Chapter 5 The King’s Request #2
“He will test your lines,” the King said, pulling himself back from wherever memory had taken him.
“He does not test them to be cruel. He tests them to be sure they are real.
That you mean what you say. That you won't break the first time he pushes.” He turned to look at me directly.
“Establish your perimeter on day one and make it humane. If you humiliate him, you lose him. If you indulge him, you lose him. Find the middle ground and hold it like your life depends on it. Because his does.”
“Understood.”
“Give him work,” the King added. “Real work, not busywork. He is safest when he has purpose. It keeps him from the places he should not go.”
Below us, the cook appeared at the terrace door with a tray and a warning about wet grass.
Sebastian promised to wipe his shoes and stole a biscuit anyway, grinning like a thief who knew he'd get away with it.
Apollo sat with perfect posture and waited to be blessed with crumbs.
He got them. He deserved them. The gardener pretended not to notice the contraband and slipped a piece of apple to the dog when the cook glared, conspirators in the gentle crime of spoiling a prince's dog.
I watched the scene and felt something shift in my chest. Not the old sharp thing that liked to cut.
Something slower. Heavier. The line of Sebastian's throat when he laughed.
The way he looked people in the face when they spoke, rank be damned.
The ease of it. The lack of calculation.
It had weight I hadn't expected. Gravity I didn't want to feel.
I pulled my attention back where it belonged.
“Your son is good at making allies,” I said.
“He is better at making enemies.” The King's voice carried the particular weariness of a father who'd spent years watching his son walk tightropes without nets. “The former will help keep the latter from killing him. At least, that is what I tell myself when I cannot sleep.”
He set his palms on the stone balustrade and leaned out the smallest degree. Rain marked his sleeves. He didn't care.
“You will have authority to override my household staff,” he said.
“Not over my son in public. I reserve that authority for myself, for whatever good it does me. He listens about as well as his mother did, which is to say not at all.” Fondness bled through the words.
“If you must move him in public to save his life, do it without asking permission. Save him first. Apologize later. Then tell me after so I can decide whether to thank you or have you arrested for putting your hands on my son.”
He was joking. Mostly.
“Understood.”
Sebastian was on the gravel now, tossing the rope for Apollo with mock solemnity like a priest offering benediction.
Apollo charged, skidded, nearly took out a flower bed, recovered like all good soldiers do when their commanding officer is watching.
Sebastian praised the dog in French and English and a nonsense third language that was mostly affection and exaggerated vowels.
The housemaids clapped. The boy from maintenance watched him like he'd just been taught a magic trick and couldn't wait to try it himself.
This wasn't the prince who had smiled for cameras. This was the person who lived under the headlines. I felt the pull of it and recognized the danger in equal measure. Wanting to protect someone was part of the job. Wanting to know them was something else entirely.
“Dinner at seven,” the King said, breaking the moment.
“East dining hall. You will shadow him and walk him back to his rooms after.
He will try to lose you on the stairs because he thinks it's funny.
Do not let him. Before that, meet Detective Chief Inspector Reuben Akintola in the south anteroom.
He is waiting. You will align protocols, not posture for jurisdiction.
I don't care whose jurisdiction a threat falls under as long as my son survives it.”
“I can do that.”
The King took a slim phone from his pocket and tapped a message. It pinged a reply within seconds. He showed me the screen. Akintola's initials. A room number. Ten minutes.
“Last thing.” The King's voice dropped lower.
Heavier. “Do not let him be alone. He thinks solitude is strength.
He thinks he can handle the darkness by himself because he's been doing it for eighteen years.” His hands tightened on the stone.
“It is the door the dark likes best. The one we leave open because we don't realize how wide it's gotten until someone we love disappears through it.”
“I hear you,” I said.
He nodded once, sharp and final, and left me with the rain. The courtyard blurred into watercolor and the staff made a small village around a prince and a golden dog who didn't know he was supposed to be afraid. I didn't allow the scene to live in me longer than a breath.
Work first. Feeling later. Maybe never.
I took the service stair down one level and crossed to the south anteroom.
It was a quiet space dressed like a waiting room, all polished wood and a table with cold tea that no one had bothered to clear.
Akintola stood by the window with a small notebook in one hand.
He turned when I entered, eyes steady, mind already on the next move.
“Mr. Volkov.”
“Detective Chief Inspector.”
We had met in rooms that smelled like cordite and damp concrete.
Once on a Tasking Board at Vauxhall when bureaucrats pretended to know what happened in the field.
Once at a hospital corridor when a witness decided not to die and we both decided not to ask too many questions about why.
We weren't friends. We were functional. It had worked then. It would work now.
He offered a hand. I took it. Firm. Clean. No games.
“I appreciate the palace arranging this,” he said. “Saves me from arguing with three different private security gods before breakfast. Territoriality is exhausting before coffee.”
“I am only a man,” I said. “But I can be useful.”
A small line at the corner of his mouth. The closest he gave to a smile on duty. He flipped his notebook open.
“All right. First, comms. I will put your team on a dedicated channel that mirrors our citywide frequency during active incidents. You will listen with receive priority. You will speak on it only when you must. I do not want the entire Met to hear palace movements unless they need to know. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Second, evidence. If your people touch a scene, they document it with body cam and upload to a secure bucket. I will give you a one-way drop. Chain of custody lives or dies on habits. We keep it alive.”
“Understood.”
“Third, crowds. Your extraction routes are your choice. If you move the prince, you text my liaison two words: 'Phoenix moving.' Time stamp. Direction if possible. We adjust our units in the area and clear what we can. No heroics. No mystery tours. Clarity beats style every single time.”
“Agreed.”
He wrote three tick marks. Then he closed the notebook and looked at me in a way that had weight. The kind of look that said we were done with official business and about to start the real conversation.
“Now the part that is not on paper,” he said. “Belmont.”
I held his gaze. “You have my attention.”
“I am going to ask you a question you will not answer,” he said, voice low enough that any listening devices would have to work for it. “Not for me. Not in this room. Did you have anything to do with the Belmont warehouse incident last night?”
“No.”
We stood in the quiet with that single syllable between us. He studied my face like he was reading a document in a language he'd learned but didn't quite trust. Then nodded once. He believed me, or he believed I wouldn't lie foolishly enough to get caught in two words. Either way, we moved forward.
“Someone with training was there,” he said.
“Not a boy with a fantasy or a thug with a grudge. My people found arrow shafts where they should not be and where they would be if the shooter understood angles. Trajectories. Kill shots versus warning shots.” He paused.
“Whoever it was contaminated my scene, which is a rage I do not have time to indulge.”
“You think it is the same actor as last month.”
“I think it is a person who believes he is necessary.” He glanced at the closed door, then back at me. “This city will forgive a martyr if he bleeds pretty enough for the cameras. It will not forgive a prince dead on the pavement. I need you to understand that distinction.”
“I am aware.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I know your background, Viktor. I know you can hunt and not be seen. If you decide to hunt here, tell me first. If you discover who is hunting, tell me immediately. I do not care how important he believes he is. I care how many funerals I have to attend in dress uniform.”
“I am not your problem,” I said.
“Today you are my solution,” he said. “Accept the compliment.”
He took out a printed sheet and slid it across the table. A short list. Rally permits. Names of organizers. Two whispers about off-book gatherings that smelled wrong, the kind of wrong that ended with ambulances and riot gear.
“Reform Coalition,” he said. “Publicly, they are slogans and leaflets and university students who think revolution means posting on social media.
Privately, a few of them are guns and pipes and people who've decided democracy takes too long. I do not confuse the two. Your prince should not either. Keep him at the line where speech is still speech. Do not let him wander across when it becomes theater for violence.”
“He will test the line.”
“Then make it a wall,” he said. “A polite one if you can manage it. A brick one if you cannot.”
He gave me a card with a number written in pen. “My mobile. Direct line. If a handler answers and it is not me, use the phrase 'blue corridor' and hang up. I will call you back within two minutes. If I do not, assume I am in a situation and act with your best judgment.”
“Understood.”
His phone buzzed. He checked it, thumbed a reply with the speed of someone who lived on their device, slid it away.
“One more thing,” he said. “You will see pressure from inside these walls to handle things quietly. To make problems disappear before they become headlines. My job is to stop bad stories from becoming bodies. I will not sell a headline for a corpse. If you are asked to compromise a scene or silence a witness, you tell me.”
“I do not compromise scenes,” I said.
“I know,” he said, and for a moment there was something like respect in the words. “Which is why we are having this conversation and not a different one involving lawyers and uncomfortable questions.”
He picked up the notebook again, flipped to a clean page, wrote nothing, and set the pencil on the spine. A ritual. The closing of official business.
“Are we clear?”
“We are.”
He held my eyes for a heartbeat longer. It felt like two men checking the edges of a bridge they were both going to have to use, making sure the foundations would hold weight.
“Good,” he said. “Then let us keep your principal breathing and my crime scenes clean. In that order.”
He extended his hand. I took it. We left the anteroom together and split at the corridor, him toward the service exit and the city that never stopped trying to kill people, me back into the palace where marble made everything sound important even when it wasn't.
On the way to my next sweep I passed the terrace doors.
Rain sketched silver across the courtyard.
Apollo trotted under the eaves with a rope in his mouth and the prince at his shoulder, listening to a maid tell a story with her hands.
Sebastian laughed at something, head thrown back, completely unguarded.
I didn't stop. Didn't let the scene slow me.
Protocols were set. Lanes were agreed. The city would do what cities did.
Men with forums would promise the dark they were coming.
A detective would wait with patient anger.
A king would count the hours until dinner and hope his son survived another day.
A prince would make a village in a courtyard with a dog and a smile that didn't look practiced because it wasn't.