At 23:47, I gave up. Pulled myself out of bed with my good arm. The movement sent pain shooting through damaged nerves. I bit back a curse. Dr. Amir's painkillers sat untouched on the nightstand. Tempting. But I needed to be sharp. Alert.
Something felt wrong.
I dressed slowly. Tactical pants. Dark shirt. Shoulder holster I couldn't wear because of the sling. Gun tucked into my waistband instead. Not ideal. But better than nothing.
My quarters had a small security station. Three monitors showing palace feeds. Standard protocol for senior protection detail. I settled into the chair and pulled up the camera grid.
Everything looked normal. Guards on rotation. Empty corridors. The King's wing dark and quiet. Sebastian's chambers showing no movement, which meant he was sleeping like he should be.
Good. At least one of us was resting.
I cycled through exterior cameras. Perimeter looked clear. East gate secure. West approach quiet. South gardens?—
I stopped. Rewound.
There. A flicker on the north gardens camera. Shadow moving with purpose toward the old carriage house. Moving with a gait I recognized. Favoring the left side slightly. The same way Sebastian had moved after the attack.
But it couldn't be Sebastian. He was in his chambers. Sleeping. Safe.
I pulled up his bedroom feed. Empty. Bed undisturbed.
My blood went cold.
I switched back to the north gardens. Watched the figure emerge from the carriage house wearing dark clothes. Watched him mount amotorcycle I'd never seen in palace inventory. Watched him key in a code that opened a gate that should've been locked.
Watched Sebastian disappear into London at midnight while still healing from bullet wounds.
I was moving before conscious thought caught up.
Down corridors. Through service passages. Ignoring the screaming in my shoulder and ribs. Out an exit that led to the garage where I kept my personal vehicle.
Black SUV. Armored. Fast enough to track a motorcycle. I fired the engine and rolled out with headlights off, following the route he'd taken through the gate.
He had a four-minute lead. But I was trained for pursuit. And I knew this city better than I wanted to.
I caught sight of his taillight three blocks out. Kept two cars back. Watched him weave through empty streets with the confidence of someone who'd done this a thousand times. East toward Belmont. Then south. Then into the warehouse district near King's Cross where old railway buildings rotted into the ground.
Not the docks. Somewhere worse. Where screams got swallowed by construction noise and bodies disappeared into foundations no one would excavate for years.
Rain started falling. Of course it was fucking raining.
He stopped near an abandoned railyard. Brick warehouses with broken windows and graffiti-covered walls. The kind of place where violence happened and nobody reported it because nobody cared.
I parked two blocks back. Watched Sebastian ditch the bike behind a burned-out car. Watched him pull something from a hidden compartment in the seat.
A bow. Dark wood. Composite construction. Professional grade. The kind you didn't buy in stores.
Then a hood. Black fabric that shadowed his face. Made him disappear into darkness.
My stomach dropped.
The vigilante. The one Akintola had been hunting. The one who'dbeen leaving bodies in Belmont and the cathedral district and everywhere else violence festered.
Sebastian.
All the pieces clicked into place. The injuries he couldn't explain. The way he'd moved during yesterday's ambush like he'd done it before. The calluses on his hands. The scars. The medical knowledge. The exhaustion in his eyes that spoke of too many nights without sleep.
How long had he been doing this? How many times had he gone out bleeding and come back worse?
