No Matter What

35

CHILDE'S POV:

The hotel lobby is bright and elegant as the four of us barge through the automatic doors. Thankfully at this hour, the area is vacant. Not even the front desk staff is present, as they're probably in the room behind the counter dozed off, waiting for someone to ring the bell.

This is good for us, because we can easily make our way toward the elevator without causing suspicion. I tap my foot as it slowly rides to our floor, Xiao holding my hand tightly. He's shaking, and I give his hand a squeeze of comfort, though my heart is pounding too.

I can barely wait for the doors to split before darting down the hall and to our hotel room. I use the fob and bolt through the second it opens.

"Baby?" I shout, running around the corner and into the bedroom, where I flick on the lights and look down to find two men lied out on the floor.

"I shot them..." Aether says softly. I nod quickly, but forget their presence entirely when my eyes land on my husband. He's laid on his side, eyes closed, knife sticking out of the bandages on his chest. Freminet is sat beside him, holding his hand and looking at me with such worry in his eyes.

"Baby..." I step over the men and crawl onto the bed, placing a shaky hand on Zhongli's cold arm. My other hand strokes a piece of hair from his face, and I feel the tears welling in my eyes. He's unconscious, pale, but he's still breathing—It's faint, but he's still breathing. "Stay with me, baby..." I whisper, leaning into him and placing a soft kiss against his forehead. "I love you. Please... stay with me. I'm going to get you help."

I bite my lip, eyes scanning the room for anything at all, but I have no choice. This is an emergency. I won't let him die here.

I reach under my husband's body carefully, until I've got him bridal style in my arms and standing firm. The adrenaline is really helping keep me up, as my body is screaming at me to sit down.

"Lyney," I say. "You've got the keys still? I need you to take us to the hospital. I'll navigate." Lyney frowns, clearly still traumatized from having to drive here, but doesn't argue.

"You can't fix him here?" Xiao says, voice trembling.

I sigh, shaking my head. "No," I say. "He needs professional medical attention."

Xiao frowns this time, lip quivering first, then his hands slap over his face and his shoulders start to bounce. I've never seen him cry so much. It truly breaks my heart. I know how stressful all of this is for him. None of our futures right now are guaranteed to end in success.

"Someone grab Freminet," I say, heading on wobbly legs toward the door. But instead of grabbing Freminet, the boys rush to grab me, as my body starts giving out and I nearly slip into unconsciousness myself. It takes a second, but I snap out of it, the adrenaline kicking back in. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Go! Get Freminet, we have to go!"

Aether runs back and grabs the boy as Lyney and Xiao help me to the elevator, and I silently pray that no one will suddenly appear and see us.

Thankfully, we get the bright idea to leave out from the side door rather than through the lobby. Aether slips Freminet in the third row with him, I place Zhongli in the middle row, Xiao beside him holding and monitoring him, as I sit in the front beside Lyney.

We take off as quickly as Lyney can manage without having a panic attack. I give him directions to the closest hospital and tell him to keep a good pace but not to speed so we don't get pulled over.

I reach into the glovebox and pull out some tissue, using bottled water to wash the blood from my face. Surely, I didn't get it all, but at least there won't be any dried blood on my eye.