Fourteen dead. Fourteen soldiers who had been killed in their own chapterhouse. Eleven injured, more than half of them severely, and at least a couple who wouldn’t survive the morning. One stressed-looking medic scurried back and forth between rows, clearly overwhelmed by all the beds that were filled with bandaged, charred, bloody soldiers. I made my way through the room, passing the wounded, the barely conscious and the dying. I’d already been here once; after the collision with the giant Adult clone, my forehead had needed stitches. I had more than a few bruises, but my body armor had absorbed a good deal of the impact. I would ache for the next few days, but I had gotten off easy. I wished I could say the same for everyone else.

“Hey, Sebastian.”

The voice was raspy, weak with pain and drugs. I paused at the bedside of the soldier, gazing down at him. Bandages covered half his face, and one of his arms was wrapped in gauze to the shoulder.

“Your lizards,” he husked out, “did good.”

He might’ve wanted to say more, but it was evident that even that bit of talking was painful. So I simply nodded and moved on, passing other cots with wounded soldiers, until I came to a corner that had been sectioned off with a curtain.

As I pushed it back, my throat tightened. Tristan St. Anthony lay on the sheets, still as death, his chest and head wrapped in bloody gauze. They’d found him buried beneath the rubble of the church tower, barely breathing but miraculously still alive. He remained unresponsive, and the medic didn’t know if he would pull through. But he was still one of the lucky ones.

Pulling up a chair, I sank down beside him.

“Hey,” I greeted him softly. “I just...uh...wanted to let you know how everything went. It worked, by the way. We won. Took some losses, of course, but at least some of us are still standing. Martin sustained a concussion and a broken wrist when part of the roof fell on him, but he’s still up, and he’s still managing the chapterhouse. Though the medic keeps pestering him to lie down. You almost shared a corner with the acting leader of the Western chapterhouse.”

No response from Tristan. The machines around him beeped softly, and his chest rose and fell with each shallow breath. It was strange, seeing him like this. In all our years of fighting together, even when he’d gotten himself sent to the infirmary, Tristan was always awake and alert and rarely stayed down for more than a few hours. I kept expecting him to open his eyes and smirk at me, amused with his own prank.