Obsidian (The Sentinel Code #1)

Prologue The Night of Falling Crowns

THE NIGHT OF FALLING CROWNS

SEBASTIAN

Eighteen Years Ago…

Rain hammered the windows like bullets.

I pressed my face against the glass, watching London blur into smears of gold and gray.

The city looked soft through the downpour, almost gentle.

Street lamps pooled on wet pavement, haloed and distant.

Protest signs wilted in doorways, their angry red letters bleeding into the concrete.

Somewhere out there, people were shouting about reform and revolution, waving banners that called for the end of everything my family represented.

But inside the royal motorcade, all I heard was the hum of the engine and my mother's voice.

She was humming again. Her hand rested on mine, warm and steady, anchoring me to something real while everything outside moved too fast. Her thumb traced circles over my knuckles, a rhythm I'd memorized years ago.

“You're restless tonight,” she said softly, not stopping her song.

I shrugged, fidgeting with the wooden toy in my lap.

A little archer she'd carved for me last winter, bow drawn, forever aiming at nothing.

The paint was chipping off his tunic where I'd rubbed it too many times.

Green turning to bare wood. I'd carried him everywhere for months, stuck him in my pocket during state dinners and official portraits, pulled him out when the palace felt too big and too quiet.

“Just tired of sitting still.”

She laughed, quiet and knowing. The sound wrapped around me like the blankets she used to tuck me into before the tutors decided I was too old for that. “My little storm.”

I wanted to tell her I wasn't little anymore. That thirteen was practically grown. That I could handle whatever was waiting out there in the rain-soaked streets. But her fingers tightened on mine, just slightly, and I kept my mouth shut.

Up front, my father's voice cut through the calm. Sharp. Clipped. He was on the phone again, jaw tight, one hand braced against the seat like he was holding the whole car upright through sheer will. Even from the back, I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his spine had gone rigid.

“I don't care what the advisors say,” he snapped into the phone. “Double the security on the north routes. If Marcel thinks we can just ignore the intelligence reports—”

He stopped. Listened. His knuckles went white around the phone.

I watched his reflection in the rearview mirror, fractured by raindrops sliding down the glass. The way his eyes narrowed. The way he looked older suddenly, carved out of something harder than flesh. Like the crown had finally started to weigh on his skull the way it was supposed to.

“Routes changed,” he muttered, voice dropping low. “Threats confirmed. Multiple targets.”

My mother's humming faltered. Just for a second. A single missed note in the melody. Then she picked it back up, softer now, but her grip on my hand tightened until I could feel her pulse against my wrist. Quick. Too quick.

“Alexandre,” she said quietly. Just his name. But it carried weight.

“It's fine,” he answered without turning around. “Protocol. Nothing more.”

She didn't believe him. I could tell by the way her breathing changed, shallow and controlled, like she was preparing for something she didn't want to name.

Thunder rolled overhead, deep and angry, vibrating through the car's frame. I counted the seconds until the lightning would follow, the way she'd taught me when I was small and afraid of storms. One. Two. Three—

A sharp crack split the air.

Not thunder.

Too clean. Too precise. Too wrong.

The driver's head snapped forward. His hands jerked on the wheel, sudden and violent. The car lurched left, tires screaming against wet asphalt, and my mother threw her arm across my chest, pinning me back against the seat hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.

“Get down,” she hissed. Not a suggestion. A command.

Another crack. Then another. The windshield spiderwebbed, glass blooming outward in fractures that caught the streetlights like spilled diamonds.

Beautiful and deadly. The driver slumped sideways, and someone in the front passenger seat lunged for the wheel, shouting something I couldn't hear over the shriek of metal and rubber.

“Ambush!” The voice came through the radio, crackling with static and panic. A guard. Maybe two. Voices overlapping, trying to stay professional while the world came apart. “We're taking fire! North and east positions compromised! Repeat, we are compromised!”

The car jolted hard, slamming into something.

A barricade, maybe. Or another vehicle. The impact threw me sideways into my mother's ribs despite her arm holding me down.

The wooden archer tumbled from my lap, hitting the floor with a soft crack that I felt more than heard.

His little crown snapped off. Rolled under the seat into shadow.

Gone.

My father roared something I couldn't make out over the chaos.

He was moving already, shoving open his door even as the car was still skidding sideways, even as bullets punched through metal and glass like the universe was trying to tear us apart one hole at a time.

Cold air and rain rushed in, bringing the smell of smoke and burning rubber.

Outside, shadows moved.

Men. Armed. Faces hidden behind masks and hoods, dark fabric slick with rain. They came out of the alleys like smoke, like they'd been waiting there all along, patient and hungry. How long had they been watching? How long had they known our route?

The convoy shattered. Cars screeched to a halt, spinning out on wet pavement. Doors flung open. Guards spilled out, weapons drawn, shouting orders that nobody could follow because there were too many attackers and not enough time and everything was happening at once.

My mother shoved me down beneath her, her body a shield I didn't ask for but couldn't refuse.

Her heartbeat thundered against my ear, fast and fierce and alive.

I smelled her perfume beneath the smoke and oil, lavender and something else I couldn't name.

Something metallic crept in underneath, sharp and wrong, making my stomach twist.

“Stay down,” she whispered against my hair. “Don't move. Don't look.”

But I looked.

Through the gap between the seats, I saw my father drag a sidearm from a fallen guard's holster.

Saw him brace against the car door and fire into the chaos, three shots in quick succession.

Each muzzle flash lit his face in sharp, violent bursts.

He looked like something carved from stone and fury, nothing soft left in him.

Nothing that resembled the man who'd read me bedtime stories when I was small.

An assassin vaulted over the hood of our car, boots hitting metal with a hollow thud.

He landed in a crouch, masked and drenched and screaming words I didn't understand.

Foreign. Guttural. Promises or threats or prayers, I couldn't tell.

His coat whipped around him, and something metallic glinted in his hand.

My father shot him twice. Center mass. The man went down hard, crumpling like his strings had been cut.

But there were more.

Always more.

They came from everywhere, pouring out of doorways and from behind overturned cars, and I realized with cold certainty that this wasn't random. This was planned. Coordinated. Someone had known exactly where we'd be.

My mother shifted above me, and I felt her flinch. Heard the small, sharp intake of breath. Something wet and warm dripped onto my shoulder, soaking through my shirt.

“Maman?” My voice cracked, too small, too young. The word felt childish in my mouth, but I couldn't stop it.

“I'm fine,” she lied. Her voice was steady, but I felt her body trembling. “Stay still, mon étoile. Don't move.”

She wasn't fine.

I could feel the blood now, hot against my skin, spreading across my shoulder blade.

She pushed herself up despite it, one hand pressed to her shoulder where the fabric had darkened, wet and gleaming.

Her face was pale, jaw set, eyes burning with something I'd never seen before. Not fear. Rage. Pure and incandescent.

She grabbed me by the collar with her good hand and shoved me toward the far door, away from the fighting. “Go. Now.”

“I'm not leaving you—”

“Go, Sebastian.” She said my full name. She never said my full name unless she meant it. “You go, and you don't look back. You hear me? You don't look back.”

Another explosion rocked the street, the shockwave rattling my teeth.

Fire bloomed somewhere behind us, orange and roaring, climbing into the night sky and swallowing the rain.

Heat washed over us. Debris rained down, metal and glass and something that might've been a door panel, clattering against the pavement like hail.

Guards pulled at me, hands rough and desperate, dragging me away from my mother even as I twisted and kicked and screamed her name until my throat went raw. I clawed at their arms, trying to break free, but they were stronger and I was thirteen and small and useless.

She was already turning back toward the fight.

My father took a bolt to the ribs. I saw it happen.

Saw him stagger, saw the arrow shaft jutting from his side just below his vest, dark wood slick with rain and blood.

He roared, more animal than man, and tackled an attacker with his bare hands.

They went down in a tangle of limbs and blades, rolling across the wet pavement.

My father's fist connected with the man's jaw once, twice, and then a knife flashed and I couldn't see who was bleeding anymore.

I broke free from the guards. I don't know how. Adrenaline, maybe. Desperation. Terror so sharp it gave me strength I didn't know I had. I hit the ground hard, palms scraping asphalt, skin tearing, and crawled toward my mother through the smoke and chaos. Glass cut into my knees. I didn't care.