Obsidian: The Sentinel Code Book One, page 36
“Lady Pemberton. You're very kind.”
“And your bodyguard.” Her eyes flicked to Viktor with the kind of assessment that made my spine straighten. “I've heard such intriguing things about the Sentinel Network. Quite the modern approach to security.”
“Modern problems require modern solutions,” Viktor said. His accent was thicker tonight, deliberately so. Playing up the foreign mercenary angle. Making himself seem less threatening by being more obviously other.
It was working. Lady Pemberton smiled, already dismissing him as hired muscle, and turned her attention back to me. “I do hope you'll save me a dance later. We have much to discuss about the new housing initiatives.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
She drifted away, replaced immediately by Lord Ashford, then Ambassador Chen, then someone whose name I'd forgotten but whose handshake was too firm and whose smile showed too many teeth.
The conversations blurred together. Pleasantries and politics and thinly veiled questions about my father's health, about succession, about whether I'd consider marriage to this daughter or that niece. Everyone wanting something. Everyone performing.
I felt Viktor's presence at my back like an anchor. Like the only real thing in a room full of beautiful lies.
“You're doing well,” he murmured during a brief lull, voice low enough that only I could hear.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“Every person here wants something from me.”
“Not every person.” His hand brushed my lower back. Brief. Gone before anyone could see. But I felt it like a brand. “I only want you to survive the night.”
The orchestra finished tuning. The crowd began to shift, moving toward the main hall where the performance would take place. But the foyer remained full, people clustering around the bars, the hors d'oeuvres, each other.
A bell chimed. Soft. Insistent. Ten minutes to curtain.
“Your Highness.” Marcel reappeared with two more people I didn't recognize. A man in his fifties with the bearing of military. A woman younger than me in silver that looked like liquid mercury. “I wanted to introduce you to Colonel Hartford and Miss Reeves. They've been instrumental in coordinating the evening's security.”
I shook hands. Made appropriate noises. Watched Viktor's shoulders tighten incrementally at the word 'security.'
“Your Mr. Volkov has been quite thorough,” Colonel Hartford said, and it didn't sound like a compliment. “Very thorough indeed. Had my men double-check their protocols three times.”
“Thoroughness keeps people alive,” Viktor said.
“Indeed.” The Colonel's smile didn't reach his eyes. “Though some might call it paranoia.”
“Only people who have never been shot at.”
Miss Reeves laughed, bright and artificial. “Well, we certainly hope no one gets shot at tonight. That would rather ruin the performance.”
The crowd laughed with her. Polite. Performative. Like violence was something that happened elsewhere, to other people, and certainly not here in this temple to beauty and culture.
I caught Viktor's eye. Saw the calculation there. The way he was already mapping which of these smiling people could be threats. Which ones had access. Which ones stood too close or asked too many questions.
He didn't trust any of them.
Neither did I.
The bell chimed again. Five minutes.
“We should take our seats,” Marcel said, gesturing toward the stairs that led to the boxes. “Sebastian, you're in the royal box, of course. I'll be just below you if you need anything.”
The crowd began to move, a river of silk and velvet and diamonds flowing toward the theater. I let myself be carried along, Viktor at my back, his presence the only thing keeping me grounded in the sea of faces and voices.
The royal box was exactly what I expected. Front and center, elevated above the main floor, with perfect sightlines to the stage and the audience both. A gilded cage with velvet cushions and a view everyone could see. We might as well have painted a target on the wall.
Viktor was thinking the same thing. I saw it in the way his eyes tracked the architecture, the angles, the sight lines. Every window a potential sniper position. Every shadow a place to hide.
“Relax,” I murmured as I settled into my seat. “You're going to give yourself a stroke.”
“I will relax when we are back at the palace. With reinforced walls. And no windows.”
“So never.”
“Da. Never.”
Below us, the theater filled. Men in black tie escorting women in jewels. The rustle of programs. The murmur of conversation that sounded like waves. I watched them settle into their seats, watched the lights begin to dim, watched the orchestra emerge from the pit.
Viktor took his position at the back of the box. Standing instead of sitting. Eyes already scanning the crowd. Cataloging threats. Mapping escape routes. Doing what he always did.
The conductor appeared to applause. Raised his baton.
The first notes trembled into life. Strings building toward something beautiful and terrible. The curtain rose on a stage dressed like heaven. White silk. Gold light. Smoke machines creating clouds that caught the stage lights and turned them ethereal.
A soprano appeared. Young. Talented. Her voice rose in an aria about love and loss and death, and despite everything, I let myself fall into it. Let the music wash over me. Let myself forget, just for a moment, that I was being watched by a thousand eyes.
The music swelled. The soprano's voice climbed higher, achingly pure, reaching for notes that seemed impossible. I closed my eyes. Felt the sound vibrate in my chest, in my bones, drowning out thoughts of duty and danger and the man standing ten feet behind me who I wanted more than I'd ever wanted anything.
Peace. Just for a moment. Just this breath between heartbeats where nothing existed except music and darkness and the brief illusion of safety.
Then Viktor moved.
I felt it more than saw it. The sudden shift in the air. The change in his breathing. My eyes snapped open.
He was already moving, weaving through the darkness at the back of the box with purpose, heading for the corridor beyond. Every line of his body screamed threat.
That's when I heard it.
The first shot was nearly silent. Suppressed. Professional. The kind of sound you'd miss if you weren't listening for it.
The spotlight above the stage shattered.
Glass rained down on the performers. The soprano's voice cut off mid-note, replaced by screaming.
People surged out of their seats, shoving toward exits that were suddenly too far away. Another shot cracked through the air, louder this time. Someone in the crowd went down. Blood sprayed across white marble like paint.
I was moving before I could think. Out of the box. Toward the stage. Toward Viktor.
Toward the fight.
The backstage corridors reeked of smoke and fear. Emergency lights flickered red, painting everything in hellish shadows. People ran past me, staff and performers fleeing for the exits, hair and costumes trailing like ragged banners. The air tasted of gunpowder and perfume and something metallic that clung to my tongue.
I pushed against the current without a plan.
“Sebastian!”
Viktor's voice cut through the noise. I turned, found him twenty feet away, gun drawn, eyes hard and wild when they landed on me.
Three gunmen rounded the corner behind him, black tactical gear, faces masked, moving with a military rhythm that spoke of planning and payment. They were professionals, not amateurs. They spread like a pincer, two sweeping wide, one closing the gap.
I did not hesitate. A scream somewhere ahead split the corridor; a woman stumbled and went down, clutching her throat. Instinct took over. I should have been terrified. Instead, my muscles recognized a shape they had lived in for years. I found the nearest assailant mid-stride and met him with my shoulder. The slap of flesh against rib and bone sounded cruel and honest. He staggered, surprise cracking his mask.
Viktor fired. The report was a thunderclap in the corridor. Muzzle flash licked the near wall. A man dropped, the sound of weight hitting concrete like a curtain falling. Viktor moved with the brutal precision I had come to trust. He covered the angles I could not see, collapsing threats with cold, methodical shots.
I moved with a different rhythm. My hands were small weapons. I ducked under an armpit, wrenched at a wrist until the gun pointed somewhere useless. I drove my knee into a liver and felt the breath leave a man's body like a rag being wrung. I grabbed a length of cable from the wall, wrapped it around an opponent's throat, hoisted him into the air, and let the others see that violence could be improvisation as much as training.
We fell into each other like two pieces of a puzzle. Viktor slid to my left and checked the corridor behind us, gun sweeping, eyes carving through smoke. I pivoted, ducked, met a charging man head-on and used his momentum to throw him into the third attacker. Steel met skull. A flash of pain licked my forearm where a knife grazed me. Blood welled quick and hot. I tasted iron and grinned.
“Too many,” Viktor said between shots. He was breathless but controlled, firing single, measured rounds that punched through jackets and bone. He did not waste motion. He was a machine wrapped in a man's skin, and I loved him for that.
“Not for us,” I snarled, and then my fist closed around a man's jaw. I didn't think. I acted. My knuckles smashed cartilage. The man reeled, hands flying, and I shoved him into a cable trunk. He hit with the sound of something breaking.
One attacker lunged with a knife. I caught his wrist in a clinch, thumb finding the soft hollow beneath his thumb, the pressure point Viktor had taught me in the training yard. I twisted, felt tendon and intent snap into a scream, then used the freed hand to strike the man behind him. Fight was choreography, practiced and raw. We fitted into that rhythm—Viktor at long range, clearing sightlines with gunfire, me inside the arc where bullets could not breathe.
A burst of a rifle on my right threw plaster dust into my face. I coughed, spat grit, and rolled toward cover behind a stacked set piece. Viktor was moving like a tide, pulling down threats that tried to flank us. When he reloaded, fingers quick and sure, he did not look away from me. Not once.
I stepped out and met a man charging from the left. No weapon in his hands, just drunken, vicious intention. We grappled. He had weight on his side, muscle on his arms, but I had speed. I sidestepped, looped my leg around his, and used his forward force to pitch him over into a row of folding chairs. He hit hard. The sound of his breath slamming into his lungs made something in me hum with frightening satisfaction.
Viktor fired twice, each shot measured, and two more men hit the concrete. Blood painted the tiles with dark intention. The smoke stung my eyes and burned my nose. Sweat slicked my palms. In the edge of my vision Viktor moved like a shadow shifting to shield me. He fired, tucked his body, moved. I answered with teeth and bone. A man tried to rise, saw Viktor level his gun, and stopped halfway like a marionette with its strings cut.
Another attacker charged, this one reckless and wild. I took his arm and twisted until he dropped the pistol. It skittered across the floor. Without thinking I grabbed it, felt its cold weight and the danger of it, and used it as a bludgeon. The butt cracked across a temple. He went down.
Viktor's breath hit my ear as he moved past me, his hand briefly skimming my lower back to push me forward. That small contact was all. It was enough. We were a single unit: his precision and my improvisation, his fire and my fists. We cleaned a path forward, leaving a wake of motion and the quiet gasping of men who had underestimated us.
“Left!” A shout from deeper in the corridor. New movement. Reinforcements. Professionals sniffing out where the prince had fled.
“Cover!” Viktor barked. He planted both feet, weapon shoulder-high, and began a steady sweep. He fired through an open doorway and a man crumpled like a rag. The sound of a rifle bite tore through the corridor and our pace shifted. We had to move faster.
I ducked into a side room and found a collapsed stage prop, a painted pillar. I grabbed it like a staff and swung, driving the wood into a man's knee. The crack of bone was ugly and perfect. He tried to grab me and I slipped, palms finding his throat, pressure until his eyes rolled. He went still.
Viktor was on me then, moving with me, guiding me through exits and into the maze of service tunnels. His boot found mine under a pipe and he used the touch to slide me around a corner, his body briefly covering mine. We moved in tight, breathing the same air. No words. Only the economy of touch that made so much more sense than language.
“How many are left?” I asked when we had a moment, voice low and rough.
“Enough,” Viktor said. He did not give numbers. Numbers were useless in the middle of a slaughter. He took the next corner with the calculated calm of a man who had rehearsed this geometry more than once.
We ducked into a utility closet and slammed the metal door, breathing heavy in sudden, shared quiet. I pressed my back to the cold metal and tried to feel the pieces of myself that stayed whole in violence. Viktor lowered his gun and looked at me. The red light made his eyes silver. He had a cut at his temple I had not seen take shape. A thin line of blood glinted there. His hands were shaking just a fraction.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Da,” he lied because of course he lied as always. Then his mouth tightened and he added, “Almost.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to curl my fingers in his hair and pull his head down and kiss him like the world was ending and maybe it was. Instead I tore off a strip of my cuff and tied it around his wound. My hands were steady. He did not flinch. He watched me with a wariness that made my chest ache.
“We should move,” he said, voice steady again.
We did not wait for permission. We pushed the door just enough to peek. The corridor was a chaos of bodies and smoke, the emergency lights making everything look like a bad dream. We timed it between two sweeps of enemy fire and bolted. Viktor firing to clear the way, me taking out anyone who made the mistake of looking at me wrong. I flipped off a railing, landed on my feet, and used a stunned guard as a shield while Viktor used a pistol grip to pound the man's head. The sound was the sound of survival.
We hit a door that led to a freight passage. It opened into the alley behind the opera house. Cold air slammed into us, clean and full of rain. For an instant we were exposed; camera flashes from the red carpet area lit us up like a tableau. A cluster of attackers hung back by the loading bays as if waiting for us to fall into a trap.
Viktor did not hesitate. He took cover behind a delivery crate, fingers working the magazine with a mechanic's patience, eyes scanning. I moved into the open and baited, throwing my weight forward. They fired. Viktor drew a bead and answered, single shots that found seams between shoulder and jacket, between threat and life. Men went down. One staggered toward me, hands flailing, and I met him with a forearm across his throat and a knee into his chin. He choked and slid off my hands.
Sirens wailed closer. Voices echoed down the corridor. The world was catching up, dragging us back to reality, to consequences, to all the lies we'd have to tell about what happened here.
“Come on. Let's get out of here before they trap us in interviews.”
Viktor followed, gun still drawn, eyes still scanning shadows. Always protecting. Always watching.
Always there.
We burst through the loading dock doors into cool night air that tasted like rain and smoke. Emergency vehicles blocked the street, lights flashing red and blue against wet pavement. Officers swarmed the building, securing perimeters, establishing control.
And standing in the middle of it all, perfectly composed despite the chaos, was Marcel.
He saw us immediately. Smiled.
“Your Highness!” He called out, loud enough to draw attention. “Thank god you're safe!”
Press cameras swiveled toward us like weapons. Flashbulbs exploded. A dozen lenses captured the moment: Viktor's hand on my back, protective and possessive. Blood streaking both our faces. The way we stood too close, like we couldn't help it.
Evidence. Ammunition. Scandal waiting to be born.
Marcel's smile widened, satisfied and sharp.
I felt Viktor tense beside me. Felt him start to pull away, to create distance, to rebuild the walls we'd torn down tonight.
I grabbed his wrist. Held him there.
“Your Highness, can you comment on tonight's attack?”
“Was this another assassination attempt?”
“Mr. Volkov, how did you know where the shooters would be?”
I stepped forward a fraction, cleared my throat, and let the practiced smile fold into place — the one the palace press office liked for photographs. The world wanted soundbites; I gave them the safest ones.
“Tonight was a terrifying reminder that violence has no place in our city,” I said, voice steady and loud enough to carry over the din. “I am grateful to the emergency services and the police who arrived so quickly. My thoughts are with those injured and their families. We are cooperating fully with the authorities as they investigate.”
A microphone dipped closer. “Can you confirm there was a coordinated attempt on your life, Your Highness?”
“We will leave operational details to the investigators and the palace security team,” I replied. “Speculation does not help the wounded or the officers doing their jobs. What I can say is that I am safe, and I am thankful for the swift actions of those who protected people tonight.”
“Mr. Volkov—”
I let a beat hang there, then added the part they'd want but that sounded carefully contained. “I would like to publicly thank Mr. Volkov and the palace security detail for their courage. Their professionalism saved lives. Beyond that, there will be a full briefing once facts have been established.”
“Will you change your public appearances?” a reporter pressed.
