoln. Who are all secretly torvars.”
“And you can’t tell anyone.” Sebastian came to a stop, and suddenly Leon felt the cold, ghostly prick of vicious claws again.
Alice stopped and looked back at them with a guarded expression.
“You can’t tell anyone, Hess. This is my family. My family. You can’t—”
“I won’t,” Leon reassured him quickly, twisting away from the claws he somehow knew were closing in on him.
The impending doom disappeared instantly, and horror spilled out of Sebastian. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay.” Leon couldn’t blame him, as uncomfortable as the situation had been. “I understand.”
“Everything alright?” Alice put her hand on her hip and lifted her chin in a perfect copy of Sebastian’s favorite, challenging pose.
“Obviously not, Mom,” Sebastian grumbled as he restarted walking and brushed past her. “I hate sharing a body.”
“Hey.” Alice stopped him with a hand on their shoulder, then pulled them back into a hug. Leon’s mind tensed automatically, but with Sebastian in control, they sank into Alice Ralsdi’s embrace. “I’m glad you’re alright. I didn’t know if you’d made it out.”
“Hess got me out.” Sebastian wrapped his mom in a tight hug.
Alice squeezed them, then pushed them out to arm’s length and looked into their eyes. “Thank you.”
Leon realized with a start that she was talking to him. He grasped for Sebastian. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
Sebastian laughed, and Leon jolted with surprise to hear his own laugh echo in the bare hallway. “I think he’s a little overwhelmed, Mom.”
“Right.” Alice chuckled and shook her head. “Let’s just go up and figure this out.”
Only a few minutes more of walking took them through what seemed to be a labyrinthian bunker and to another heavy metal door. This one hung open, and through the doorway, Leon saw a cozy, well-furnished living room.
They stepped out of the concrete tunnel, into the inside a wood armoire, then out into the nicest room Leon had ever been in. Everything was warm and soft and clean, and Leon felt very keenly the dirt and grit and blood on him. After a life spent in bunkers and hideouts, he felt as though he were intruding on a place he had no right to be. The casualness with which Sebastian walked into the room and sank into the comfy couch did not make him feel any better.
Alice bolted the metal door behind them, slid the false back of the armoire into place, then closed its ornately carved doors. She turned back to the room and frowned.
“Darling?” she called as she moved to sit on the couch across from him and Sebastian. “Your father was just here.”
“I’m back!” William Ralsdi, head of the oldest and most powerful Southern Tava family and longtime secret Resistance benefactor, walked in carrying a food tray. “I was getting Sarah and some…” He trailed off at the sight of Sebastian in Leon sitting on the couch.
Sarah Ralsdi—rising political star in her own right—walked in after him and raised both eyebrows. “Oh god.”
Leon wished he could go back—alone in his own body—into those concrete tunnels and turn off all the lights. He had never felt more out of place and off-balance in his entire life.
“Hey, Dad. Hi, Sarah.” Sebastian moved his hand in a jaunty wave that felt absurd to Leon’s muscles.
“Oh boy.” William Ralsdi heaved a sigh, set the tray down on the low table between the two couches, and sat next to his wife.
“I feel like maybe the emergency code would have been more appropriate, Sebbie.” Sarah shook her head a few times, then sat on her father’s other side, giving Leon the impression they were under interrogation.
Sebastian wasn’t tense at all, though. He shrugged and pulled a plate of meat and vegetables toward himself. “If I’m not bleeding, it’s not an emergency.”
