Chapter 1 Prince #2
I approached from the south side, using the shadows and the rain for cover. The perimeter was weak. Two guards outside, smoking and bitching about the weather. Both armed with pistols, holstered. Not expecting trouble.
Amateurs.
I scaled the fire escape on the building next door, boots finding purchase on slick metal rungs. The roof gave me a vantage point. I crouched low at the edge, scanning the warehouse through the broken skylight.
Eight men inside. Maybe nine. Hard to tell with all the crates stacked up like a maze. They were unloading something from a truck, moving fast, working in pairs. Military rhythm. These weren't amateurs.
I caught a glimpse of what they were handling.
Assault rifles. Military-grade, from the look of them. Stamped with Cyrillic letters I couldn't read from this distance but recognized from intelligence briefs I'd stolen from my father's study.
One of the men laughed, his voice carrying up through the broken glass. “Double shipment next week. Boss says the rally's going to get bloody.”
Another voice, deeper. “About damn time. Tired of waiting around while these royals piss on us from their palaces.”
My jaw clenched.
They were planning something. Something big. Something that would end with blood on London streets and my father standing over more bodies, making speeches about unity while people burned.
Not tonight.
Not on my watch.
I drew an arrow, nocking it smooth and silent. The bowstring creaked, a sound I'd memorized, a sound that felt like home. I sighted down the shaft, compensating for wind and rain and the angle. The man closest to the truck had his back to me, rifle slung over his shoulder.
Armed. Dangerous. Planning to kill people.
Fair game.
I released.
The arrow punched through his spine between the shoulder blades. He dropped without a sound, crumpling like his strings had been cut. The rifle clattered to the concrete.
The warehouse erupted.
“Shit! We're under attack!”
“Where? Where is he?”
“Find him! Now!”
I was already moving. Drew. Aimed. Released. Another man went down with an arrow through his throat. Blood sprayed across the crates, dark and arterial. He clutched at the shaft, gurgling, and collapsed.
Two down.
I dropped through the skylight, boots hitting the top of a crate with a dull thud.
Glass rained around me. Someone shouted.
I was already drawing again, spinning, firing.
The arrow caught a man in the chest as he raised his rifle.
He fired wild, bullets stitching across the ceiling, and then he was down.
Three.
I vaulted off the crate, rolling as I landed. Bullets tore through the space where I'd been standing, splinters exploding from the wood. I came up in a crouch behind a metal support beam, breathing steady, heartbeat calm.
This was the part I was good at.
The part where everything else fell away and it was just me and the bow and the people who needed to die.
I counted their positions by sound. Footsteps to my left. Heavy breathing behind the crates to my right. Someone trying to flank me from the far side, boots scraping on concrete.
I pivoted, drew, and put an arrow through the flanker's knee.
He screamed, high and sharp, dropping his weapon.
I was already moving, closing the distance.
Drew the knife from my shoulder holster and drove it up under his ribs.
Felt it punch through muscle and cartilage, felt his breath leave him in a hot rush against my face.
Four.
His body hit the ground, and I was already spinning toward the next target. A man burst from behind the crates, knife in hand, face twisted with rage. He was fast. Trained. He slashed at my throat, and I barely got my arm up in time to block.
The blade scraped across the carbon fiber on my forearm, sparking. I slammed my forehead into his nose. Felt it crunch. He staggered back, and I drove my knee into his gut, then grabbed his knife hand and twisted. Bones snapped. He screamed.
I ripped the knife from his grip and buried it in his throat.
Five.
The others were regrouping. I could hear them shouting, coordinating. Three left, maybe four. I needed better positioning.
I grabbed the dead man's rifle and sprinted toward a stack of crates near the back wall, bullets chasing me. Wood exploded. Metal pinged. I dove behind cover and came up firing.
The rifle kicked against my shoulder, familiar and brutal. Three-round bursts. Center mass. One man dropped. Then another. The third took cover behind the truck.
I dropped the rifle and drew my bow again.
This was what I'd come for.
“Come out,” I called, voice echoing through the warehouse. “Make it easy.”
“Go to hell!” The voice came from behind the truck. Terrified. Young. Stupid.
“You first.”
I fired blind, arcing the arrow high. It came down at a steep angle, punching through the truck's roof and into the man hiding beneath. I heard him scream. Heard him thrashing.
Then silence.
One left.
I waited, bow drawn, scanning the shadows. The last man would either run or fight. Most ran. This one didn't.
He came at me from the side, pistol raised, finger already squeezing the trigger. I dropped and rolled as the shot went wide. Came up inside his guard. Grabbed his wrist and twisted, forcing the gun toward the ceiling. He fired again. Again. The slide locked back, empty.
I stared at him through the shadow of my hood.
“You have no idea who you're dealing with,” he spat. Blood on his teeth. Fear in his eyes.
“Neither do you.”
I swept his legs and slammed him into the concrete. Drove my knee into his chest, pinning him. Drew an arrow and pressed the obsidian tip against his throat, just hard enough to draw blood.
“Who's running the shipments?”
“I don't know.”
I pressed harder. “Wrong answer.”
“I swear! I just move the crates. They don't tell us anything.”
“Then you're useless.”
I stared down at him. At his terrified face. At the way his hands shook. He was maybe twenty-five. Maybe younger. Somebody's son. Somebody's brother.
He lunged.
Faster than I expected. His shoulder drove into my ribs, knocking the bow from my hands. We hit the ground hard, rolling across broken glass and spent shell casings. He was on top of me, fist connecting with my jaw, and stars exploded across my vision.
I tasted copper.
He hit me again. Then again. Each blow rattled my skull, and I realized through the haze that this one was trained. Military, maybe. Or someone who'd learned to fight in places where losing meant dying.
His hands found my throat, squeezing.
I drove my knee up between his legs. He grunted, grip loosening, and I twisted my hips, throwing him off. Scrambled to my feet as he did the same. We circled each other, both breathing hard, both bleeding.
He pulled a knife from his belt. Eight inches of serrated steel.
“Come on,” he growled.
I drew mine.
He came at me fast, slashing high. I ducked under it, felt the blade whistle past my ear. Countered with a strike at his ribs. He blocked with his forearm, twisted, and drove his elbow into my temple.
My vision blurred. I staggered back, barely getting my knife up in time to parry his next strike. Metal screeched against metal. He was stronger than me, heavier, using his weight to drive me back against the crates.
His blade scraped across my shoulder, cutting through fabric and skin. Heat bloomed, sharp and immediate.
I snarled and slammed my forehead into his nose. Felt cartilage crunch. Blood sprayed across both our faces. He roared, stumbling back, and I didn't give him time to recover. Kicked his knee, heard something pop. He went down.
I was on him before he hit the concrete. Kicked the knife from his hand. Dropped my own and grabbed my bow from where it had fallen. Drew an arrow in one fluid motion and pressed the obsidian tip against his throat.
He froze. Eyes wild. Chest heaving.
“The city takes back what it's owed,” I said quietly.
I shifted the angle and drove the arrow through his shoulder, pinning him to the wooden pallet behind him. He screamed, raw and animal, thrashing against the shaft.
But he wasn't going anywhere.
Police sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer. I moved fast, pulling arrows from bodies where I could, leaving the ones too embedded to retrieve. I grabbed a rag from one of the crates and wiped down the rifle I'd used, then tossed it onto the pile of corpses.
Let them think it was gang violence. Rival traffickers. Anything but the truth.
I vaulted back up the crates, climbing toward the skylight. Rain poured through the opening, washing the blood from my gloves. I could hear voices outside now. Police. Shouting orders.
I pulled myself through the skylight and onto the roof, then sprinted across the slick surface. Jumped the gap to the next building. Then the next. Putting distance between me and the carnage.
By the time the police breached the warehouse, I was six blocks away, standing on a rooftop overlooking the Thames. The rain had soaked through my coat, plastering my hair to my skull. I pulled off the hood and sucked in air, letting the cold bite into my lungs.
My hands were shaking now. Adrenaline crash. It happened every time.
I stared at my reflection in a puddle at my feet. Blood on my jaw. Rain in my eyes. The same boy who'd knelt beside his mother's body eighteen years ago, now unrecognizable.
“Be more than this,” she'd said.
I laughed. Sharp and bitter and swallowed by the storm.
Sorry, Maman.
This is all I know how to be.
I turned away from the reflection and climbed down the fire escape. The bike was where I'd left it, engine cold but ready. I stowed the bow, stripped off the bloodied gloves, and pulled on clean ones from the storage compartment.
The ride back to the palace was slower. Quieter. The rain kept falling. The city kept breathing. And I kept moving because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant drowning.
So I didn't stop.
Not until the palace gates closed behind me and I was back in the hidden garage, stripping off the gear and locking the bow away. Not until I'd climbed the servant stairs and slipped back into my quarters, the door clicking shut with a finality that felt like a prison sentence.
Apollo was waiting. He padded over, tail wagging, and pressed his nose into my hand. I sank to the floor and hugged him, burying my face in his fur. He smelled like home. Like safety. Like everything the rest of the world wasn't.
“You're the only one who'd still wait up for me,” I whispered.
He licked my cheek, and I felt something crack open in my chest. Something raw and bleeding that I'd been keeping locked down for eighteen years.