Viktor took his position at the back of the box. Standing instead of sitting. Eyes already scanning the crowd. Cataloging threats. Mapping escape routes. Doing what he always did.
The conductor appeared to applause. Raised his baton.
The first notes trembled into life. Strings building toward something beautiful and terrible. The curtain rose on a stage dressed like heaven. White silk. Gold light. Smoke machines creating clouds that caught the stage lights and turned them ethereal.
A soprano appeared. Young. Talented. Her voice rose in an aria about love and loss and death, and despite everything, I let myself fall into it. Let the music wash over me. Let myself forget, just for a moment, that I was being watched by a thousand eyes.
The music swelled. The soprano's voice climbed higher, achingly pure, reaching for notes that seemed impossible. I closed my eyes. Felt the sound vibrate in my chest, in my bones, drowning out thoughts of duty and danger and the man standing ten feet behind me who I wanted more than I'd ever wanted anything.
Peace. Just for a moment. Just this breath between heartbeats where nothing existed except music and darkness and the brief illusion of safety.
Then Viktor moved.
I felt it more than saw it. The sudden shift in the air. The change in his breathing. My eyes snapped open.
He was already moving, weaving through the darkness at the back of the box with purpose, heading for the corridor beyond. Every line of his body screamed threat.
That's when I heard it.
The first shot was nearly silent. Suppressed. Professional. The kind of sound you'd miss if you weren't listening for it.
The spotlight above the stage shattered.
Glass rained down on the performers. The soprano's voice cut off mid-note, replaced by screaming.
People surged out of their seats, shoving toward exits that were suddenly too far away. Another shot cracked through the air, louderthis time. Someone in the crowd went down. Blood sprayed across white marble like paint.
I was moving before I could think. Out of the box. Toward the stage. Toward Viktor.
Toward the fight.
The backstage corridors reeked of smoke and fear. Emergency lights flickered red, painting everything in hellish shadows. People ran past me, staff and performers fleeing for the exits, hair and costumes trailing like ragged banners. The air tasted of gunpowder and perfume and something metallic that clung to my tongue.
I pushed against the current without a plan.
“Sebastian!”
Viktor's voice cut through the noise. I turned, found him twenty feet away, gun drawn, eyes hard and wild when they landed on me.
Three gunmen rounded the corner behind him, black tactical gear, faces masked, moving with a military rhythm that spoke of planning and payment. They were professionals, not amateurs. They spread like a pincer, two sweeping wide, one closing the gap.
I did not hesitate. A scream somewhere ahead split the corridor; a woman stumbled and went down, clutching her throat. Instinct took over. I should have been terrified. Instead, my muscles recognized a shape they had lived in for years. I found the nearest assailant mid-stride and met him with my shoulder. The slap of flesh against rib and bone sounded cruel and honest. He staggered, surprise cracking his mask.
Viktor fired. The report was a thunderclap in the corridor. Muzzle flash licked the near wall. A man dropped, the sound of weight hitting concrete like a curtain falling. Viktor moved with the brutal precision I had come to trust. He covered the angles I could not see, collapsing threats with cold, methodical shots.
I moved with a different rhythm. My hands were small weapons. I ducked under an armpit, wrenched at a wrist until the gun pointed somewhere useless. I drove my knee into a liver and felt the breath leave a man's body like a rag being wrung. I grabbed a length of cable from the wall, wrapped it around an opponent's throat, hoisted himinto the air, and let the others see that violence could be improvisation as much as training.
We fell into each other like two pieces of a puzzle. Viktor slid to my left and checked the corridor behind us, gun sweeping, eyes carving through smoke. I pivoted, ducked, met a charging man head-on and used his momentum to throw him into the third attacker. Steel met skull. A flash of pain licked my forearm where a knife grazed me. Blood welled quick and hot. I tasted iron and grinned.
“Too many,” Viktor said between shots. He was breathless but controlled, firing single, measured rounds that punched through jackets and bone. He did not waste motion. He was a machine wrapped in a man's skin, and I loved him for that.
“Not for us,” I snarled, and then my fist closed around a man's jaw. I didn't think. I acted. My knuckles smashed cartilage. The man reeled, hands flying, and I shoved him into a cable trunk. He hit with the sound of something breaking.
One attacker lunged with a knife. I caught his wrist in a clinch, thumb finding the soft hollow beneath his thumb, the pressure point Viktor had taught me in the training yard. I twisted, felt tendon and intent snap into a scream, then used the freed hand to strike the man behind him. Fight was choreography, practiced and raw. We fitted into that rhythm—Viktor at long range, clearing sightlines with gunfire, me inside the arc where bullets could not breathe.
A burst of a rifle on my right threw plaster dust into my face. I coughed, spat grit, and rolled toward cover behind a stacked set piece. Viktor was moving like a tide, pulling down threats that tried to flank us. When he reloaded, fingers quick and sure, he did not look away from me. Not once.
I stepped out and met a man charging from the left. No weapon in his hands, just drunken, vicious intention. We grappled. He had weight on his side, muscle on his arms, but I had speed. I sidestepped, looped my leg around his, and used his forward force to pitch him over into a row of folding chairs. He hit hard. The sound of his breath slamming into his lungs made something in me hum with frightening satisfaction.
