Shadows in the Wings

​POV: Jarrah

​The opera was a sea of false pearls and cheaper souls, but the heavy velvet behind the main stage smelled of old dust, dried sweat, and copper.

​Out front, the soprano was hitting a high C, a shrill, soaring note that vibrated through the floorboards beneath my boots. In here, behind the towering black folds of the backstage drapes, the world was suffocatingly dark.

​I stood completely still, breathing through my nose, letting my pulse drop to forty beats a minute. You don’t hunt in the light. You hunt in the gaps between the music.

​A shadow shifted near the rigging ropes ten feet to my left.

​It was subtle. Just a whisper of leather against heavy wool, but to a man who had spent his entire life listening for the click of a hammer, it was as loud as a gunshot.

​I didn't draw my gun. A gunshot in the middle of Lucia di Lammermoor was sloppy. It brought questions. It brought police. Steel was quieter. Steel kept secrets.

​I slid the silver-handled blade from my inner jacket pocket, the metal cold against my calloused palm. My lungs burned with the quiet rage that had been building since the moment I realized someone had put a price on Malia’s head. They thought they could breach my circle. They thought they could bleed me in the dark.

​I stepped forward, taking advantage of the sudden crash of the orchestra's cymbals.

​The assassin turned a fraction of a second too late.

​I hit him low, my shoulder plowing into his ribs, driving him backward into the suffocating folds of the massive crimson velvet curtain. The fabric wrapped around us like a heavy, suffocating shroud, muffling the sound of our impact.

​He was fast. A professional. His elbow slammed into my cheekbone, sending a metallic surge of blood into my mouth. I didn't back down; I welcomed the pain. It grounded me. It reminded me of what I had to lose.

​He drew a curved blade, slashing wildly in the gloom. The steel whistled inches from my throat, catching the fringe of the curtain and tearing it with a wet rip. I grabbed his wrist, twisting hard until I felt the radial bone pop under my thumb. He let out a strangled groan, choked back by his own discipline, and dropped his knife.

​We hit the wooden floor together, rolling beneath the shadows of the hanging iron counterweights.

​I pinned his forearm with my knee, my knife pressed so firmly against the side of his neck that a thin red line bloomed across his collar.

​"Who sent you?" I whispered, my voice barely a raspy murmur against the booming climax of the opera just six feet away on the other side of the drape.

​He grinned through teeth stained red with his own blood, refusing to speak. He was a dead man walking, and he knew it. His fingers twitched, reaching for something in his tactical vest.

​Before I could sink the blade to end it, a pale, slender hand reached out of the darkness and plunged directly into his inner pocket.

​My heart halted.

​Malia.

​She was kneeling right beside us in the filth of the backstage floor, her ivory silk gown stained with grease and dust from the floorboards. Her dark hair was loose, tumbling over her shoulders, but her eyes- god, her eyes- were cold, clear, and steady. There wasn’t a single tremor in her fingers as she pulled a dark, encrypted satellite phone straight from the assassin's inner vest.

​"Malia, get back," I growled, my grip on the blade tightening. "This isn't your place."

​She didn't flinch. She didn't look at the blood running down the man's neck or the violent squeeze of my knuckles. Instead, she locked her gaze with mine, her dark brown eyes burning with a terrifying, beautiful calm that chilled me to the bone.

​"Your world is my world now, Jarrah," she said softly, her breath hitting my cold jaw like a flame. She held up the locked device, her thumb resting on its screen. "He was waiting for a confirmation ping. If his heart stops before the transmission completes, the phone wipes itself. Hold him."

​A strange, savage warmth blossomed in my chest.

 A terrifying realization: this woman wasn't just someone I needed to protect. She was someone who walked through the fire right beside me without burning. She didn't flinch at the monster in me; she claimed it.

​I pressed down harder on the man's throat, cutting off his airway just enough to keep his nerve center panicked while Malia held his thumb against the biometric scanner.

​Click.

​The screen glowed bright blue in the dark.

​Access Granted.

​Malia tapped the screen twice, her eyes scanning the encrypted incoming log. A slow, bitter smile touched her lips, but behind it lay a deep, aching betrayal that hit me right in the chest.

​"It's not an outside syndicate," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly for the first time.not from fear, but from raw, agonizing shock. She held the glowing screen up so I could see the header of the final command log.

​My blood ran cold.

​The kill order hadn't come from our rivals in the North. It had been authorized three hours ago using a master security key that belonged to only one person in our inner sanctuary.

​Out on stage, the soprano hit her final note, and the theater erupted into thunderous, deafening applause.

​Malia looked up at me through the dim light, her hand touching my blood-stained cheek. "Jarrah... the command came from inside the house. It's Thorne."

​Before I could answer, the heavy iron rigging cable above our heads snapped with a deafening screech of tearing metal, and the five-ton steel lighting grid began its freefall straight toward where we knelt.