Around them, Sarajevo roared.
The battle had spread farther through the surrounding streets, but something had changed within its sound. It was no longer only the cracking of rifles and the shouted orders of police and soldiers. Other voices had joined them—hundreds of angry civilians pouring from homes, shops and alleys, helping the authorities seize the men who had turned their city into a battlefield.
Oskar could hear them shouting through the smoke.
Assassins were being dragged from doorways and pulled screaming from windows. Men climbed stairwells and rooftops beside policemen and Guards, while others pointed toward hiding places, seized fallen weapons or helped wrestle gunmen to the ground. Somewhere farther away a crowd erupted in furious cheers as another conspirator was captured.
Women screamed for doctors. Wounded men called for help. Horses reared and fought against reins slick with sweat and blood while the chaos rolled outward from street to street.
Sarajevo was still fighting, but now its people were fighting back.
For several heartbeats Oskar remained kneeling amid it all, still caught in that strange place where the mind refused to accept what the eyes had already witnessed.
Then he moved.
Shadowmane lowered his enormous head beside him, allowing Oskar to seize the thick mane and drag himself upright. Pain tore through his shoulder and ribs like burning wire. His right side screamed with every breath, and he pressed one hand tightly against his torso as though sheer pressure might hold everything inside where it belonged.
Then he turned toward the car.
The A-class had come to rest hard against the corner of a building, its front crushed inward and radiator hissing steam like some dying animal. Broken glass glittered throughout the cabin while smoke drifted through the open compartment.
And inside— Franz Ferdinand held Sophie, alive, both of them.
For one stunned second Oskar merely stared, it was a miracle.
Then he saw the blood spreading across Sophie's dress, darkening the fabric beneath her, and the miracle immediately became another emergency.
"Sophie—Sophie—" Ferdinand's voice broke completely. There was nothing imperial left in it now, only the terrified voice of a husband. "Stay with me… please—"
He lowered her across the rear seat as gently as his shaking hands allowed before looking up.
Their eyes met.
Ferdinand's face had gone grey. His lips trembled, and when he finally spoke the words came rough and broken, heavy with shame.
"Oskar… I should have listened. Your letters—I—" His gaze flicked toward the dead men inside the automobile before returning desperately to Sophie. "This is my fault. God help me, it's my fault."
Oskar did not allow him the luxury of collapsing into guilt.
"Later," he said through clenched teeth. "Blame later. Move now."
Ferdinand blinked, almost as though he needed permission to become practical again.
Oskar pointed toward Sophie with a blood-smeared hand. "Get her to a hospital, immediately, and don't stop for anything."
Only then did Ferdinand properly look at him.
The ruined remains of the white shirt. The soot and burns. The blood, much of it his own. The bullet wounds across his enormous body and the way he remained standing largely because he had apparently decided falling was no longer acceptable.
"Jesus…" Ferdinand breathed. "Oskar, you're hit bad. Get in. The car still—"
"No," Oskar said.
Ferdinand stared at him as though he had misheard.
Oskar looked beyond the wrecked automobile toward the house from which the woman and her family had emerged. Through the smoke he could still hear the thin, relentless crying of the child inside.
"I have other matters," he said quietly. "A child needs me, and besides, I doubt the car in its current state could carry me."
Frustration flashed briefly across Ferdinand's face, but it vanished beneath something stronger. Fear, not for himself, but for Sophie.
He swallowed and nodded once. "Alright. But be quick. You're bleeding like a slaughtered ox." His voice twisted toward humour and failed halfway there. "I'll be at the hospital. Don't you dare die on me."
Oskar managed the ghost of a nod.
"Don't worry," he said, forcing another painful breath. "Shadowmane will get me there faster than any car. After all, cars can't jump."
Ferdinand's mouth twitched despite everything.
For one fleeting moment, the joke reassured him that somewhere beneath the blood, soot and bullet holes, Oskar was still Oskar.
Then reality returned.
If Ferdinand wanted to reach the hospital, he needed the driver's seat.
Unfortunately, the driver's seat was occupied by a dead man, and the front of the automobile was still wedged tightly against the building.
Oskar limped behind the A-class and forced himself into the narrow space between its rear and the damaged wall. He planted both hands against the bodywork and pushed.
Pain exploded through his shoulder. His boots slipped against blood-wet stone.
"Come on…" he growled through his teeth.
Metal scraped slowly against masonry.
At first the automobile barely moved. Then Oskar forced harder, muscles trembling beneath blood and soot, and the heavy machine shifted several inches away from the wall.
Inside, Ferdinand stared toward the driver's seat.
Leopold Lojka still hung over the wheel, his body warm but lifeless, arms trapped awkwardly around the steering column and legs caught beneath the pedals.
Ferdinand reached forward and grabbed the dead man's coat.
The body refused to move cleanly. One arm caught against the wheel. A boot snagged beneath the pedals. Something scraped unpleasantly against broken wood and metal as Ferdinand pulled.
For a moment his face twisted—not from fear, but from the horror of what necessity demanded of him.
"Forgive me," he whispered.
Then Sophie made another weak sound behind him.
Ferdinand pulled harder.
Leopold finally came loose with the terrible dead weight of a body that could no longer help itself. Ferdinand dragged him sideways and pushed him as far from the controls as he could, not because the man deserved such rough treatment, but because there was no longer time for dignity.
Potiorek remained collapsed nearby, his coat dark with blood. Harrach—the man who had spent his final moments standing between Ferdinand and the assassins—lay motionless amid the wreckage.
Ferdinand forced enough space open to climb forward. His bloody hands found the steering wheel.
The engine coughed when he tried the ignition, once, again. Then it caught.
Behind the automobile Oskar shoved one final time. Metal shrieked across stone, and the A-class lurched away from the wall far enough for its damaged front wheels to straighten.
"There!" Oskar rasped, slapping one bloody palm against the rear bodywork. "She's loose. Now go. Pedal to the metal."
Ferdinand wrestled the transmission into gear, nearly stalled the engine, swore viciously and tried again.
The automobile jerked forward.
Before leaving, Ferdinand looked back at Oskar one final time. There was no farewell in that look, only a plea.
Stay alive.
Oskar answered with one hard nod.
Go.
Ferdinand pressed the accelerator.
The battered A-class surged down the street, engine coughing beneath the damage before gathering speed and disappearing around the bend into smoke, shouting and fleeing crowds.
Franz Ferdinand did not look back.
His entire world had narrowed to one thing.
Get Sophie to safety.
Rage could come later. Understanding could come later. Blame could come later. For now, there was only survival.
Oskar watched the automobile disappear. For several seconds an almost dizzying relief passed through him.
They were alive.
Against history, against the bombs, against the bullets and against everything that had happened upon that street—they were alive.
Then the child cried again, sharp and lonely.
Oskar turned toward the house.
There, framed by the darkened doorway and drifting smoke, stood a little girl.
She could not have been more than three. Bare feet rested upon the splintered threshold beneath a ragged dress hanging loosely from her small body, while pale-blond hair clung to tear-streaked cheeks. Something about the shape of her face reminded Oskar strangely of Tanya, though her wide blue eyes were entirely her own, searching the ruined street for faces that would never answer.
In her arms she clutched a small teddy bear so tightly that its worn fabric strained beneath her fingers.
"Mama…" she sobbed.
The word cut through Oskar worse than any bullet.
He stepped toward her.
The girl finally noticed him properly and frowned.
"Hey," she said in surprisingly clear German. "German man. Have you seen my mama? Or my papa? Or my big brother?"
Oskar stopped. She spoke German, fluent German.
And he had just watched all three of her family members die, while she luckily had not. She had only heard the explosion, seen the smoke, perhaps felt the house shake around her. And now all she could see was this enormous, half-naked stranger covered in blood standing where her family had been only moments earlier.
For several seconds Oskar could not answer.
The girl tilted her head.
"They were just here."
He took another cautious step.
She immediately pressed herself against the doorframe.
"Stop. You're big and scary," she announced. "And you're all red and your clothes are dirty. I don't like dirty things."
A laugh almost escaped him, yet it died somewhere in his throat. Oskar slowly lowered himself onto one knee, ignoring the fresh pain that tore through his side.
"I'm sorry," he said gently.
"For what?"
His eyes fell toward the street.
Black scorch marks stained the cobblestones. Blood filled the cracks between them, surrounded by pieces of debris he desperately wished she would never recognize.
"The truth is that they're… gone," he managed.
The little girl frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Oskar opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was a father. He knew the stubborn incomprehension of very small children. At three years old, gone did not mean dead. Gone meant another room. Gone meant work. Gone meant returning after supper.
He could not explain this here, not now.
Gunshots still cracked somewhere farther through the city, and distant shouting rolled between the buildings.
"Well, anyway," Oskar said instead, pressing one hand against the blood seeping steadily from his side, "it's dangerous here. And I'm bleeding rather badly. I think I need to go to the hospital, so do you wanna come with me?"
She shook her head fiercely and lifted the teddy bear between them like a shield.
"No. I want Mama."
One little foot stamped against the floor.
"I want Mama!"
"I know," Oskar said softly.
Her lower lip trembled as she glared at him.
"I don't like you. You're weird."
Then Shadowmane stepped forward.
The enormous black stallion lowered his head toward them, breathing heavily, one flank slick with blood and soot.
The girl blinked.
"Oh."
Her eyes widened.
"He's big as well."
Oskar nodded solemnly. "Yes, of course he's big. He's my horse, after all."
She took one cautious step from the doorway.
"What's his name?"
"Shadowmane."
"Shadow… what?" she asked suspiciously.
"It means he's very fast."
She considered this explanation with the seriousness of a scholar examining questionable evidence before looking more closely at the stallion.
"He's hurt," she whispered.
"Yes," Oskar said. "He is. We're going to the hospital to fix that."
The little girl looked over her shoulder into the darkened house. Nobody answered her, and the silence there somehow felt heavier than all the shouting outside.
Oskar pushed himself slowly upright.
"Well," he said with deliberate casualness, "you can stay here alone if you prefer."
He turned slightly toward Shadowmane.
The girl looked around, at the smoke, the shattered street, the empty doorway behind her.
Her shoulders seemed to shrink.
"…Alright," she muttered. "I'll come."
Oskar allowed himself the smallest breath of relief and held out his hand.
After a moment of hesitation, she stepped forward and placed her tiny fingers into his enormous bloodied palm.
He instinctively reached to brush the hair from her face.
"Don't touch me!" she protested immediately. "You're all bloody!"
"I am trying not to be," Oskar replied gravely. "It's very inconsiderate of me."
She huffed.
With considerable care, Oskar lifted her and settled her onto Shadowmane's broad back.
The girl immediately looked around.
"There are no reins."
"Correct."
"How do we hold on?"
"You hold his mane."
She gathered a fistful of dark hair in both hands.
Oskar pulled himself painfully onto Shadowmane behind her, wrapping one enormous arm securely around the child's waist.
"Ready?"
Shadowmane shifted beneath them.
The girl squeaked.
"Not good! I'm too high! I don't like being this high!"
"I've got you," Oskar said quietly.
He pressed his heels gently against Shadowmane's sides, and the stallion began moving.
The girl shrieked once. Then, after several steps, the shriek dissolved into a nervous little giggle.
They rode through the smoke-choked street, following the path Ferdinand's automobile had taken toward the hospital. After a short while the girl twisted around as far as Oskar's arm would allow and peered up at him.
"What's your name?"
"Oskar."
Her eyes widened.
"Oskar? Like the Crown Prince of Germany?"
He blinked.
"Yes."
She gasped.
"The big one?"
"…Yes."
"You're the one who makes the German books!"
Oskar frowned. "What books do you mean?"
"The bright ones! With Princess Tanya! And the sleeping princess Anna!" she declared proudly. "I made Mama teach me German so I could read them. I can read very well."
"You can?"
"Yes. I'm very smart," she replied with complete confidence. "Oh, and I'm Anica, and I'm three."
Despite everything, Oskar laughed.
It came out sharp and exhausted, but it was real.
"I believe you."
A moment later Anica wrinkled her nose.
"Eww, you're bleeding on me again."
"I apologize."
"You should stop."
"I will attempt to."
Shadowmane limped slightly beneath them but continued onward, powerful even through exhaustion and injury.
Behind them Sarajevo still roared, while somewhere ahead waited the hospital.
For Oskar, however, the journey was becoming increasingly difficult.
At first the pain from his wounds had been sharp but distant, almost clinical enough to ignore. Now it was changing. Growing heavier. Each heartbeat pushed fresh warmth down his side, and with every pulse the street seemed to tilt a little farther beneath him.
Anica, on the other hand, kept talking, constantly.
Like a tiny clockwork machine wound far too tightly and perhaps a little too frightened of what might happen if she ever allowed herself to stop.
"And in the German Man book, when the moles came up from the ground, I didn't like that part because they were ugly, and I don't like ugly things. Mama said they're not real, but what if they are real? What if they come here and build armies underground and ride those big monsters and make factories and steal people and turn them into blind moles too, and—"
Her words gradually blurred together.
Oskar answered whenever he could.
"No… they don't exist."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"But they look very real in the pictures."
He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.
"They're only stories. I made them up."
"Good," Anica said with obvious relief. "Because they are very scary. But if you made them up, are you afraid of moles or something? How do you even think of things like that?"
Despite himself, Oskar almost smiled. If only you knew.
Around them, Sarajevo was beginning to change again.
The sounds of battle still echoed through the surrounding streets, but the wild confusion was slowly becoming something more organized. Boots thundered across cobblestones. Orders were barked through the smoke. Doors crashed inward and windows shattered as the Third Company of the Eternal Guard spread through the district with frightening efficiency, joining Austro-Hungarian soldiers, police and increasingly furious civilians in hunting down the remaining conspirators.
Men were dragged from buildings and rooftops. Weapons were kicked away. Suspected assassins were pinned against walls or hauled screaming into the street while angry crowds pointed out hiding places and tried to get their hands upon them before the police could. Order was returning, though it returned with clenched fists.
Oskar barely registered any of it.
He was riding mostly on instinct now—breathing because his body demanded it, remaining upright because he had not yet given himself permission to fall, and keeping one arm around Anica because some stubborn part of him had decided that whatever else happened, the little girl was not coming off that horse.
An engine snarled beside them.
Captain Carter appeared on a motorcycle with two more Eternal Guards close behind. His steel visor was raised, and his eyes flicked once over Oskar's condition—the burned clothing, the blood, the bullet wounds—before hardening.
Then he was speaking into his radio, voice calm and clipped, issuing orders about streets, prisoners, hospitals and reinforcements that Oskar could no longer quite hold together inside his head.
Anica, however, immediately found Carter fascinating. She twisted around upon Shadowmane's back and stared at him.
"Hey, you smaller German man on the motorcycle, have you perhaps read Princess Anna and the Silver Comet Sleep?" she called loudly enough to carry over the engines. "The Sleeping Beauty one, where she sleeps because of the curse and dreams about wars and fire and then wakes up when the kingdom is ready. Mama says it's not just a love story. She says it's… important."
She continued without waiting for an answer.
"And The Adventures of Princess Tanya—like Tanya and the Tomb of the Black Sun and The Scarlet Sands of Alexandria. German Man likes Tanya more," she explained matter-of-factly, as though discussing some well-established political fact, "but I think Anna is nicer. Tanya is brave though. She has the tight suit and the pistols and climbs walls and always saves herself."
Her face suddenly tightened with concern.
"Do you think the moles are real? The ones from Emergence Day? The ones who come from underground and take people and make them into blind mole soldiers? Tanya would punch them, right? German Man punches them, but Tanya is scarier."
Carter blinked once.
For several seconds he looked like a man whose mind had been forced to jump directly from urban counter-insurgency to children's literature without any transition between them.
Then, somehow, he answered without losing control of the motorcycle.
"I haven't read them," he said. "But I've heard they're… popular."
"They are!" Anica declared triumphantly. "Mama said Tanya is scandalous."
Carter made a sound suspiciously similar to a cough.
Oskar tried to smile. Instead his vision smeared around the edges.
Shadowmane continued forward, though his limp had become more pronounced. The enormous stallion was suffering too; each stride came heavier than the last, yet he kept moving with the same stubborn refusal as the man upon his back.
At last the hospital appeared ahead through the smoke and movement of the city—pale walls, tall windows and an entrance crowded with soldiers, civilians, nurses and wounded people pouring in from every direction.
Oskar saw it.
Then the world tilted, not metaphorically, physically.
Until then the pain had remained strangely distant, sharp enough to recognize but somehow separate from him. Now it thickened. Every heartbeat pushed new warmth down his side. His breathing became shallow, and the buzzing that had been growing somewhere behind his eyes spread until it seemed to fill his entire skull.
Anica's voice moved farther away. Carter's motorcycle moved farther away. Sarajevo itself moved farther away.
Then Oskar began to fall, he never struck the ground. Hands caught him—several of them, hard and practiced—and after that the world simply slid inward into darkness.
When awareness returned, he was inside.
White walls flashed above him. Bright lamps. Faces. Hands everywhere.
Someone cut away what remained of his clothing. Metal instruments gleamed briefly before disappearing from sight. Voices overlapped one another as doctors and nurses worked around the enormous body suddenly occupying much of their table.
"Four entry wounds—"
"Careful—"
"Damn, his skin is like leather—"
"He's losing too much—"
Oskar could not follow them. The world narrowed into sensation. Cold metal against skin. Pressure. Hands forcing him still. Something digging deep into his side. Then a sudden dragging pain as something was pulled from inside him.
A needle bit into his arm.
The buzzing inside his skull grew louder until it sounded like an entire hive had somehow taken residence behind his eyes.
Through it all, one familiar little voice drifted from somewhere near the doorway.
"I'm sorry, but have you perhaps seen my mama?"
A doctor snapped toward her.
"Why is she here? Get her out of this room—this is not a place for—"
Another voice cut cleanly through the chaos, calm, controlled.
"Doctor. I am Captain Carter of the Third Eternal Guard Company. His Highness chose her to accompany him. She will remain until we locate her family. That is not open for debate."
A pause followed.
Then Anica's small, satisfied voice answered from somewhere beyond Oskar's sight.
"That's right. Now tell me, have you seen my mama?"
The light folded inward. Darkness rolled over him like deep water. When Oskar surfaced again, it did not feel like waking. It felt like crawling upward through thick mud.
His mouth tasted of metal and medicine. His tongue seemed too large for his teeth, and every attempt to think dissolved before it reached completion. Sound arrived slowly and strangely, distant and muffled, as though the entire world had been wrapped in wool.
The buzzing was still there, steady, persistent.
He blinked.
Shapes began resolving themselves. A white ceiling, a lamp, curtains moving faintly in warm air.
Then faces.
Ferdinand stood beside the bed, close, alive, real. Anica was there too, sitting upon a chair far too large for her, little legs dangling above the floor while she occupied herself with a collection of flowers. She was weaving their stems together with the solemn concentration of a child who had decided that whatever she was making was considerably more important than everything else happening in the hospital.
Ferdinand noticed Oskar's eyes opening.
The change in him was immediate. His shoulders sagged, and his entire body seemed to loosen like that of a man who had unknowingly been holding his breath for hours.
"Oskar."
He dragged a stool closer, sat heavily beside the bed and took Oskar's hand between both of his as though sheer grip might keep his friend anchored to the world.
"My friend," Ferdinand said, his voice low and urgent. "Are you with me? Can you speak? Are you—are you alright?"
Oskar tried to answer and discovered that his lips did not quite obey him. He managed a crooked smile anyway.
"Yeah," he murmured, the word emerging slow and thick. "I think… I'm alright. For now."
Ferdinand exhaled sharply. Relief flashed across his face, only to disappear almost immediately.
He leaned closer, and for the first time the controlled mask truly slipped.
"Oskar," he said, almost pleading now. "I need to know. For certain. Who did this? Is everything you warned me about… true? We had evidence, yes. We heard whispers. But would they truly dare something like this? Would they truly try to—"
Oskar's faint smile never reached his eyes.
He stared at Ferdinand as though the question itself were slightly ridiculous.
"Oh, come on," he rasped. "Why are you asking? Haven't I already made it quite clear?"
Ferdinand's grip tightened around his hand.
Oskar stared at the ceiling for several seconds, gathering thoughts that kept threatening to drift apart.
"I wrote you," he said. "Many times. I told you in person too." His eyes eventually found Ferdinand again. "It's the same chain. Young Bosnia. The Black Hand. Same destination, slightly different banners."
Ferdinand said nothing.
"They want variations of the same dream," Oskar continued, his voice hoarse and strangely calm, like a drunken lecturer repeating something he had explained too many times before. "Young Bosnia talks about South Slav unity. The Black Hand talks about Serbian unification. But both roads lead toward the same thing—Bosnia torn out of your Empire and pulled toward Belgrade."
The muscle in Ferdinand's jaw tightened.
"And you already know how these things work," Oskar murmured. "Serbia tolerates them. Looks the other way. Pretends certain people don't exist until they become useful." A faint, bitter laugh escaped him. "But explosives, rifles, money… none of that falls from the sky."
Ferdinand's eyes sharpened.
"You're saying—"
"I'm saying your own evidence already points in that direction," Oskar interrupted, not harshly. "You simply don't want to say it aloud yet."
He swallowed painfully.
"And if you keep following the suppliers, eventually you begin seeing foreign fingerprints too. Loans. Cheap credit. Weapons bought abroad. Serbia does not maintain an army of that size because it discovered some magical mountain filled with gold." His eyelids sagged slightly under the drugs. "Someone keeps feeding them. Keeps them armed. Keeps them confident. And we both know which great power benefits most from having Serbia sharp and pointed toward Austria."
Ferdinand became very still. Something flickered behind his eyes, not grief, not anymore.
Oskar noticed it through the haze, and a cold uneasiness shifted somewhere inside him.
He tried to gather himself and return to the larger problem—the one he and Ferdinand had spent years circling without ever stating quite this plainly.
"The real problem," Oskar murmured, "is that their ambitions would matter far less if your Empire were… tighter. More like Germany. But it isn't. You have cracks, Ferdinand. Apparently some rather large ones."
He blinked hard as the ceiling swayed gently overhead.
"You can see them even in Bosnia. People live beside one another without always living together. Language divides them. Faith divides them. Community divides them. They hire their own, marry their own, protect their own, and when trouble comes their loyalty often moves sideways toward family, parish or people before it moves upward toward the state."
He paused for breath.
"And resentment grows inside those gaps. Resentment is cheap to weaponize. A little money. A few guns. Some clever pamphlets. A promise that dying will make a boy immortal." His mouth twisted faintly. "Groups like the Black Hand do not create anger from nothing. They harvest what is already there."
Ferdinand listened without interrupting.
"That's why we kept pushing unity," Oskar continued. "A common civic identity. A common language for administration. One body of law every citizen can read and understand. Something large enough that belonging to the Empire means more than simply tolerating it until someone offers a prettier flag."
He shifted slightly and immediately regretted it as pain tore through his side.
"I'm not saying erase anyone," he added, waving one weak hand. "Don't be dramatic. I'm saying bind them together. Let a Serbian remain Serbian. A Croat remain Croat. A Czech remain Czech. But when any of them says, 'I belong to this Empire,' that should mean something stronger than whichever village, parish or province happened to raise him."
His eyelids drooped again.
"It takes time. Ten years. Twenty. Maybe longer. But once people speak to one another, study beside one another, work beside one another… at least they can argue properly." A faint chuckle escaped him. "That alone would be progress."
He breathed out slowly.
"Hatred doesn't vanish because children learn the same language. But understanding helps."
For several seconds he seemed almost to drift away before forcing his eyes open again.
"Still… this was worse than I expected. Much worse." His brow furrowed. "The Black Hand, Young Bosnia, whoever is feeding them from behind the curtain—they must feel cornered. People don't gamble this much blood unless they think time is running against them."
Silence settled across the room.
Ferdinand did not look reassured. If anything, something inside him had hardened.
The horror of the morning remained. So did the fear for Sophie. But beneath both, something colder had begun assembling itself piece by piece.
"I understand," Ferdinand said slowly.
It did not sound like comfort. It sounded like calculation.
Oskar smiled weakly, too drugged and exhausted to understand the difference.
"Good," he breathed. "Then handle it. Clean it up properly. Fix the seams. And maybe… one day… you can walk through your own streets without a regiment following you." His smile twitched. "It's a very nice feeling."
His eyes drifted half closed.
"Just give it time. It'll work. We've already started."
Then Ferdinand came properly into focus again, and Oskar noticed the look upon his face.
Something had changed.
There was no shouting. No trembling. No theatrical fury. It existed entirely within the stillness—the rigid jaw, the unmoving shoulders, the eyes burning beneath a face held almost unnaturally calm.
It was the expression of a man holding something molten behind his teeth and refusing to let a single drop escape.
Oskar, swimming through medicine and the relentless buzzing inside his skull, misunderstood it completely.
His mind went immediately to Sophie. Something had happened. Something terrible had happened while he had been unconscious.
That fire in Ferdinand's eyes had to be grief, not fury, not vengeance.
His heart stumbled.
"Sophie…" he murmured thickly. "Ferdinand… is Sophie alright?"
Ferdinand blinked, and the anger cracked just enough for the frightened husband beneath it to reappear.
"She's alive," he answered quickly. "For now. But she lost a great deal of blood. The doctors say she's still critical."
Oskar released a shaky breath that almost became relief.
Ferdinand hesitated before continuing, suddenly looking almost ashamed to ask.
"They tested us," he said quietly. "Your blood… apparently it matches closely enough. And the doctors say yours is unusual. Strong." His throat worked. "Would you permit a transfusion? If she worsens, they believe it could save her."
Oskar made a sound somewhere between a laugh and an exhausted breath.
"Yeah," he slurred. "Sure. Take it."
Ferdinand stared at him.
"Oskar—"
"That's why I perfected the whole idea," Oskar mumbled, his eyelids hanging heavily. "More blood types. Better transfusions. So people wouldn't die stupidly."
For the first time, Ferdinand's expression softened completely.
"Thank you," he said. "My friend… I won't forget it."
He squeezed Oskar's hand once more before rising from the stool, slowly smoothing his coat as though doing so might restore some order to a world that had spent the morning falling apart.
"You've given me much to think about," Ferdinand said, his voice once again quiet and controlled. "But don't worry about any of that now. Rest. I will try to handle things from here."
Oskar managed another weak smile.
"I trust you," he murmured. "Go handle it."
Then, because the drugs had loosened his tongue and because some ridiculous part of him remained unmistakably himself, he added dreamily:
"Oh—and tell the nurses to bring me cookies and milk."
Ferdinand paused.
Oskar stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
"Or… something sweet," he mumbled. "Sugar. Mmm. Sugar sounds good."
For the first time since Sarajevo had exploded around him, Ferdinand's mouth twitched into a helpless little smile.
"I will see what I can do," he said softly.
Then he turned and left.
The door clicked shut. Silence lasted perhaps half a heartbeat before Anica exploded with relief.
"Yes!" she whispered fiercely. "Finally. He's gone."
She immediately seized the stool Ferdinand had abandoned and began dragging it across the floor with enormous determination for such a tiny person. The legs scraped loudly over the boards until she positioned it beside Oskar's bed, climbed onto it like a conqueror scaling a fortress and raised the flower crown she had been constructing in both hands.
Oskar watched her through half-lidded eyes, amused despite everything.
Anica rose onto her toes and carefully lowered the crown onto his head. It immediately slid sideways.
Her face collapsed.
"No," she groaned. "No, no, no… I did it wrong."
Oskar lifted one weak hand and patted her shoulder.
"It's beautiful," he murmured. "Don't beat yourself up."
She glared at the offending crown as though personally betrayed by its dimensions.
"It's not big enough," she declared. "It's no good."
"Well," Oskar offered, "I could wear it as a bracelet."
"No."
The word came with the authority of an imperial decree. She stamped one foot.
"No! I will make it bigger. Then it will fit your fat, stupid head."
Oskar gave a faint laugh.
"I'm sorry. I'll try to make my head smaller."
"No," she said again, already climbing down. "Don't make it smaller. I'll get more flowers."
Her disappointment disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
"Besides," she added brightly, "I like picking flowers."
"What kind?" Oskar asked, half curious and half drifting back toward sleep.
Anica stopped at the doorway and considered the question with enormous seriousness.
"The red ones," she decided. Then frowned. "No. The pink ones. No—blue ones. The ones that look like the sky. Those are best."
Oskar blinked slowly.
"Prussian blue," he murmured. "That is the right colour."
She wrinkled her nose.
"No. Prussian blue is too… blue. I like the lighter blue."
His lips twitched.
"Of course you do."
Anica pointed sternly toward him.
"And don't think you can change my mind regarding that," she warned. "I won't allow it. I'm a strong independent girl, like Tanya! And besides, boys are weird."
Then she skipped from the room with her head held high, apparently satisfied that she had successfully defended her principles against the Crown Prince of Germany.
Oskar settled farther into the pillow, smiling faintly. The buzzing softened. The ceiling stopped moving. And in the quiet that followed, a thought slowly rose inside him—warm, dangerous and intoxicating.
Did I do it?
People had died, but Ferdinand lived and Sophie lived. The heir to Austria-Hungary still breathed. And Ferdinand was a reformer. A cautious man. A man who despised the idea of throwing the Empire into some glorious, unnecessary war.
If Ferdinand lived, then perhaps the war Oskar remembered—the great slaughter that had consumed his old world—would never be born at all. Perhaps the chain had finally broken.
A tired certainty began settling into him.
I did it.
Already his half-conscious mind raced toward everything that could come next.
Rockets, a proper space centre, a German flag upon the Moon, photographed against the black sky and carried across the world as proof that mankind could finally lift its eyes upward rather than spend another generation burying young men beneath trenches.
Africa.
The great industrial projects still waiting there. Cities, mines, farms and power stations. More wealth. More people educated. More scientists. More steel, fuel and knowledge feeding whatever came after.
A new age, a better age.
Oskar smiled faintly as sleep pulled at him. Somewhere beneath that relief, however, a tiny splinter of unease tried to surface.
But what if Ferdinand…?
Oskar's brow tightened.
No.
Ferdinand wouldn't. He was good, he was careful, he was a man of peace.
Oskar let the thought sink away.
The room dimmed around him. And he fell asleep believing the storm had passed.