Chapter 8 The Night Beneath the Cross
THE NIGHT BENEATH THE CROSS
SEBASTIAN
I'd been lying in bed for three hours, staring at the ceiling, watching shadows from the rain-streaked windows crawl across the plaster like living things.
My mind kept circling back to the chandelier.
To Viktor's hand fisted in my jacket. To the weight of him covering me, protecting me without hesitation.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to logic my way out of this.
It was just novelty. That's all. Viktor was different from the parade of guards who'd come before him.
Different from the nobles who fawned. Different from the staff who bowed.
He looked at me and saw a job. A variable. A liability to be managed.
That should've been insulting.
Instead, it felt like the first honest thing anyone had offered me in years.
But it was more than that, and I knew it.
Knew it in the way my pulse had kicked when his hand had covered mine in the workshop.
In the way I'd caught myself watching him during the meeting, tracking his movements like they mattered.
In the warmth that had bloomed in my chest when he'd thrown himself between me and death without a second's hesitation.
Like I mattered.
Not the crown. Not the title. Me.
I sat up, chest tight, breathing harder than I should've been. This was dangerous. This feeling. This pull toward someone who was paid to be there, who'd leave the moment the contract ended, who probably saw me as nothing more than a pampered prince playing at rebellion.
I'd worked too hard to let my guard down now. Had spent eighteen years making sure no one got close enough to hurt me the way my mother's death had hurt. Had turned myself into something sharp and untouchable because soft things broke and I refused to break again.
But Viktor made it hard.
The clock on my nightstand read half past eleven. The palace had settled into its nighttime rhythm. Distant conversations from guards changing shifts. The creak of old wood. The whisper of rain against stone.
And somewhere in this maze of corridors, Viktor was probably doing another patrol he didn't need to do, maintaining distance I suddenly wanted to close even though I knew better.
Even though I knew that wanting was weakness. That caring was a knife you handed to someone and hoped they wouldn't use.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars.
This was why I needed to go out tonight. Needed to move. To hunt. To pour all this restless, dangerous energy into something that made sense. Arrow and target. Predator and prey. Violence I could control instead of feelings I couldn't.
Viktor would be furious if he found out. Would probably make good on his threat to tell my father. Would look at me with that cold disappointment that somehow hurt more than anger.
Apollo lifted his head from where he was sprawled at the foot of my bed, ears perked.
“Can't sleep either?” I asked him.
His tail thumped once against the duvet.
I stood, pacing to the window. Lightning split the horizon, turning London into a photograph of itself. Thunder followed, rattling the gold frames that caged my entire life.
I needed to move. Needed to do something other than lie here drowning in thoughts I couldn't control. The palace felt suffocating tonight. Too quiet. Too still. Like it was holding its breath waiting for something to break.
I made the decision without really making it. Just turned from the window and started moving.
I moved to my door first, pressing my ear against the wood. Stone was cold against my cheek. The faint smell of beeswax polish lingered from the morning cleaning. I held my breath, listening past my own heartbeat for the telltale rhythm of Viktor's boots.
Nothing.
I cracked the door open. The corridor stretched empty in both directions, lit by sconces that turned shadows into living things. The guard at the far end was facing away, shoulders slumped with boredom.
Viktor wasn't at his usual post.
The absence carved something hollow in my chest. I pushed it down and slipped back inside, turning the lock with a soft click that sounded too loud.
Apollo watched me from the bed, head resting on his paws. His amber eyes tracked my movement to the wardrobe, and his ears flattened. He knew.
“Stay,” I whispered, even though he always did. “I'll be back.”
His tail didn't move.
I pressed the hidden panel, and the door swung open on hinges I'd oiled myself last month. The servant stairs yawned dark and narrow, smelling like century-old stone and the earth pressing in from all sides. I pulled the door shut and descended.
The darkness swallowed me whole. My fingers found the wall, trailing along rough stone worn smooth in places by generations of servants who'd used this route. Seventeen steps down. Turn. Twenty-three more. Another turn. Each footfall quiet on worn wood that creaked if you didn't know where to step.
I knew.
The air changed at the bottom. Opened up. Smelled like motor oil and leather and the ghost of gasoline. The hidden garage was smaller than most people's closets, carved out of foundation stone that had held this palace up for three hundred years.
My motorcycle sat in the center like a patient predator.
I moved to the weapons locker I'd built into the wall. Steel. Fireproof. Hidden behind a false panel that looked like structural support. My fingers worked the combination lock in darkness, muscle memory guiding each turn.
The door swung open, and I breathed in the familiar scent. Gun oil. Treated leather. The faint metallic tang of broadheads.
I changed quickly, efficiently, folding my civilian clothes and stashing them in the locker. The transformation felt physical. Like shedding skin. Like becoming something that made more sense than prince ever had.
The bow case was in the motorcycle's storage compartment.
I pulled it out, ran my hands over the dark wood.
The limbs were cold to touch. The string had perfect tension when I tested it.
My mother's necklace caught the faint light from the exit indicator, silver glinting like a promise I kept failing to keep.
I checked the quiver. Fifteen arrows left from last time. Not enough.
The weapon rack was mounted on the back wall, disguised as electrical conduit. I'd built it myself, learned metalwork from a smith in Brixton who'd taught me to weld in exchange for keeping his immigrant status quiet. Each arrow had its own slot, foam-lined, organized by tip type.
I selected fifteen more. Seven broadheads. Eight obsidian tips for the heavier work. Each one I'd fletched myself, raven feathers I'd collected from the palace gardens at dawn when no one was watching. Each one weighted and balanced and tested until it flew true.
Thirty arrows total. Same as always. I'd never needed more than that.
I pulled on the gloves last. Black leather worn soft at the palms. Carbon fiber plates over the knuckles that had split skin more times than I could count.
The hood went up, and I caught my reflection in the chrome of the bike's exhaust. Face half-shadowed. Eyes gone predatory in the low light. Something feral looking back that had no place in marble corridors and state dinners.
I mounted the bike, feeling the familiar weight settle between my thighs. The engine turned over with a purr that vibrated through my bones. I keyed in the override code for the exit, watched the reinforced door roll up on hydraulics I maintained myself.
London at night was a different city. All shadows and reflected light, beautiful in the way broken things sometimes were. I rode east, toward the cathedral quarter, where old churches rotted into the ground and the crown's influence ended.
Where monsters wore human faces and nobody asked questions about blood on stone.
I'd heard rumors about the cathedral district. Whispers from informants I'd cultivated over the years. Black market auctions held in abandoned chapels. Weapons trafficking. Human trafficking. All the darkness the city tried to pretend didn't exist.
Tonight, I was going to make them remember.
The rain came down harder as I ditched the bike in an alley three blocks from my destination. I killed the engine, listening to the city breathe around me. Water sluiced down crumbling brick. Glass crunched under my boots. The smell of garbage and wet concrete filled my lungs.
I pulled the comm from my jacket pocket and fitted it into my ear, cycling through frequencies until I found the police band. Static crackled, then voices.
“—reports of activity in the cathedral district. Suspected weapons movement. Units are advised to maintain distance pending backup—”
Perfect.
I stripped off the helmet, secured it to the bike, and pulled the hood lower. Rain immediately soaked through, cold rivulets running down my neck. I moved through the shadows, keeping close to walls, using dumpsters and fire escapes for cover.
The cathedral rose ahead like a rotting tooth. Gothic spires clawed at low clouds. Stained glass windows that once showed saints now gaped empty or hung in jagged fragments. Light flickered inside through the broken panes. Candlelight. Warm and wrong in a place that should've been dark.
Voices echoed from within. Low. Urgent. The cadence of men doing business they didn't want witnessed.
I approached from the east side where the shadows were deepest, where centuries of London soot had turned stone black. My fingers found purchase in worn carvings. Saints and demons eroded into abstract shapes. I climbed, testing each handhold, feeling stone crumble under my weight.
The roof was slick. Rain hammered against slate that shifted beneath my boots like living things.
I moved in a crouch, distributing my weight, one hand trailing along the ridgeline for balance.
Lightning split the sky, turning everything white for a heartbeat.
Thunder followed close enough to feel in my chest.